Mila remained silent as I carried her up the stairs. Her weight felt solid in my arms. She was shaped like the kind of woman I preferred—the kind who could take a hard fuck without the worry she might break.

Just the feel of her body against mine sent a rush of blood to my groin. Meanwhile, the object of my hard-on reeked of despair.

As she should.

She actually elbowed me in the face. I didn’t want to kill the girl—necrophilia wasn’t my kink—so, after she split my lip and self-control, I released her with the belief Adrik holding an AK-47 in the hall would stop her in her tracks. I didn’t account for her ability to lay him out and take his fucking gun.

Oddly enough, when I heard her cry of pain, a hot and unpleasant sensation expanded in my chest. I could only relate the feeling to the anticipation of receiving a package in the mail, only for the delivery man to shake it like a Christmas present and break it. Adrik had fucked with my package.

Mila may have been raised as a soft-hearted American, but it was now clear she could be a Mikhailov when she needed to be. The fact shouldn’t turn me on, though after she’d gotten one over on me and I watched her unload three bullets into Adrik, all I could think about was fucking her raw in his blood. The urge was a little twisted, even for me.

Annoyed with this girl and the constant hard-on she aroused, I dropped her to the floor in her room.

She gasped, tossed the hair from her face, and shot me a look of resentment. I suppressed a smile and moved to the dresser to grab the discarded ropes from the top. Mila got to her feet, and, warily, piercing blue eyes met mine.

Fuck, she was stunning—even while she emulated Stephen King’s Carrie with a singular obsession for Elvis.

She was drenched in blood and hadn’t fainted. Maybe I’d broken my pet’s phobia. I walked toward her, evading the broken chair on the floor, with the ropes in my hand.

She backed up and shook her head. “No.”

There she went with that word again.

My eyes narrowed. “We’ve had this talk.”

Her almond eyes softened with something almost pleading, and the sight hit me in the chest and ached in my cock both at once. The unsettling sensation brought anger to the forefront. She drew my blood when I was focused on her naked ass. Foolish error on my part. And now, with a single look, she was making me question my ill intentions.

When she only stood there, I warned, “You don’t want to fight me right now.”

I’d do something I’d regret, like hurt her or fuck her. I realized I didn’t like the former, and I didn’t want to force the latter.

After a momentary stare down, she took my threat seriously and moved to the bed to lie on her back. As she dutifully raised her hands above her head, her shirt rode up her thighs. Forcing my gaze from the sight of the shadowed apex between her legs, I started to tie her wrists to the headboard.

She stared at the ceiling and didn’t say a word. So blue and clear, her eyes were practically transparent, and right now they were drifting to that absent place I hated.

While I was held up in Moscow for the past two days dealing with the unsavory business aspects of being “D’yavol,” wild blonde hair and a soft American accent drifted through my mind far too often for comfort—even between Yulia’s hourly updates on Mila’s activities. Just for invading my thoughts, I should leave her to stew in her misery alone. But I needed something from her. Something to hold me over. Something to tell me she thought about me inside her as much as I did.

With her wrists secured, I sat on the side of the bed and was unable to stop myself from trailing a hand up her bare thigh. She wasn’t given a razor on the off chance she might slit her wrists, but now I had the feeling she wouldn’t take the easy way out.

There was something novel and innocently sexy about running my hand over smooth skin and a light dusting of blonde hair. I hadn’t been with an unwaxed woman since I was a teenager, and those were usually clothed fucks against an alley wall.

“You need to shave, kotyonok.”

“You need to reach into your darkened soul and find your conscience.”

I chuckled and slid my palm up, bypassing the place I wanted inside the most, and beneath her shirt, where I caressed the flare of her hip with a thumb. “I’m not the one who just killed a man, am I?”

I almost regretted saying it when a single tear slipped down her cheek. She probably wanted to attend Adrik’s funeral and apologize to every member of his worthless family. In actuality, I didn’t know if they were worthless, but most family was.

“Stop crying.”

“I’m not crying,” she insisted as another tear escaped.

Fuck. This was killing the mood.

“It was self-defense,” I said, not giving a shit she’d killed Adrik. I didn’t need men on my side who got bested by soft-hearted women. “Say it.”

“But—”

“Say it.”

“It was self-defense,” she parried emotionlessly.

I didn’t know why I was offering out a tiny olive branch. The unsettling tears, maybe, but it was more so the fact it’d been a long time—if ever—since I met a woman with feelings. Mila was uncharted waters to me, filled to the brim with a selflessness I didn’t understand. And like a cat with a mouse, I wanted to play with her for a while.

I gripped the indent of her bare waist, which was so small I could probably touch fingers if I wrapped my hands around it. A waist wasn’t exactly the first thing I noticed about a woman, but ever since I’d stripped Mila naked in her hotel room, I wanted to hold her there while she rode me—a position I normally couldn’t stomach. I attributed the weird desire to the fact this was the longest I’d ever had to wait to fuck a woman I wanted before, and the smallest things about this one made me feel like I was just released from prison after abstaining from sex for four years again.

I rested my other hand next to her head and pulled a blonde curl between my fingers. “I’ll put a cross in the hall like you Americans do at car crash sites. We can even spread his ashes together if it’ll make you feel better.”

A disgusted gaze met mine, and it lifted a soft laugh from me.

“Shouldn’t you be out stealing virgins and terrorizing Moscow?” she asked.

“Unless I run into your papa tonight, the city’s safe from me.” While that may be a lie, I was an optimist when it came to things like business and murder.

She swallowed and pulled her gaze back to the ceiling. “How magnanimous of you.”

“When you say big words, it makes it harder to do the right thing here,” I drawled before nipping her jawline.

She released a shaky breath. “You’re beyond help, you know that?”

“And here I thought all I needed was an intervention.” I swept my thumb beneath the curve of her breast, back and forth, the lightest of caresses. Her breasts lifted with every breath, her nipples visible beneath her shirt, and it reminded me of how sensitive and sweet they were.

Sliding my lips to the shell of her ear, I said, “I bet I could make you come just from sucking your tits, kotyonok.”

The shiver that rolled through her was the only tell she hadn’t shut me out yet, so I pushed a little further. Palming the weight of her bare breast, I squeezed the soft flesh and ran my thumb around her nipple, then sucked the pulse point on her neck, pulling the skin between my teeth to leave another mark behind. Her chest rose and fell quicker, but she refused to acknowledge my hands on her.