“Relax, little bird. Trust me. Trust me, Clare, and let your body take over.” I close my eyes and do what he says. The fear seeps out of my body like rising smoke, as gone as quickly as it came, as he slowly, perfectly, enters me and fills me to completion. He stills, holding me against him, before he slowly builds a rhythm that makes me whimper with need and want.
Fuck yes. I’ve never had sex like this before. I’ll never be the same again.
Constantine has ruined me for other men. For any other kind of sex.
For everything.
“Oh, God, oh God,” I whisper at the same time he curses.
“Khristos, Clare. You’re so fucking perfect. Jesus, woman.” He mutters in Russian, and I don’t know if he’s cursing or praying, but it doesn’t matter, his deep voice and the roughness of his words are pushing me straight over the edge of bliss.
I’m so full, so goddamn full I’m going to die, but I’ll die a happy woman. I can’t hold myself back as his flanks slam against my ass, all pain fading to perfect ecstasy. My clit throbs and my thighs clench. His fingers wrap around my throat as we near release.
“Come, little bird,” he whispers against the shell of my ear. His hand flexes like a collar, reminding me of the power he wields and how I’m his, and at the feel of his fingertips against my skin, I shatter.
Ecstasy blinds me. I forget how to breathe. I whimper and writhe. Spasms ricochet through me. He comes with a roar that echoes around me, his seed lashing into me with hot insistence. I don’t recognize my own voice when I scream his name.
I’m hoarse when I come back to earth. I’m panting, slumped over the side of the tub. He bends and kisses my shoulder and mutters something once more in Russian.
I imagine he says I love you.
Chapter 17
Constantine
I carry Clare to the large king-sized bed in the master suite.
This house is one of many properties held in common by the Bratva, sometimes used as a safe house, sometimes for fucking mistresses, sometimes simply for a break.
Even gangsters grow tired from time to time.
Even gangsters want to relax.
It’s no coincidence that we’re only a short distance from Clare’s family home. I brought her into the heart of my world—sex clubs, gang territory, and underground fighting rings.
Now I want to stand in her world.
I want to show her that I can inhabit a palace of gleaming marble and polished wood. I could wear a suit, if I wanted to, and ride in the back of a limousine. I could drape diamonds around her neck and dance with her.
Or at least, I want to believe I could.
I want to believe that Clare and I are not so different.
I’ve stolen a princess, and now I want to keep her. But what kind of life could I possibly offer?
Clare is deeply asleep, curled up against my chest. She’s exhausted from all this running and hiding, all this searching and fighting. She’s not used to this desperate existence.
As exhausted as I am, I can’t fall asleep alongside her. My mind is racing, trying to find some solution that could solve all our problems. That could make the impossible possible.
No matter which way I turn, one glaring issue remains.
I have to kill Valencia.
I know he’s at the heart of this. He orchestrated it all. He killed Roxy and framed me for it. He intends to conquer the Bratva and the Irish, to bring the criminals of this city under his heel.
His actions require retribution; the Irish will expect it, and my own raging fury demands it.
He must be punished, tortured, obliterated.
How the fuck can I do that, while preserving any kind of relationship with Clare?
She’s followed me every step of the way. I kidnapped her, broke out of prison, dragged her along on this mad dash. We’ve been threatened, shot at, almost killed.
But there has to be a line at which I’ll lose her.
Valencia is her father. If I cut his throat in front of her, she’ll never forgive me.
It will devastate her.
I know Clare well enough by now that I can perfectly picture the horror in those beautiful dark eyes, the guilt and misery it would cause her.
I don’t want to hurt Clare. I can’t stand the thought of it. I may have taken my belt to her ass, but punishment is not injury.
Clare is a good person, truly good. She came to that prison to try to help the worst kind of men—men like me. She saw me not as a monster in a cell, but as a human being with strength and intelligence, with the ability to change and grow.
I have never seen myself as someone who could change.
I believed that I was born a wolf, I would live a wolf and die a wolf. Subject to the laws of predators, not of philosophers.