Page 29

ROMAN

O ver my dead fucking body…

She was not leaving. There was no way in this life, or in any other, I would let her get on a plane and go back to Russia.

She belonged here with me.

Zoya was mine by right.

I had taken her, cared for her, and I was the one who saved her…again.

“Leave,” I demanded, talking to the guard standing outside of her room. A guard that Gregor must have posted when he went to talk to her an hour ago.

I didn’t want Gregor to be the one who spoke with her. It wasn’t right.

I wanted to tell her about the deal myself. She would have questions only I could answer. A marriage, even one like this, was more than just a contract. I needed to be the one who told her what being my wife was going to mean, what it would look like.

Gregor insisted he be the one to tell her and gauge her reaction. He said it was nonnegotiable. That he needed to see the acceptance of her circumstances in her eyes himself.

He needed to know she could be trusted.

I fought him, but he threatened to take the option off the table indefinitely.

Artem insisted as well, and just like that, there was nothing I could do about it.

“Let him do this, cousin,” Pavel whispered in my ear. “If she is smart, she will agree, and you will be in the clear. You will have your girl and not have to worry about the implications of where your loyalty lies.”

Until he came back with a smug smile and informed everyone that he would arrange a private flight for her within the week. Per her request, he was “sending the banshee back to the frozen lake in the center of the hell that she crawled out of.”

I tried to argue, but he shrugged and said she made her choice.

Pavel and Kostya crowded around me, making sure I didn’t lunge for Gregor. It was tempting. But I knew he wasn’t lying.

Gregor was a man of his word. If she agreed to the marriage, then he would’ve held up his end as soon as the ink was dry and her ring in place.

Zoya was just stubborn enough to make this difficult.

She had refused me, and I was going to find out why. I stormed through the house. Heat rising from my chest to my neck and crawling up the sides of my face.

If she was being sent away, there was no longer a point in keeping my distance. I had agreed to marry her, so there was no trying to prove I wasn’t thinking with my cock.

Maybe that was what she needed.

Could I fuck some common sense into her?

The guard at the door pushed back his shoulders and acted like he was going to stand up to me.

I glared at him, bared my teeth, and pulled a blade from the back of my belt, twirling the freshly honed steel between my fingers.

The color drained from his face as he shrank down, then pushed his way past me and fled down the hall, probably pissing himself.

A smarter man, a man who had more control, would have stopped outside the door, collected himself, and then calmly entered the room. I was so far beyond that man, it didn’t even register as an option.

I had the forethought not to walk into that room armed. Even in my haze of rage, I would not hurt her, but at that moment, I didn’t trust her not to steal my knife and bury it in my back.

I stabbed the blade into the wooden doorframe.

With one quick yank, I ripped the door open, and then slammed it shut behind me. It rattled so hard I wouldn’t have been surprised if it fell off the hinges or shattered the frame.

The gods answered my anger with a lightning strike that flashed in the window and a rumble of thunder.

Zoya was right where I left her. Handcuffed to the goddamn bed like the captured queen she was. She stared at me with a defiance that fired up my temper and tightened my fingers into fists at my sides.

No one had ever made me this mad. No one had ever angered me beyond fucking reason before. But there she was, relaxed on the bed, her ankles crossed while she gave me a flat, bored expression.

She didn’t even flinch at the slamming door. Didn’t shift. Just stared at me, her gaze dragging over me like I was interrupting her day. Like I wasn’t the reason she was still breathing.

“Back for another lecture?” she drawled, lifting one delicate wrist and rattling the cuff against the decorative but strong wrought iron bars of the headboard. “Or did you finally decide to just kill me and get it over with? After all, I won’t marry you, so what use do I have, right?”

I stepped closer to her, slow and deadly, my muscles coiled tight, ready to pounce. “Don’t tempt me.”

She smirked, a cold, cruel sneer, before she opened her lips and spat pure venom. “Oh? And here I thought you preferred to chain me to the bed forever, like a proper caveman. I’m assuming your plan was to give me some time out of this bed? Just enough to cook and clean, like a good little wife?”

Her lips twisted in disgust as she bit out the word wife.

My hands flexed at my sides as anger crawled up my spine. “Is that an invitation, printsessa ?”

Her eyes flashed, but she didn’t take the bait. She wasn’t going to give me the satisfaction of a fight, not when I could win.

She was far too smart for that.

Instead, she dragged her handcuff over the wrought iron, metal dragging on metal making an ugly, grating noise. Deliberately filling the space between us with a sound that was worse than nails on a chalkboard.

Only Zoya could turn her imprisonment into my punishment.

“I’m not marrying you.” Her words came out sharp, singular, and absolute.

I bent over her, bracing both of my hands on the mattress, caging her in before I leaned in closer, my words dropping to a lethal whisper. “What the fuck makes you think that you have a choice? You will do as you are told.”

