And I was going to stab him in the back. I was going to send him to prison for the rest of his life.
Luka wrapped his arms around me. His warmth felt good, but even it couldn’t banish the black despair that was spreading through my soul. I’d finally found a man I wanted to be with...maybe the one I was meant to be with. And I was going to destroy him.
But it was much worse than I could have imagined. I didn’t know, then, just how dangerous being together was going to be, for both of us.
Or just how completely I’d have to betray him.
It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen: the human body as a moving work of art. The music swelled and ebbed as the ballerinas jumped and floated, weightless as ghosts.
And I couldn’t concentrate on any of it because of what Luka was doing under my skirt.
“Someone will see!” I told him in a harsh whisper.
He smirked, as if that amused him. His fingers pressed a little more insistently and I groaned under my breath. And parted my thighs.
We were in a private box. A box the Malakov family actually owned, that sat empty between performances no matter how full the theater was. Apparently, Luka’s dad, Vasiliy, used to take his mother here when she was alive. Now, it was used by Luka and his current girlfriend.
And now that was me. Not another willowy Russian model with laser-straight blonde hair, but a pale, awkward girl with hair you might charitably call chestnut and a body that was too heavy on the hips to be slender, but not curvy enough to catch a man’s eye.
Not most men’s, at least. Luka, for some reason, had claimed me for his own. And he was currently demonstrating his ownership by means of his hand between my thighs. The tips of his fingers were strumming up and down along the opening of my lips. I could feel myself moistening beneath my panties.
We’d been back in Moscow just one day. I was a gangster’s girlfriend. A moll. If it was even appropriate to call Luka a gangster. Kingpin suited him better, given that he was about to take control of most of the gun trade into the US.
I knew I needed to contact Adam—urgently. But when we landed in Moscow, we’d gone straight back to his penthouse apartment for more sex and then fallen asleep, tangled in the sheets. Today, we’d lounged around the place, never apart for more than a few minutes. I didn’t dare try to call Adam from the bathroom. If Luka overheard….
Then, this evening, he’d told me to dress up for the ballet. I was in one of the dresses I’d been given at the boutique, a long black number with a loose skirt and tiny beads of jet glistening blackly across the bodice. It was sexy but sophisticated and Luka had made approving noises when he saw it, and when he’d slid his hand into the high slit that run up one side of the skirt. But then he’d shaken his head. “It needs something else,” he told me.#p#分页标题#e#
And then he gave me the necklace.
It was made up of hundreds of squares of shining silver, joined at the edges to make a shimmering snakeskin pattern that flowed like liquid as it followed the shape of my neck. It was just a few squares wide at the sides and back, but flared out to eight wide at the front. He fastened the chain around my neck and I gazed at it in the mirror. It was starkly beautiful and clearly expensive without being showy. Miles away from the bling people associated with new-found Russian wealth. But then Luka and his dad had had more time to get used to it than a lot of people.
As I’d run my fingers over it, unease had coiled and twisted in my stomach. First clothes, now jewelry. I was being seduced by him. After the violence of the gun deal and the savage beating he’d given Ralavich’s son, now he was showing me the other side of his life. The one spent cruising in cars with tinted windows and in private jets. The one where we partied at the finest clubs in Moscow, or went to the ballet or the opera. The one where everyone feared us.
I’d felt it when we’d walked into the theater. People turned and looked and then pretended to be looking at someone else. Others scurried ahead of us to open doors or quickly stepped aside to clear a path. It felt like being a princess. An evil princess. One who could order you killed with a tilt of her head. I knew Luka would do it for me in a heartbeat—he had both the physical strength and the hardness in his soul. He had killed, plenty of times, and he’d do it again.
Unless I could stop him.
It was crazy. I’d been sent to Moscow to take down a monster and, instead, I was trying to tame him. As if that was even possible. As if I could give him back his soul—and, even if I could, as if that would make a difference to Adam. He was still going to demand that the Russians put Luka in jail for the rest of his life. Luka thought I was his salvation, but I was going to be his downfall.