How would they feel standing before this man, staring up at his powerful jaw and dangerously sexy face? I doubt they’d be able to resist either. But it’s not just his physical traits that have me going. It’s something more. The way he’s acting like he already owns me…
“In one of the back rooms?” I reply. “Not exactly rom-com material.”
His eyes blaze, and he cocks his head to one side. “Rom-com? Gorgeous, there’s nothing comedic about my life. Did you forget who I am?”
“I guess—I guess what I’m saying,” I stammer, stumbling over my words, “is I doubt that’s how most girls picture their first time. Shouldn’t it be with someone I love?”
“Is that what your daddy told you?”
“No,” I say. “My dad’s dead.”
Finally, there’s a crack in his armor. His expression falters for a microsecond. He
shows sympathy, but it’s wiped away immediately.
“I’m sorry,” he replies. “I never knew my parents.”
My heart goes out to him—him. Sasha Kumarin, the Ice Man, feared across Los Angeles. Most people must be terrified by him, but I see something else behind his eyes, and I’m desperate to know more.
I wait for him to speak, but it’s like he’s processing. There’s an internal debate going on in his mind. I wait and wait and wait until the tension is almost unbearable. His expression shifts and I’m sure he’s going to ask me out—or whatever the kingpin equivalent of that is—but I couldn’t be more wrong.
“No.” He shakes his head. “I can’t. It wouldn’t be fair.”
“What?” I gasp in disbelief. “What wouldn’t be fair?”
“Claiming you, Ella. As much as I am dying to feel your soft body underneath mine—as much as I want to give you more pleasure than you could ever dream of experiencing, I can’t…”
Is he serious? After all this he’s just going to back away? I thought telling the story to my friends about how a notorious kingpin swept me off of my feet and took me back to his home would be unbelievable, but telling them how he hit on me and then left me alone would seem even less believable.
“Why? Sasha, do you think you don’t deserve me?”
It’s an honest question. There’s something going on beneath his hard exterior that I can’t quite pinpoint.
“No,” he admits. “I don’t deserve you, gorgeous. You’re young, pure, and good. I’m a bad, bad old man…”
“Old? How old are you, Sasha?”
“I’m twice your age, gorgeous.”
“Thirty-six?” I ask.
“Thirty-five.”
That might turn some girls off, but not me.
“Don’t be stupid,” I tell him. “That’s not old. Now, if you had said sixty-five…”
“And you have daddy issues,” he growls, more to himself than me. “It just wouldn’t be fair to you.”
An anger flares inside me, and this time I step closer to him. “That’s not for you to decide. I’m not a child, Sasha.”
That gets his attention. My breath leaves my lungs as he holds my gaze with a new intensity. My thighs are warm, and my feet are tingling. I feel like I should sit down.
“You’re right. You are not a child, Ella. But I could still make you Daddy’s little girl, and I don’t know if I can stop myself now.”
“As long as it isn’t in some random room in the Lakers’ stadium, I’m okay with that,” I reply.
He glances behind him. I’m not sure why. Maybe a byproduct of the life he leads. But when he turns back to me, there’s nothing but intensity in his eyes.