Page 69 of Crowned

His mouth hooks into a smile. “Don’t. You may not feel sorry for me when the rest of my story is told.”

I look up in surprise. “There’s more?”

Kirill muses on this, tilting his head from side to side as if he’s relishing a secret and deciding whether this is the time to tell it. “Or should I say, our story.”

“You and me?” I ask, not understanding.

Over his shoulder, Konstantin raises his head and frowns. He didn’t say a word or move a muscle this past hour, even during the parts of the story that included him. Elyah casts a curious look at Kirill, and it’s clear they don’t know what he’s talking about either.

Kirill hunkers down on his heels before me and puts his hands on my belly. My heart rate picks up as I stare into his brutally handsome face. There’s just something about a cold-blooded killer touching me so gently, so sweetly, that makes my body go haywire.

He raises those dark eyes to mine. “This is my baby, Lilia.”

The finality in his voice surprises me. I can understand Elyah’s need to claim this child as his own. To protect us with his body and prove he can love us as no other man can. I can even understand why Konstantin wants it to be his. A wife and a baby are the next phase of his life.

But Kirill? When I look into his face, I see nothing of the soft and almost innocent sixteen-year-old boy who craved to be kind to a fellow misfit. All that kindness was burned away the night he torched the Lugovskaya mansion. His only loyalty is to Konstantin and Elyah, and to the mayhem and chaos he thrives in.

I shake my head and push his hands away. “Don’t start with that again. You can’t just decide that this is your child. I’m not Katya and we don’t need you.”

“No, Lilia.” His voice is dark and possessive. “It’s my baby. You still don’t remember?”

“Remember what?”

A sharp smile curves his lips, and his eyes glitter. That expression sends ice skittering down my spine.

“You really are a deep sleeper,” he murmurs, caressing my throat.

I haven’t heard those words in so long, but suddenly I’m strapped to a lie detector that gives me electric shocks while Kirill purrs,Are you a deep sleeper?

Konstantin and Elyah are staring at Kirill.

Kirill just laughs.

I stand up quickly, backing away from him. “You didn’t.”

He strolls closer, that hateful smirk on his lips. “You needed a little help to stay under, but it was just as good as I hoped.”

I remember his body on mine, that first slow thrust of his cock. His kisses. His mouth on my body. My pussy. It was the most intense dream of my life, and I woke up with my heart racing, horrified that I was thinking about one of my captors that way.

“But it was a dream,” I blurt out.

“Oh,detka. You do remember.” Kirill strokes his fingers lovingly and possessively through my hair. “You were so delicious I couldn’t help myself. And when I was finished, I tucked you so sweetly back into bed, full of my cum.”

I shake my head. I would have noticed that. I would have realized the next morning that I was damp and sticky.

But mornings were so chaotic at the pageant, and I was always in a hurry to wash myself and get dressed. Could I have missed what happened to me while I was distracted thinking about other things?

I wrap my arms around my stomach and stare at my baby. This pregnancy was a shock, but I came to terms with it these past few months. Elyah or Konstantin gave me a baby because I gave myself to them in order to buy my freedom. That seems right to me.

Kirill, delighting over the way he deceived me and then getting me pregnant? I ram up against a brick wall in my mind and shake my head. “I don’t believe you. Iwon’tbelieve you.”

Kirill wears a proud smile on his lips. “It was the third night of the pageant. Before Kostya. Before Elyah. I was with Lilia first. This is my baby.”

White noise roars in my ears as Kirill reaches out and takes hold of me once more, sliding his hands around my waist.

I try to push him away, but he won’t let me go. He laughs at my attempts, and I feel the vibrations against the palms of my hands.

“I had you on the floor of the Lugovskayas, passed out cold,” he whispers. “You fought for your life and you nearly killed me. I was never so fucking turned on in my life. I had to have you, Lilia.”

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