Page 8 of Inked Adonis

My body is warm and my breathing is labored. I should stop, but we’re so close to the finale.

“I ride him hard, and he encourages me, whispering everything we still have yet to try in my ear.”

“And do you cross the finish line?” Hope presses.

“Twice. No, three times, before he explodes inside me. We’re just getting started, though,” I decide, eyes fluttering open. “I’m not done with him yet.”

Hope is smiling down at her phone, typing up a storm. “I bet not.”

Something pings in my head. A vague realization that something is amiss. “What are you doing?”

“Just sending off a little message,” she says, all breezy and nonchalant.

That’s when my gaze drops to Samuil’s business card perched on her right thigh.

Oh.

My.

God.

“Hope…” My voice is strangled. “What did you just do?”

There’s a familiar littlewhoosh, the telltale sound of a message being sent, and then Hope flips her phone around so I can see the screen…

Including the audio file she just sent.

She gives me a guilt-free shrug. “When Samuil makes your fantasy a reality, you can thank me later. I accept cash or check.”

3

SAMUIL

“I’ve got some bad news.”

When Myles utters those four little words, my first instinct is to imagine smashing his face with a hockey puck. Not enough to kill him. Just enough to shut him up. It’s becoming a familiar fantasy these days, because all my head of security seems to bring me lately is an endless parade of fuckery.

Myles has been more of a brother to me than my actual brother since our Dartmouth hockey days. But right now, all I see is another messenger I want to shoot.

He must sense my murderous thoughts, because he smooths a hand over his crew cut like he’s protecting his skull. “It’s about Lev Danovic.”

“Let me take a wild fucking guess.” I lean back in my chair, leather creaking beneath my weight, preparing to play a fun little game I callWhat The Fuck Else Can Go Wrong? “Since Danovic is the Litvinov Group’s biggest client, and you look like someone pissed in your protein shake, I’m betting those Andropov snakes are trying to steal my golden goose.”

“Ding ding ding.” Myles’s grimace tells me everything I need to know. “You win.”

Like fuck I do.

Lev Danovic isn’t just any client. He’s a Moscow oil titan with his fingers in every major pie from Russia to the States. The man single-handedly helped make me Chicago’s youngest billionaire. Losing him would be like losing a limb. A very profitable limb.

“According to my sources,” Myles continues, “he’s already taken two meetings with an Andropov rep. And...” He winces like the next words physically pain him. “... he’s accepted a third.”

Suddenly, the air in my top-floor office feels thin. If it were any other company trying to poach Danovic, I’d almost welcome the challenge.

But the Andropov Group isn’t just any rival.

They’re enemy number one.

These fuckers have been gunning for my destruction since before I had anything worth destroying. They fight dirty, they fight mean, and they never stop coming.

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