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But it doesn't come.

"Why?" he asks, his voice hoarse with emotion. "Was any of it real?"

I can’t tell him why. Even now, I can’t bring myself to give him the whole truth. Secrecy is ingrained in me, trained into my bones and my blood like my skills with a knife and a gun, like my fighting ability, like my instinct to survive. But I can give him one thing.

“Yes,” I whisper. “Some of it was.”

I see the war raging behind his eyes—fury battling with something deeper, something he doesn't want to acknowledge. His hand tightens on the knife, then loosens. The blade presses against my skin, then eases away.

"I can't," he whispers, almost to himself.

The realization hits me like a thunderbolt. He can't kill me, just as I couldn't kill him. The knife clatters to the floor beside us as he releases it, his hand still pinning my wrists above my head.

"I should slit your throat," he growls, his face inches from mine, breath hot against my cheek. "I should make you suffer for what you’ve done to me. For your lies, your betrayal. I should make you tell me everything, word by word, like you did to Elia. Didn’t it ever occur to you that you might suffer the same fate, Valentina?”

My name again, on his lips. An ache sweeps through me, hot and burning, and without meaning to, I arch into his weight, mylegs pressing against his as I stare up at him. “Yes,” I whisper. “Every moment.”

“So why didn’t you do it?” His blue gaze holds mine, intense and piercing, and I remember the first time I saw his face staring up at me from a photo in a dossier, how those eyes were the first thing that captured me.

How I knew then that this was a mistake.

“I don’t know,” I whisper, and his expression darkens.

“I think you do.” His weight shifts against me, and I can feel how hard he is. Solid as iron, pressed between my thighs, only a few thin layers of fabric separating us. “Tell me, Valentina.”

“Stop saying my name,” I whisper, and I can hear the thread of desperation in my voice.

“Valentina.” He breathes it roughly, his voice rasping like sandpaper over silk as he grips my wrists more tightly in one hand, the pressure enough to hurt, as he drops his other hand to my thigh. He starts to slide my dress up, inch by inch, and I bite back a whimper.

“Why didn’t you do it?”

I try to turn my face away, and he reaches up, grabbing my chin as he yanks my face back so that I’m forced to look up at him. “Don’t look away from me,volchitsa. Face what you’ve done.Why, Valentina?”

“Stop,” I whisper, but my hips arch as he reaches down and yanks my skirt up around my hips, and we both know I don’t meanstop touching me. I mean,stop saying my name, stop reminding me of what could have been, stop making me feel this now, after everything.

His fingers slide between my thighs, pushing beneath the lace thong I’m wearing, and I hear the strangled groan in his throat as his fingers slip between my folds.

“You’re dripping,volchitsa,” he growls. “Does fighting me turn you on?”

Everything about you turns me on.I bite back the words, refusing to give him the satisfaction of hearing them. He chuckles darkly, his fingers rubbing back and forth through my slick wetness, and a moan escapes from between my clenched teeth.

“You want me,” he murmurs, satisfaction thick in his voice. “You’re so wet for me, Valentina. Dripping with need. You’d come for me no matter what I did.”

His thumb grazes my swollen clit, and I gasp. His gaze darkens then, and he slides his fingers out of me, curling them around the fabric of my thong as he bunches it in his hand. I let out a mewl of protest despite myself, my body clenching as an ache sweeps through me at the loss of having him inside of me.

A smirk curls Konstantin’s lips, and he jerks his hand back, towards himself.

The lace of my panties tears, and he rips them away from me, balling them in his fist before throwing them to the side. And then, as I stare up at him with a fearful need, he reaches for the knife lying next to me.

My chest cramps with fear when I see him move his hand toward my leg. And then he flips the knife in his grasp, his fingers curling around the very edge of the handle where it meets the blade, and he pushes the wooden handle between my thighs as he nudges them apart with his knee.

“Keep those legs spread for me,volchitsa,” he murmurs, his voice thick and husky. “Or you might cut yourself on the blade when you come.”

“I—” My mouth falls open as I realize what he’s doing, the moment that the cool wood touches the hot, slick flesh of my inner folds. He pushes the knife handle into me, and my body clenches around it instantly, desperate to be filled, for friction, forsomething.

He laughs, low in his throat, the sound dark and threatening. “Do you want me to stop, Valentina?”

“Don’t call me that,” I whisper, my voice strangled. “Don’t—” He thrusts harder, his thumb finding my aching clit as he fucks me with the handle of the knife, and a moan escapes my parted lips.