Page 90 of Gilded Cage (Kovalyov Bratva 1)

“What do you think?” she asks, as though it’s a serious question. “You like it?”

It looks like a moomoo with sporadic cutouts dipped in neon green paint and sewn together by a whole factory’s worth of baby doll frills. And then there’s the purple leopard print patches…

I’m literally speechless.

What kind of sick fuck can take something as sexy as lingerie and make it…this?

I can tell that Esme’s enjoying the moment. She picked it out for this exact purpose, I’m sure.

Trying to fuck with me. Get inside my head. Seize back control of whatever you’d call this dynamic between us.

She’s made one mistake, however.

She let me see the fire in her eyes.

That’s what does it for me. What’s always done it for me.

Bare-faced, bright-eyed, she looks as sexy as she did the night I met her at The Siren.

If I block out that disgusting lingerie and focus only on her face, I’m as hard for her as I’ve ever been.

“Well?” she pushes.

I cock my head to the side. I know I need to be very careful. More careful than usual, even.

Because when it comes to Esme Moreno, I’m not as in control as I like to be.

“You chose that for me?” I ask faux-innocently.

“I did,” she murmurs, her eyes flashing dangerously, despite the smile she wears. “I thought it was important you see me in this.”

“Oh? And why is that?”

She comes forward, moving gracefully despite the ugly thing she’s wearing.

She stops only inches from me. Her perfume fills my nostrils, and it only serves to make my cock harder than ever.

She’s at least a head shorter, but by the way she’s looking at me, you’d think she was twice my height.

Gazing right up into my eyes, she lets a teasing smile play across her lips. Subtle, tempting, delicious.

Then the smile drops off her face and her hazel eyes turn gold with anger.

She hisses, “So you know that I’m not your fucking china doll.”

There it is,I think.

The fire.

The fury.

Fuck—I love it.

“Who the hell do you think I am?” she continues.

The sexy whisper is gone. Her voice is rising into a fever pitch now.

“How dare you send me off to a fucking lingerie store to tart me up like one of your whores? You’re not the boss of me, Artem Kovalyov. You’re notanythingto me. You may command every brainless puppet in this city, but I’m not one of them. I’m not your little fuck doll and you don’t get to dress me up like one.”

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