Page 26 of Gemini Kings
Maxim snarls at him like he’s already in dragon form (which seems like a real possibility now that my alpha’s on the scene and attacking him). Every ropy sinew in the shifter’s naked body strains against that telekinetic hold Vasili’s got clamped around him like a fist of iron.
But I’ve been on the receiving end of Vasili’s telekinesis when he’s Hulking out myself, and it’s not exactly a situation you wiggle out of.
Let’s just say this new guy’s going nofuckingwhere.
“Romanov,” Maxim growls, rolling his R’s ferociously, eyes flaming, his dragon lurking in his voice. “Still you are a filthy skulking sneak who refuses to fight me fairly? Just as your ancestors slaughtered mine in shameful ambush. Release me and face me like a Russian.”
Okay, I gotta give this guy some credit for moxie.
Vasili showed up out of nowhere and hurled Maxim all the way across the parking lot without laying a finger on the dude. My alpha’s levitating fifteen feet off the ground for intimidation effect. And even dressed in his David Bowie Goblin King attire, long legs encased in heeled boots and breeches, sparkly coat draped over the corset laced around his lean body to such lethal effect, hair blowing in the wind and face chiseled out of ice and eyes absolutely wicked with intent… Vasili looks pretty fucking terrifying.
Half rock star, half pit viper.
That’s my warlock.
If it was me pinned five feet off the ground against the gas station wall while this hooded snake reared over me with his fangs dripping venom, I’d be pissing myself.
“Hmmmm,” Vasili murmurs, sublimely unimpressed by all this dragonish bluster. “Last time, as I recall, I turned the other cheek and overlooked your little temper tantrum so I wouldn’t spoil my manicure. This time,malchik, I do believe I’ll punish you.”
Chapter Six
Vasili
Karma can be a vicious bitch.
Oh, you can trust me to know. I’ve always supposed I haven’t seen the last of him. I’m talking about this so-called prince, this perfect paragon, this spoiled prick whose swaggering ego and tattling tongue cost me so dearly.
Four years ago, this wretched little worm cost me everything.
And I’ve been lurking and watching long enough just now from the darkness to ferret out precisely what new mischief he fancies he’s brewing. This Rasputin cunt imagines he’s going to swoop in and claim Zara like she’s some sort of medieval virgin, exterminate the rest of us like cockroaches, then fuck my queen through her inconsolable grief.
Enter, stage left, that vicious bitch called karma.
Let’s just say Maxim Rasputin owes me asubstantialkarmic debt.
Well, darling, it’s payback time.
I’ll confess it’s simply delightful to be holding this bastard prince pinned to the grimy wall above the dumpster with the merest fraction of my telekinetic strength. Purely for effect, I’m levitating high enough to intimidate any fool with eyes (because you don’t get a second chance to make a first impression).
I hadn’t come into my power that summer our grotesque families spent together at sea, with little Maximka and his odious clutch of brothers terrorizing the crew and kissing my father’s aristocratic ass and polluting our gaudy superyacht with the sulfurous reek of dragon.
Let’s just say Vasili 2.0 should come asquitethe nasty shock to this rotten little imp of a Rasputin who tried his piddling best to ruin me.
He glares at me now from where I’ve got him pinned, naked as the day he was hatched (I suppose, not having been there, you know) like he’s going to breathe fire and set me alight the way he did those hapless Gemini buffoons in the chopper. And because I too have eyes, I can hardly avoid noticing, as he writhes and strains quite futilely against my witchcraft, that my boyhood nemesis has grown intoquitethe specimen of manhood. He’s all smoldering intensity and scowling menace and ropy muscle bunching and flexing under that Black Sea suntan.
Then there’s that absolutely intriguing forked dragon cock whose angles and length I’d normally be dying to explore with my tongue—
“Fight me like a man, Romanov,” he snarls in his gutter English, presumably for Zara’s benefit, since he and I obviously grew up speaking Russian.
This bit of bluster on his part effectively shatters my fantasy, which is really just as well. Our harem might be polyamorous, yes, but the five of us are entirely exclusive. We’re only with each other.
And Maxim Rasputin is definitelynotinvited to the prom.
Apparently the lizard king doesn’t care for my eye roll, since he bares his teeth at me in a dragonish grimace and tediously repeats himself. “Fight me fairly, coward, I dare you! Fight me for the right to rule her bed.”
“Oh, dear God,” I murmur.
Zara’s eloquent snort makes me smirk. She’s sauntering across the parking lot to say hello, also naked and owning it in that ballsy way of hers I absolutely adore.
