Page 7 of Claimed By Desire

I bump up against the wall behind me. A thrift-store painting of some nice little ducks rattles and nearly falls.

Alex grabs my wrists and pins them above my head.

“Because we just learned something about each other,” he whispers, dipping down to kiss my neck.

I squirm, but don’t try to get away. “What’s that? You finally figured out what a bastard you are?”

“No, Natalya, I learned that wefittogether. Maybe you’re a spoiled little Russian Bratva princess and your head’s filled with hot air and music notes, but you feel like fucking heaven. And I wantmore.”

My mouth hangs open at the devilish look he gives me. It’s half loathing and half lust, and I feel the same tearing around in my guts.

This prick, this arrogant bastard, but he’s right.

I hate it, but I can’t deny it.

Wefit.

“If I tell you to fuck off?” I ask him, desperately clinging to my last shreds of pride.

“You won’t. No, you’re going to kiss me now, and then I’m going to drag you into that pathetic little cubby you call a bedroom, and I’m going to fuck you into a senseless puddle of messy bliss. I’m going to take my fill of you, Natalya, before we have to go back to the real world. I’m going to make you ache and moan and come so hard your toes curl. This is your last chance. This is your last escape.”

My last chance. My last escape.

But what he doesn’t know is, this year in Paris hasn’t been so much a vacation as it has been a prison sentence, and I yearn for something more.

Something to make mefeelagain.

He doesn’t move. His mouth is inches from mine. I’m breathing hard and my breasts rise and fall, my nipples brushing against his hard chest.

Then I twine my fingers through his, hold on tight, and lean forward to swallow the space between us.

Chapter 3

Alexander

Iwake up in Natalya’s sweltering Paris shit box, stare at the ceiling, and wonder how I managed to fuck this up beyond saving.

She is going to hate me even more than she already does when she wakes up and I have to tell her the truth.

But it was that song, that fucking song.

I didn’t plan on any of yesterday—didn’t even think it was a possibility. Not with Little Nat, not with my best friend’s spoiled little sister, the bratty little asshole that always made my life miserable when we were growing up. Constantly complaining. Constantly tattling. She drove me absolutely fuckingcrazy.

No, it was the music that shattered me.

That longing, brutal sadness. It opened something inside of me that I’ve struggled for years to keep locked down and closed away.

I knew she was talented. I heard her play when we were younger, and even her brothers both agreed that she could become aconcert pianist or something like that if their father weren’t such a controlling prick.

But unfortunately for her, Natalya was only ever destined for marriage.

When I heard about her arrangement to Valentin Zeitsev, I figured she would’ve been ecstatic. I mean, she was always going to end up with a Bratva husband, but the fuckingpakhanhimself? That was a coup for her and her father.

Except then she ran.

It made no sense. Valentin was going to give her money, comfort, and a strange kind of power, and her children were going to be the heirs to the Bratva. She would’ve been important, at the center of the world, or at least at the center of the only world she’s ever known.

It was everything she should’ve wanted.

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