"If I stay and drive out Viktor, you'll come to hate me. And I'll hate myself because this shit? All of this? It's everything I ever wanted to be away from. I won't give up my autonomy, and I won't be with somebody in a life of violence and vendettas. This can never be for me. You know it."

He comes to me. "We're never over. We weren't over when Konstantin took me away. We weren't over when they lowered my coffin into the ground. We're sure as fuck not over now."

I back up and hit the wall. "What are you going to do, lock me up my whole life? Shoot me?"

He grabs my wrists and slams them above my head, pinning them there.

My heart stutters as he runs his fingers down my neck. He unbuttons the top button. The next button. "Don't."

His breath comes in gusts on my forehead. "Don't what?" The next button. "Don't use you like a dirty whore?"

His words are dark magic. His words set my skin on fire. "Don't talk to me like that."

"Why? Because you don't want to like it?"

Exactly. This is the wrong time to be turned on. I twist, but he has me, muscles like steel under the fine white shirt.

"We're never over." He kisses my neck. He kisses my ear, warm and tingly. "I always watched you. Always saw you. You were always mine."

I hiss out a breath I didn't know I was holding.

"You need me just like I need you. Say it. 'I won't leave you, Aleksio.'" He shoves his tongue in my ear, and I start to melt. "It makes me fucking crazy to think of you leaving."

"You need your brother-"

"I need you." His fingers dance against my bare skin as he rips apart my shirt. "We belong together, that's all we need to know."

All of my protests fall out of my mind under his touch. I feel like a trapped animal, half needing to get away, half needing to follow him anywhere.

He rips open my shirt the rest of the way. He pulls aside the right cup of my bra and plants a kiss on the fleshy inside of my breast. "Deep down you're an animal who wants to be used by a twisted, bloodthirsty killer like me, aren't you? Say it."

I shake my head. Things are starting to feel dangerous.

He slides a hand between my legs, cupping me through my skirt. "If I touch you here, how wet will I find you? How hot are you to let me take you however I want you?"

I twist in his grip.

"How hot? Tell me. Say it."

"Aleksio..."

He pushes up my skirt and kicks my feet apart, then he presses his fingers between my legs, making contact with my soaked panties. His fingers graze over my pussy. I tremble with his every move.

"Aleksio..."

"What do you want, baby?"

I want him to call me a whore again. The word has a sharp point that I want to feel.

He strokes a finger between my legs, up and down, hitting nerves. His fingers graze over my pussy.

I tremble with his every move. I'm becoming more and more his with every stroke.

"No matter where you run I'll always find you." His strokes are strong and steady. He's found the spot that's sending me partway into the stratosphere. "Because you're my dirty fucking whore and this is mine." It feels like he's sliding all four fingers through my pussy. "This is mine to use how I want, got it?"

"Yes," I breathe.

He keeps going, stoking the energy higher. "And right now I want you relaxed and dripping so I can do you hard." He slides two fingers into me, invading me, pushing me into oblivion. Shapes pulse and build whenever I close my eyes. He's not holding me anymore, but I'm not going anywhere.

He picks me up and carries me to the desk. He shoves everything off it-the files he so carefully stacked, the mugs, the laptop. "Lie back for me, baby."

I lie back. I want him so bad I can't think. I'm flying. Trembling. I'm completely his.

He pushes open my legs and stands above me, then he yanks his belt open with a hard jerk and starts unbuttoning his dress slacks, regarding me hungrily. The heat of his gaze is too much, and I press my knees together.

He shakes his head. "No, this is mine, remember?" He pushes my legs apart again. "Touch yourself."

"Wh-what?"

He pulls out his log of a cock, dark and veiny and fiercely beautiful. I get hot remembering the way he shoved it down my throat. "You have to touch yourself right now." It's part plea and part decree.

I touch myself. He watches me with that invasive gaze of his. Everything between us feels impossible. Like everything is lost and all we have is this impossible madness, and it feels good.

Our impossible madness feels like the only true thing in the world.

I touch myself for him.

He climbs up on the desk with his pants half down. He kneels over me, his pants like a band around my chest. "Open, whore. This mouth is mine, too."

I open my mouth and he arches into me, shoving his cock between my lips. I'm spinning, stroking myself, bending to his will, taking him.

"That's it," he says. "Suck it. Feel me moving in your mouth. I want you to feel every throbbing vein. That's what you do to me."

I whimper.

"Shhhh, baby." He hovers over me and grabs something from somewhere beyond my head. He places it in my hand. It's round and smooth. "That's a paperweight. You can crack my skull when you get tired of what I do to you. That's your safe word."

I grunt. It's all I can do.

