Page 46 of Sin & Sapphire

“You know Boris Tchérnov?”

I shook my head.

Dmitri looked at me with surprise. “No? You Americans are so fucking myopic sometimes, I’m surprised you can even find your own asses. He’s Russo-French—Paris-based bratva. Ana fucking Costa blew up his boat. So he started blowing up Angelo’s property here.” Dmitri smiled. “Chaos is bad for business,” he said. “And Nikolai doesn’t want Russians he can’t control in Yorkfield.”

“And what about Ana?”

“Who the fuck cares? Costa will marry her off to some poor fucker who’ll spend his life wondering if selling his soul to the devil was worth the alliance she’ll bring.”

“What do you need me for?”

Dmitri grinned, his smile feral in the dim light of the back office. “Nikolai needs someone to take down the bratva interlopers. If he shows his hand against other Russians, the families he rules will rebel.”

“In exchange for?”

“In exchange for letting you keep the territory you gain, you fucking moron.”

19

VALENTIN

Angelo droppedto his knees in front of me, then snaked my belt out of its loops, his fingers dragging over my abs in a seductive caress.

“What a delightful gift you brought me,” he murmured as he freed my cock. “A brat,” he continued sardonically.

My laugh turned into a strangled moan when he wrapped his lips around me. “Putain, Angelo,” I gasped. “She’s a hellcat, and I don’t want to talk about her with my cock in your mouth.”

Angelo smiled around my cock, fisting the base as he licked at the tip, then pumping his fist up and down as he looked up at me. “No? You don’t want to talk about how hard you get when you spank her? How much she likes the pain? Or how about those perfect tits that beg for you to mark them, as if she isn’t perfect for you too?”

“She’s a reckless witch. You fell in love with the idea of her when she was sixteen and you have no fucking idea who she is as an adult. And neither do I. Three months of taming her and you’ll be—” Angelo took me down his throat and wiped all thought from my consciousness. The obscene sounds he made as he bobbed up on and down my cock only fueled my need.

I clenched my fists to stop myself from tangling my fingers in his hair and fucking the back of his throat like I needed—like he hated.

He pulled back and looked up at me, his eyes more thoughtful than usual. “You love my obsessions.”

True.

“You loveindulgingmy obsessions.”

Also true.

“And you love it when I come back to you after I throw them away.”

So fucking true.

But I didn’t think he was going to throw this one away.

I moaned as he tightened his fingers around me. “Is that your plan? Indulge yourself while you train her, work her out of your system, so you can give her away to someone else?”

He licked the crown of my cock. “I can’t give you what you need. I won’t put up with your sadistic bullshit. But she will.”

The thought of Ana, sweet, vicious Ana, on her knees in front of me, her face covered in tears, her ass red from the shock of my belt, had my hips jerking toward Angelo. I’d taken lovers before, we both had. We’d shared. But we’d never found someone who could scratch both our itches.

Maybe Ana could. And that terrified me. Ana was hell personified, temptation in a gorgeous package that threatened to tear down my carefully erected walls and destroy me when she left. And leave she would. I’d never admit it out loud, but women like her deserved better than sadistic assholes like me.

Women like Ana deserved Angelo’s ruthless devotion, a quiet voice whispered in the back of my mind.

Fuck. I resisted the temptation to slam into the back of his throat, to wrap my fingers in his hair and pull until tears leaked out of his eyes, to remind him who he belonged to and that he’d promised I’d be his forever.

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