She exhaled a sharp laugh, something dark and reckless lighting up her gaze. I could see the hysteria, the crazy just beyond those brilliant emerald eyes. “You really are just your family’s puppet, aren’t you? The good little obedient doggy.”

“Careful,” I warned, clenching my jaw.

“Why?” she asked, tilting her head and smiling sweetly. “Or what? You’ll chain me up?”

She lifted her wrist, flicking it to make the chain jingle before she pulled it tight and scraped it over the wrought iron again. The sound shot through my skull and ran down my spine in the most irritating way possible.

“No, you’re not going to hurt me. Do you know how I know you’re not going to hurt me? Because Gregor didn’t tell you to. And that’s what you do, right? Whatever you’re told, like a good boy? Well, just because you’re good with being their little lap dog doesn’t mean I am.”

The remaining shreds of the control I came in here with snapped at her words.

With a snarl, I grabbed the wooden edge of the headboard with both of my hands and pulled.

The wrought iron bars warped, and then the wood splintered as I ripped it apart.

Shards of wood went flying as the frame twisted and groaned under the force, but the second it fractured, the iron bars slipped free and the chain fell loose.

The cuff around her wrist was still locked but no longer attached to anything.

Zoya sat up fast, rubbing her wrist, and her expression flickered for just a second. Fear? No. She wouldn’t have let me see fear in her eyes. Shock? Maybe, but I doubted that too.

It was excitement.

Her pretty little lips could spout lies all day. She could say over and over how much she didn’t want me, didn’t need me, wouldn’t be mine.

Her body told me the truth.

She wanted me. She was turned on by my power and it made her tight little body hot whenever I showed her my strength.

Zoya would fight it, but she would lose. Her own needs would override her stubbornness. It just needed a little help.

She launched herself off the bed, but she didn’t run. I expected her to make a break for the door and then I was going to be on her in a fucking second.

Instead, my little warrior got right up in my face, shoving at my chest.

“You don’t own me, Roman! I will never be your property. I will curse your name until the day I die.”

The way she spat my name like it was the vilest thing she had ever tasted sent a sharp shock of anger through me. Every single insult, every dismissive look or word just honed my rage into a sharper blade.

“Funny, you didn’t seem to mind my name in your mouth when you were screaming at me to save you.”

Her hand flew toward my face, but I caught her wrist in mid-air, twisting it behind her back, forcing her body to press against mine.

She twisted hard against my grip, and I felt every inch of her defiance—hot, breathless, infuriatingly arousing. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I pulled her over to the bed, sending the lamp crashing onto the floor where it shattered at my feet, before I sat her on the now empty nightstand.

“Is this the part where I’m supposed to be grateful?” she said, pure fury coloring her words. “Bow at your feet like a good little captive?”

“No.” My grip tightened, my other hand coming up to tangle in her soft blonde locks, forcing her head back just enough to make her eyes widen as she stared up at me. “This is the part where you stop lying to both of us.”

She opened her mouth—to snarl, to spit, to curse—it didn’t matter. I didn’t care.

The moment those beautiful lips parted, I took them.

I kissed her like a man starved. Like her mouth held all my anger and every answer I’d ever searched for.

The kiss was not soft, not sweet. There was nothing soft or sweet between us. It was fucking war. Teeth clashing, lips bruising and her fist tangled in my shirt like she wanted to rip me apart.

I straightened, pulling her up with me, holding her as her legs wrapped around me.

Thunder crashed in the distance, and it seemed fitting. The world sounded like it was ripping apart at the seams from something so violent, so destructive, and yet so natural, that the world made little sense without it.

I knew the feeling.

Then she bit me—hard.

Her teeth sank into my lower lip, the pain shocking and filthy, shooting straight to my cock. The edge of pain added to the passion and just deepened my need for her. This was what it was going to be like between us.

Always.

Neither of us were the type of people to give a single inch. We were oil and fire. We didn’t mix, we ignited. But we belonged together.

She was going to learn, one way or another, this was going to be her life. A constant fight where we would come together, clashing in fire and passion, and it would be glorious every single time.

We would always fight each other, and every argument would be solved with violent, earth-shattering sex.

Nothing less would ever satisfy either of us.

Her teeth bit down harder, intensifying the sharp sting to my bottom lip. It only made me groan and then slam her body against the wall.

I pressed my body to hers, caging her in.

She didn’t fight me. She should’ve. She should have shoved me away, hit me, screamed at me, done anything but kiss me back like she was starving for it.

Her body didn’t melt against mine. Her legs wrapped around my waist; her fingers clawed at me. One hand was wrapped in my shirt, the other one gripping my hair as she pulled me closer to her and kissed me back as violently as I kissed her.

It didn’t matter how much she lied to herself. She couldn’t lie about this. She couldn’t pretend that this didn’t exist.

Maybe it would have been better if she could have been just as dismissive about this as she was when I walked into the room, but it wasn’t possible.

This was too magnetic, too forceful.

And it fucking ruined me. But I was going to make sure I ruined her more.