I didn’t know why this girl smelled so good even covered in blood, but the feel of her breast in my hand and her soft scent was beginning to dim my vision. The relentless ache in my groin swelled, while Mila acted as bored as a baptist sitting in a church pew.

Her apathy was starting to irritate me, so I moved lower and bit down hard. She hissed in pain, but when I soothed the bite with my tongue, the ropes pulled taut, her head lolled to the side, and the subtle arch of her body told me she wasn’t so fucking indifferent anymore.

I pulled back to see my handiwork—the dark hickeys I left behind. While I didn’t think I’d ever given one before Mila, something primal inside of me enjoyed marking her up like my own little checkerboard.

“I think red is your color,” I told her, this girl in my guest bed adorned in blood and hickeys.

“You would,” she countered, but her words were husky, lacking heat.

When I finally ran my thumb across her nipple and pinched it, her ragged exhale came between wet, parted lips, though she still tried her best to ignore me.

“You call me sick,” I drawled, “but I think you might be a little twisted too.”

“I’m nothing like you.”

I raised a brow. “Sure about that?”

“That I’m not a psychopath? Yes.”

“I prefer ‘sociopath.’ More socially acceptable.”

“Because this scene screams ‘socially acceptable.’”

This girl had the odd ability to amuse me even while I was trying to be serious about breaking her down as my temporary, mindless sex slave. And I didn’t like when people threw a wrench into my plans.

I slid my hand down her stomach, between her legs, and pressed my thumb against her clit, applying the slightest amount of pressure. She closed her eyes tight, trying to fight the sensation, but when I gave her a little friction, she pulled her bottom lip between straight white teeth and faintly rolled her hips.

The sight flooded thick heat through me that curled down my spine and settled heavily in my cock. She was hot and wet, and, from what I’d learned, tighter than a fist. I wanted to give her what she needed; to slide two fingers home just to watch her eyes roll back. The idea she would let me at this point singed every ounce of willpower inside until my blood began to pound in my ears.

I may not give oral or let a woman take control, but I was hardly a selfish lover. Still, I’d never been so interested in making a woman come before. I couldn’t even say three women at once got me harder than this single girl. The fact she was Alexei’s daughter was just the icing on that nauseating cake.

She had to be a professional at this innocent act; at drawing men in. Just like her mother was before Alexei showed up to put a bullet between their eyes.

Mila fisted the ropes, eyes closed, a pink flush warming her cheeks. I’d barely touched her, and she was close to coming. Only an idiot would believe they were the first to get her off. She was a hair trigger, and there wasn’t a chance she’d remained celibate considering how she threw herself at me.

I stilled my hand and asked, “How many men have made you come?”

She inhaled deeply, in relief or frustration. I wasn’t sure she even knew which, but it was clear she had no desire to respond.

“Answer me,” I demanded.

Silence.

She was stubborn, but so was I.

I slapped her between the legs.

A gasp escaped her before she slayed me with a lethal gaze. “Sorry, was I supposed to keep count?”

My teeth clenched. I vowed to make her count every orgasm I gave her until she begged me to stop. Before I could give in to the desire to start right then and there, I pulled my hand away and stood.

“Bad pets don’t get rewarded.”

Fury cooled all of the desire in her gaze. “You’ll get what’s coming to you, D’yavol. And when you do, I’ll smile when they cover you with dirt.”

Fuck. That was kind of hot. And annoying.

I gripped her face. “If I go down, I’ll take you with me. Your Mikhailov blood will keep me cool in hell.”

An uncertain flicker passed through her eyes, and then she looked at the ceiling, dismissing me in an arrogant way no one else would dare. I released her roughly, and with a hot rush of frustration, I walked out of the room to find Yulia scrubbing up blood with an obsessive mentality.

The woman had knocked on my front door seven years ago, unperturbed by the guards and guns, and announced, “I would like job.”

I recognized her from two different occasions.

In my preteens, she fed me and my brother a hot meal and gave us a place to sleep for the night when she found us camping out in her car during a snowstorm. She was also on the news for butchering her husband with a meat cleaver without a single explanation, serving a decade in the looney bin. I should have thought twice about it, but instead, I opened the door wide and said, “You can start today.”

She’d proven to be a loyal servant, which was invaluable in this house.

Standing on the front porch, I grabbed a pack of cigarettes from Ilya’s jacket pocket, took one out, and put it between my lips. Blood trailed across the driveway to the garage, where Albert was busy dealing with the body.

I slipped the pack back into Ilya’s pocket. “Lighter?”

He shuffled for his Zippo, flicking it open. I lit my smoke, inhaled on it deeply, and headed to the car parked in the drive before hollering at Pavel across the yard.

My newest recruit, lanky and still in his late teens, hesitated.

I watched him mosey his way over here, inhaling on my cigarette. “You got a stick up your ass or something?” I asked, blowing smoke out of the side of my mouth. “Or did your girlfriend try something new last night?”

Laughter resounded through the yard.

The kid turned red. “No.”

“Let’s go. You’re driving.” I flicked the smoke to the snow and sat in the back seat.

I hated the taste of cigarettes, but I’d needed a hit of nicotine. I pulled a piece of Big Red out of the center console, tossed one onto Pavel’s lap, and watched him grip the wheel with white knuckles.

“You know how to drive, don’t you?”

“I can figure it out,” he stammered.

Jesus.

Viktor recruited and trained my men, but apparently, driving wasn’t included. I could get someone else to take me, but instead, I sat back in my seat and prepared for a sketchy ride into Moscow. Pavel had to learn eventually.

I checked my watch, noting the blood on my hand and shirt. The kid must have gotten the brake and gas pedal backward; the car suddenly lurched forward and then stopped abruptly.

I ignored it.

One of my mother’s clients taught me how to drive when I was eleven. He was high as fuck when he put a gun to my thigh and told me to keep it at sixty kmph. Longest drive of my life.

I had a meeting with Alfonso in an hour. The Colombian drug lord’s latest shipment of cocaine was cut with laundry detergent, and I made it a priority to make sure what I put out was pure. A chemist in Rublyovka tested all my product in his basement. It was an interesting meeting in front of me, but all I could think about was the girl tied to my guest room bed.

I ran a thumb over my split bottom lip wondering how I was going to work her over. Diamonds and furs wouldn’t do it, unfortunately. She responded to a little seduction a moment ago, but I didn’t want to push her to a point of simply needing to get off. I wanted her to need me; to beg, live, and breathe just for me.