Page 76 of Vasily the Nail

She really is going to be the death of me, but in the best way possible. Instead of dipping my head between her legs, I run a trail of kisses up her slight body, racing my way up to her lips. “What if you weren’t a barista in Denver? What if you were a baker? Or a chef?”

Her cheeks burn a deep ruddy shade beneath her olive skin. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“But you’re learning. I swear you’re already a better cook than I am, and I’ve had to cook my whole life. Just think what you’ll be making in a week? Or a year?”

She drapes her arms over my shoulders to bring me back down to her neck. She shivers beneath me as I lick her there. “Mmm, I’m not thinking about what I’m cooking in a year, just tonight.”

As much as it pains me to do so, I peel myself off of her. There’s a meeting I need to be at. Artyom has a bad feeling about the MC, and I’m the one who has the best rapport with them. There won’t be any nights off for a while until we’re sure things have settled with the Irish. Artyom even mentioned calling in some assistance from the Russians in Vegas, but if we can get the bikers back in our pocket, that shouldn’t be necessary.

I look around, trying to remember where we last undressed. “I need to head out, but I bet Kseniya would love to make dessert with you. She said she’s already gone up a pants size this week,and it hasn’t even been a week.” I give up on my clothes and head into the closet. From my dresser, I pull out some briefs and socks, but when I look back up, Ana’s entire weight is thrown at me.

I grunt as I catch her and she wraps herself around me like a monkey, but I don’t even stumble. She weighs practically nothing. I do back up at least, and by the time I’ve hit the wall, she’s managed to rub herself enough on my cock to get it perking back up.

“I need you now,” she whimpers as she nips at my jaw and my earlobe before biting down on my neck hard enough to leave a mark. She holds me with one hand while the other tugs on my hair.

“You are a total sex fiend,” I say with a chuckle, knowing I should peel her off me but finding it hard to get that motivation.

I don’t want to work. I want to bury my cock in Ana for the rest of the night. I want to break her and mold her into me. I want her too weak to walk so I can have the honor of cleaning her, feeding her, caring for her. Making her mine forever.Earningthe right to make her mine.

But can I truly earn that? We talked about what she could do if we found ourselves in a small town in Colorado but not what I could do. I never finished college. I’ve spent my life as a thug. I’m a drug addict, and I want to say I can clean up for Ana, but how realistic is that?

The voices aren’t going to stop on their own. And thinking about that is enough to cool my blood off quickly.

I should regret tattooing her with my sigil, but even if I can’t be the one who takes care of her, that symbol will run off any man who thinks he can buy her.

Ana, the saint that she is, catches the moment the fear takes me. She keeps herself wrapped around me, but she stops moving except to get her arms in a position to hug me as she nuzzles at my neck. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m no good for you,” I tell her as I carry her back into the bedroom and lay her on the bed, gently this time.

She takes my head between her hands and guides me down close enough that her breath warms my lips. “You’re all I’ve ever wanted.”

“You don’t even know me.”

Her smile, the light going straight to her deep chocolate eyes, warms me more than her breath ever could.

My heart clenches. She’s not Brooke. She’s no more Brooke in my mind now than she’s ever been. At worst, there’ve been some late-night moments where I got so lost in the mindless labor of fucking that it didn’t matter who she was. But it hits me now that she’s taken a place within me I thought only Brooke could have.

I’m in so much trouble.

Ana slides a hand down my chest, to that mangled heart fighting to push out what’s already been drilled in and latched there. “I know what’s here. I did that first awful day in the strip club. It just took me a long time to realize it.” Her eyes glitter, another spur digging into my heart to lock her down. “No, I did know it then. I just didn’t want to admit it. You’re a good man.You have this life you can’t get out of, and you do terrible things. I picked a piece of bone out of the dryer lint yesterday, and I don’t have the energy to come up with a plausible explanation for how that got there that doesn’t involve awful things, but still, I know that you did it because you are loyal at the least, honorable at the most. I don’t know a single other man I can say that about.”

A better man would lift himself off her and get himself dressed, probably drive her home to her family and then turn himself in to the police for kidnapping. But I’m not a good man, despite what she says, so I let her words of praise sink into my soul. “You don’t know many men. And the men you know?”

Well, the men she knows saw me rape her on camera — and in real life, in the case of her fucktwat brother — and not a single one came to her rescue. The best she got was an offer from her friend’s husband, which I laughed about when she told me and then sent him a gift basket to pamper his wife with as a token of my appreciation for caring more than the rest of those assholes. If that had happened to Kseniya, I would have been dumb enough to set the entire city on fire to rescue her before I found out it was just her having fun.

“I never realized Tony was so bad until all of this. I knew he wasn’t good, but I didn’t think he was bad. And that’s gotta mean something, right?Youshowed me that. What you did should have been the worst thing that ever happened me. I should be scared of you. Do you know that it never occurred to me until that first morning that if something happened and I did have to set out into the world alone, I have no idea what I’d do? I have no idea how to exist out there? Vasya, if your door hadn’t locked from the outside, you would have never known that I attempted to leave.”

I would have. The alarm on the door notified Igor, which notified me, and I felt a peculiar warmth when she immediately tried to go back in. But she doesn’t need to know that now.

“Themomentthe door closed behind me, I regretted it. I knew it was better to stay with you than to go anywhere else, whether it was setting out on my own or returning to my brother.”

“You know I promised to take care of you.”

She pushes me onto my back, rolling with me and clenching around me to make it clear she’s not pushing me away in any way. Once she’s straddling me, she leans down to kiss my sternum over my heart. “I know. Just like I know you’re serious when you tell me I could be a barista or a cook or a baker, and—”

“You know none of those make a lot of money,” I warn her.

“But they make me some money. They makememoney. And that’s . . . that’s something I never had before. That makes me somebody. I won’t be just your wife. I’ll be a barista or a cook or a baker.”

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