Page 72 of Broken Sins (Volkov Bratva 3)

I grip the collar of his shirt in my free hand and ball it up in a fist. “What the hell does that mean?”

“You’re the heir to a vast kingdom, living in a castle with four dark princes, love. If that doesn’t make you a princess, what does?” He laughs, loud and carefree, as if his sworn enemy isn’t holding a knife to his throat.

I marvel at that. I always said I wanted to be carefree. Is this what that looks like? To stare death in the face and laugh—not just putting on a brave front, but to trulylaugh,like he means it—is that freedom from worry? Is that what I want? I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore.

I don’t know why I’m here.

I don’t know why I care that his brother is dead.

I don’t know why it breaks my heart to think of a little boy with honey-colored eyes watching his violin burn.

I don’t know why I let my hand fall slack.

I don’t know why I let go of his shirt, why I let Dante lean up on his elbows.

I don’t know why I lean forward to kiss him.

And I don’t know why he stops me with a finger on his lips.

“Wait,” he says. He reaches over to wrap his fingers around my wrist and pull it up so he positions the knife back against his jugular. “Keep it there,” he tells me softly, his eyes riveted on mine. “Make me feel like I’m alive. It’s been a long time since I’ve felt that, princess.”

Then he kisses me, and I feel like I’m diving into the heart of the jungle as his tongue slides past my lips and his smell consumes me. His hand finds the edge of the T-shirt I’m wearing, the one that appeared suddenly in a chest of drawers two mornings ago, and moves underneath it to palm my lower back. His other hand moves to the back of my head and tugs gently at the roots of my hair.

I feel what I felt with Leo, the same feeling I’ve been wrestling with for so many days and nights now: I want this man more than I’ve ever wanted anything in my life.

With Leo, I felt like he might swallow me whole at any moment.

With Dante though, I feel like I’m closing my eyes and jumping off a cliff. It’s adrenaline, yes, but the kind filled with uncertainty and wind rushing past your face and the cloying, unfiltered sense that there is nothing between you and the next moment and the next.

I feel wild. I feel free.

I also feel his cock stiffening beneath me. I’m still straddling him, but as he sits up further and further—keeping the knife pressed against his neck; he truly wants it there— he shifts me back, until his thickness is rubbing against my own core heat, separated only by the thin lace of the panties I’m wearing. His hand on my back slides around front to find one breast and squeeze it. He’s careful at first, but as his thumb flicks across my taut nipple and draws a low moan from me, he gets messier and hungrier and less tentative.

Devour me,is what I would tell him if my mouth wasn’t caught in his, if his teeth weren’t finding my lip and biting and his hands weren’t lifting my shirt over my head to expose my naked torso to the moonlight streaming in through the window.

The strangest mix of emotions is rising up in me as Dante’s thumb keeps flicking back and forth over my achingly hard nipples. I feel the familiar lust that I’ve ignored since I was first brought here. It’s been a betrayal of myself since day one to admit how bad I want these brothers. They’re physically gorgeous, and that’s part of it of course, but it runs deeper than that too. Each of them speaks to something different in me. Now, as Dante kisses me and grinds his hips into mine, I feel a savage fury rise up from deep in my core.

I want to hurt something. I want to break something. I want to beat something into submission, to master it, to go at it like a wild beast with my teeth and fists. The heat of that foreign, brutal feeling keeps building in me, to the point where I can’t ignore it anymore and I let it take me over.

I plant my free hand in Dante’s chest and shove him flat on his back. He falls back with an ungainly thump and a surprised look in his face. He smiles up at me, that laughter still teasing at the corner of his lips, but I don’t smile back. I feel like a warrior princess. This isn’t what I shared with Leo—an exquisitely crafted dance of pleasure, pain, denial, reward. This is much more primal than that.

This is a claiming.

I move my hand down to the zipper of Dante’s jeans. I yank it down and free his cock from the denim. It springs free at once with a shocking curve to it, aiming back up towards his belly button. He is hard as a rock.

But there’s no time to waste. I have a desperate energy to my actions as I pull aside the fabric of my panties and position him at my entrance.

I don’t move the knife from his neck. Not as I slide down his length until he fills me so completely I might explode. Not as I start to rock up and down on him. I keep the blade there so he knows that he is fucking the queen of death. I have his life in my hands. There is only this second for him to enjoy, because I could end this at any moment. He knows that; I don’t have to say it. He wants to be tortured like this. He wants to be punished. He thinks he deserves it, and maybe he does. Maybe, after all of this is over, I’ll slit his throat and end his pain-filled life the way that part of him desperately wants me to do.

He tries to reach a hand up and grab my bouncing hips, but I pin it to the floor with a ruthless thump. “Don’t fucking touch me,” I snarl. “I’m not your princess. I’m not your prisoner anymore.”

He smiles, but it turns into a groan as I lean forward to press my forehead against his and writhe harder and faster on his cock. My thighs are burning but all the money in the world couldn’t stop me. All the Bianci men in this house couldn’t pull me off him right now. I’m riding him like my life depends on it, and like his does too—which is the truth.

“Tell me you need this,” I pant in his face as he pierces me and withdraws and does it all over again. “Tell me you fucking need me.”

“I need you,” he answers at once in a husky voice. “I—ah fuck, princess—I need you on my cock like I need air. Fuck me, kill me, do whatever you want.”

“That’s right,” I gasp back. My hand that’s holding the knife is starting to shake as the telltale pressure of an orgasm accumulates right where the curve of Dante’s manhood is finding part of me that’s never been touched before. “I’m your—fuck, fuck—I’m—” I run out of air, but Dante knows what I want to say.

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