"Kill me, fuck me, love me," he gasps, invading my throat.

I move under him, panting through my nose. I'm about to come.

"Oh no, you don't." He pulls out and gets off of me, pulling my hand away from my crotch. "Wider. Open up for me, give me everything, baby." He grabs my knees, spreading me wider himself. He holds me there, holds me open.

The air on my throbbing pussy is wickedly cool.

I groan as he penetrates me with his fingers, pushing in deep and merciless. He nips the side of my thigh, and I gasp. He's doing something with his fingers, curling them as he slides them inside me, like he means to pull an orgasm right out of me.

I'm panting, needing him to never stop. He kisses down my belly. Down, down, he goes until he touches his tongue to my clit. I let out a cry. He licks once. It's not a dainty lick, it's a hard, mad, rough lick. A lick and a suck while he moves his fingers inside me.

He does it again, and I drop the paperweight. It shatters below. He licks me again and again, and I shatter, too, into a zillion pieces.

My cries are throaty and low and like an animal and I don't even care. I've lost touch with everything normal.

"I like you like this. Like an animal broken for me. Touch yourself some more. Keep yourself swollen and ready for me."

I feel shy and exposed now that I've come down from coming, but I touch myself like he says. I think I'd do almost anything for him.

"What are you?"

"Your fucking whore to use."

His hands tremble as he rolls on a condom, panting. "God, Mira," he whispers. "I can't...I can't..."

He's not making any sense. Not that it matters.

Roughly, he shoves away my hand, like it was too much for him to watch me touch myself for even for a second more. He's over me, so gorgeous. I feel his fat, hard head between my legs. He's pushing into me, shoving into me, looming over me.

He presses my arms over my head and slides in.

I look into his eyes as he fills me. He's impossibly thick inside me. Us together feels real and forever. The most honesty there can ever be in this world of lies.

"You feel better than I ever dreamed." He moves in and out of me, harder and harder.

"You do, too."

I'm on the knife edge of another orgasm, trying to make it last, but the way he's panting, just gone, gone, gone, sends me over the edge, screaming his name.

And then he comes with a shout, clutching me, crushing me. I love the way he feels, the way he hurts.

After he comes, he stills, fully sheathed in me. It's a long time before he pulls out.

I lie there boneless while he limps over to the wet bar. He grabs a bright blue towel and limps back.

"Your ankle."

His lips quirk. "My ankle." Like it's so funny. "Lie the fuck still. This pussy is mine, and I plan to take perfect care of it." He wipes between my legs-gently, thoroughly, gazing into my eyes.

I can feel myself getting addicted to his edge, to his possessiveness. Part of me wants to lie there and be his thing forever, like the rest of the world doesn't exist.

Except it does exist.

When he decides my pussy is back to its perfect, pristine condition, he tosses the towel and lies down next to me on the desk, clothes half-off. He pushes my hair off my shoulder. "You look sad."

I am sad. I'm sad for him. For us. "Our worlds are so different. You see darkness everywhere. Happy baby animals make you think of death and blood."

"I guess I ruined happy baby animals for you."

"You didn't ruin them for me. You showed me your heart."

He traces the line of my cheekbone.

"Be better than him, Aleksio."

"It's too late."

"Fuck you," I say. "You think I don't know what you are, what you can be? I remember you as a kid. Maybe you don't remember, but I do. I remember when you were good. I knew your heart, and yeah, you kicked down a few sandcastles in your time, but you had a good heart. I remember."

"Are we back to this again?"

"You have a good heart. And if you would just let yourself feel anything, feel just one thing, you would feel your good heart, and you would know you were better than him. Better than all of this animal shit."

"Do you I need to fuck you senseless again?"

"Aleksio. You can make me want to fuck dirty and be talked to...dirty. But you won't make me forget your beautiful heart. Why not leave all this? You could come back with me."

"I can't."

"Why not? You're alive. Fuck the crime empire. Your father left you and your brothers huge amounts of money. You can do what you want."

"It's not that simple. I can't just turn and run."

"You won't, you mean."

He slides a knuckle over my lower lip.

"I need to go back to my life," I say. "In the Bronx. You can't stop me."

His phone rings. He watches my eyes.

"Your fucking crime empire awaits."

"Ignore it," he says.

It rings again.

I slide off the desk and hand it to him. I need space. He takes it, not moving his gaze from mine. "Yeah." Then he looks away. His brows furrow. "Who is this?"

I hear a woman's voice.

"Hold on." He passes it to me. "Lila."

I take it and sit up. "Lila?"

"Mira," she says.

He jerks the phone out of my hand and puts it on speaker so that he can listen, too.