Page 75 of Hateful Vows
“Is that what you think? That I never cared about you, or for you?”
“You were very good at pushing me away.”
She purses her lips like the memory hurts her still, then shrugs haughtily. She would have me believe the conversation bores her and it doesn’t matter but as much as she knows me, I know her. Every crease of her brow, every slant of her lips, the color of her clothes and how she doesn’t realise how much they’re telling of her inner turmoil. Black when she’s at ease, dark shades of red when something bothers her, and brighter when she has something to prove. She’ll reserve blue for contempt and disinterest.
I round the desk and glide a finger on her soft cheek, goosebumps following the trail of my digit, before tilting her chin up so she can meet my gaze.
“I protected you. The further away from me, the less of a target you were for my father.”
“I could have defended myself.”
I tilt my head, the old argument a litany I’ve heard before. I glide my thumb on her lower lip and she parts them for me. “Now? Of course. At sixteen? Unlikely. I did what I had to do tokeep you safe and I’m not sorry. But Iamsorry it bruised your heart,malyshka.”
She gasps at the pet name. Allowing myself to use it stirs a desire a decade old inside me. It comes out roaring and ready to raze everything we’ve been to the ground. Forging us anew.
“I’m not ashamed of the scars that bear your name on my body and face,malyshka. They remind me every day that I protected you, that you escaped the monster because I took his rage for you. I know they offend you, but I wear them with pride.”
She grasps my wrist and presses a tender kiss to the pad of my thumb. Her eyes shimmer with something vulnerable, so unlike the Irina I know. Dante’s influence is all over her but this time, I don’t mind. She’s glowing and I just get to bask in her presence.
“They don’t offend me,” she says. “I just wish you’d never had to suffer because of me.”
I bend down to hover over her lips. “I’d do it all over again for you.”
Then, I succumb. I kiss her, her soft lips yielding to me. She stands and wraps her arms around my neck, clutching me to her like it would hurt her to let go.
My hands press at her back and hip, holding her closer in a bruising grip. But it’s not enough. With her, it’ll never be.
She opens for me and I taste her sweetness on my tongue, delving into her mouth to get more of her. Kissing Dante was as easy as breathing, but kissing Irina—without him being there as a guardrail for our folly—is a revelation, it’s more intimate than anything else we’ve done. It’s the missing piece that finally,finallymakes me whole.
I frame her face, owning her mouth and never coming up for air. Who needs it when I can have her taste in my mouth, her love on my tongue?
We move in sync as I set her up on the desk and step in between her spread thighs. The slit in the skirt isn’t enough to allow me to press against her heated centre, so I take the knife I know is strapped at her thigh and cut it off her body, giving me full access. It ends up in tatters on the mahogany desk, leaving the infuriating, beautiful woman in front of me in nothing but a thin silk bra and panties.
“Hey!”
“Please,malyshka. I’ll get you a new dress but I might die if I don’t feel you,” I retort and grind my length against her clit through her thin black panties.
Irina paws at my shirt, breaking the buttons with impatience before raking her nails down my chest and abs, making me shudder. We devour each other, our kiss another battle neither of us want to lose.
“I’ve dreamt of your lips for so long,” I say, panting in her mouth.
“Aleksei.”
My name on her lips is a plea, a desperate cry. One I need to answer. I frame her face with my hands, slide them alongside her delicate throat, her arms, her stomach, her thighs. Anywhere I can reach, I feel the softness of her skin. I pepper kisses alongside the column of her throat as my deft fingers remove the bra, inhaling deeply and filling myself up with that perfume that drove me mad for more than a decade.
“Dante’s not here,” she murmurs when my lips are back on hers, her frantic hands removing my clothes. My trousers and boxers fall to my ankles and I step out of them before I answer.
“Why don’t we record it for him, then?”
A slow, bright grin takes over her face and shocks my system. I swallow hard, in awe of how much I feel for this woman, especially when she smiles at me like I can give her everything she desires.
“You’re diabolical.”
“I learnt from the best.”
Cock rock hard, I fish my phone from the trousers on the floor and set it up to give Dante the perfect view of me ruining his wife.
With a cock-hungry look and a lick of her lips, Irina opens up her legs again in invitation.
