Kostya: A Dark Mafia Romance (Zinon Bratva), Nicole Fox [life changing books txt] 📗

“Charlotte.” He grabs my arm, gentle but firm, as he spins me so that his body is between me and a door and I’m backed against a table. “There’s no car. No way to get back until I call.” He’s not smug. Not the bully I expect him to be.

He’s just Kostya. Holding onto me. Tilting his head. Stroking my cheek with his finger.

But I’ve had enough of being manipulated, of being blinded by my own lust and of him using it against me.

“Fuck you, Kostya,” I snarl. I swallow hard against the fear blooming in my chest. “Fuck. You.”

12

Kostya

The world feels heavy right now.

I haven’t slept in days. My body is sore and depleted from the gunfight adrenaline. Enemies are lurking at the edges of my empire, looking to take what I have built, what I have earned.

And now this. Charlotte’s eyes are dilated with rage, and though she is petite, her chest heaves and her fists are balled like she is ready to fight if necessary. I don’t have any fight left right now. With adrenaline retreating, I’m so exhausted I don’t know how much longer I can remain on my feet. I was furious with her earlier, sure she had to be a Whelan spy sent here to break down my personal defenses in the cruelest way possible.

But Charlotte, even with the tables turned and her being the one furious with me, I see the Charlotte I’ve always known. Charlotte wears her heart on her sleeve. The deep flush of her cheeks tells me she’s not only upset with me for accusing her of being a spy, but she’s scared, too. I was groomed for this life. Taught how to push down the hatred and use it to do what needed to be done. Charlotte was brought up in sunny California with days at the beach and a mother and sister who love her. My life will never make sense to her. She was just thrown into my world with little warning, like being tossed into the deep end for your first swimming lesson.

A woman sent here to be a spy wouldn’t be this terrified. Wouldn’t be shaking like this. Unless she was a fantastic actress, of course.

I mentally shake my head. No. Not my Charlotte. I might be naïve. I might be overly hopeful in my conviction that Charlotte is the same woman now as she’s always been. She’s not a spy. She hasn’t been sent here as a distraction. She is a distraction, of course, but that’s no one’s fault but my own.

Because I’m falling in love with you.

Had she truly meant that? It wasn’t just my cock that reacted to her declaration. If I decided she had seen too much and needed to be dealt with permanently, had her uttering those seven words been enough to save her?

“I’ll walk back to Tiana. And you can go to hell.” She shoves my chest, and I hold up my hands and move back. Not because the force of her action did anything, but because she needs the space. And I need to give it to her. I don’t want to hurt her.

“I have men guarding her. Protecting her.”

She scoffs and spins to face me. Her eyes flash. “Like you had men at the hotel?”

It’s a valid point, but I don’t like her making it. A bit of my anger is starting to resurface. I don’t like the way she’s talking to me. We’re at a moment where we might not be able to go backward. A point of no return.

She shoves me again and moves around me to the door. “Charlotte!” I bark because I know the kind of anger she’s suffering through. All she can hear is the sound of her heart, and all she can feel is the sting in her gut.

She whirls to face me. “What could you possibly say next?” she says. “What could possibly make this right?”

I don’t have anything to say that’ll make this moment right, nothing I can do will take that look from her eyes.

But I want her, and she needs me. There’s no other reason for me to kiss her so fiercely, to crush her mouth beneath mine, to yank her body into my embrace while my tongue ravages the inside of her mouth.

“No!” she yells into my kiss. “Let me go. Now.” I break the kiss when she shoves me away once more. Again, I let her.

She looks like a wild animal, standing there framed in the doorway. Hair mussed, eyes blazing.

“I am not your fucking toy,” she hisses.

“No, you aren’t,” I agree.

“I don’t want you to touch me.”

I arch an eyebrow. “That, I do not believe.”

“You better start believing.”

I take one step towards her, but freeze when she tenses up. She looks feral, ready to rip my throat out if I get too close. I raise my hands as if to say, I mean you no harm.

“Tell me that again, Charlotte.”

She falters a little bit. Just the tiniest fraction, but I see it. I see everything warring in her. The same war is raging in me right now. It feels like we are in a fever dream.

“Tell me you don’t want me to touch you.”

“I …”

I step closer. She doesn’t move.

“Tell me you don’t want me to brush my lips along your throat. Tell me you don’t want me to slide my fingertips up your thigh and find your center. If you tell me that and mean it, then I won’t touch you. I won’t kiss you. I won’t pin you against the door and fuck you raw and senseless.”

“I … I don’t …” The fight in her has turned into something else, or maybe just given way to something that was already boiling within her. She wants me—badly. I can see it plain as day. She knows it, too, and she knows that I know it. This is all a game, an elaborate dance. One wrong move and the moment will shatter.