Page 172 of Shattered Altar (Makarova Bratva Duet)

I see her gulp as nerves and uncertainty drive out the anger from her body. “I’m not really, though, am I?”

“You certainly do a good job of acting like it,” I point out with a wry smirk. “Nagging, jealousy, the works.”

“I… I don’t…”

“Jennifer and I are not together,” I tell her, cutting through to the heart of the question she can’t bring herself to ask. “We never have been. We’re too much alike.”

“But she… suits you.”

I shrug. “Lately, I’ve been partial to brunettes.”

She’s not expecting that, either. Her cheeks flush with color, but she tries to control her expression. “Have you been with other women since I’ve been in the house?”

The way she says the question—like it hurts her, like it’s been festering inside for God knows how long—tells me everything I need to know about what the little kiska is feeling.

And the way I answer tells me everything I’ve been unwilling to see about what I’m feeling.

“I haven’t so much as looked at another woman in that way since I saw you in that airport,” I rasp. “Not a single one.”

“Oh.”

She blinks as she tries to absorb that. It’s torturous to watch—mostly because my cock is screaming for attention.

I take the time to drink in the sight of her. Her lips are full and swollen from constant gnawing. I remember her taste. That sweetness, that ripeness. Youth, innocence, and beneath it all, the heady scent of desire.

The mark of a woman who’s spent her whole life being careful and is finally ready to throw caution to the wind.

“I didn’t fuck other women because I didn’t want to, Olivia,” I tell her, running my thumb over her lips. They part slowly, and I can see her lust glistening through. “Because I couldn’t. Because the thought of a single other soul besides you made me sick to my fucking stomach.”

Her throat rides up and down with the force of her swallow. Like she’s tasting this truth. It’s raw, it’s sharp-edged—but it’s honest.

“And you… you didn’t actually abduct anyone? Or kill anyone?”

“I have killed people in the past. Many, in fact,” I tell her unapologetically. “But never a woman. Never an innocent. And never without a reason.”

She seems to accept that. Or at least, the answer doesn’t frighten her the way it might have at the beginning of this forced cohabitation.

I see hope in her eyes when she meets mine. Then—and I don’t even think she’s aware she’s doing this—she runs a tongue along her lip where I just touched her.

Tasting me, this time.

Saying with her body what she’s too afraid to say with her words.

“You’re playing with fire now, Olivia,” I growl.

“Everyone’s always telling me I’m playing it too safe,” she whispers in a rasping voice that doesn’t sound like it belongs to her. “Maybe it’s about time to get burned.”

She reaches out. One pale, fragile little hand crossing all that space to graze against the buckle of my belt.

The fact that she does it?

That she takes the risk, the action, the impulse, instead of retreating to the safe world of her fantasies?

That’s what unleashes the storm.

I’m on her in an instant, devouring her lips with mine, pressing my whole body up against hers and grinding my aching hard cock into the space between her thighs. I haven’t been this out of control since I was a horny teen.

She mewls beneath me like the little kitten she is. Claws at my back, nips at my ear whenever I release her from the kiss to lick down the curve of her throat.

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