Page 8

I detached my lips from hers, latched them on her jugular, and grazed her skin with enough teeth to leave a mark. Her head flew backward, and she clutched my shirt, melting into a helpless puddle.

Tasting her had unleashed something in me, more consuming than the darkness that plagued me for years, and I wanted— craved much more.

Squeezing hard, I grabbed the soft curves of her ass and yanked her closer than the unwritten laws of personal space would permit.

Elena’s face fell forward to the crook of my neck, her arms snaked around my neck, and her breaths puffed at a quickened pace.

That’s when I noticed that her eagerness was, in fact, uncertainty.

“Why are you shaking?” I asked, withdrawing.

Clearly agitated, she chewed on her lips, her cheeks flushed. “I…I’ve just never done this before. This make-out session is a first. You’re, um,” her gaze flickered to my swollen lips, “my first.”

Her first kiss?

My brain sent signals urging me to step further away from her, but my feet refused to budge; her scent, a sharp blend of flowers and vanilla, proved to be an even greater distraction.

I frowned. “Exactly how old are you?”

“Whoa! Wow.” She flinched, her brows creasing with a frown of her own while her cheeks flushed scarlet. “That was not how I saw this going. Well, if you have to know, I’m twenty-two. I’m not…I’m not that young.”

Christ. Twenty-two? In a few weeks, Katya was turning twenty-two. That meant two solid decades between Elena and me. Two fucking decades.

Retracting two steps, I combed my fingers through my hair and stuck my hand in my pocket. If I didn’t sheath them, I knew I’d succumb to the pulsing desire to touch every inch of Elena’s fucking body. Shit.

Beyond the shocking revelation that I’d been passionately sucking faces with a girl in my daughter’s peer group, what I wanted to know was how, with a body and face like hers, she had survived for twenty-two years without offering herself to the raving youthful sexual pressure.

“How?”

She caught on to the silent question rather quickly and rubbed her arms.

“Honestly, it wasn’t that hard to keep my focus on books instead of guys who ran on high testosterone.

Going through an elite school with a scholarship hanging over my head kind of helped with keeping myself in check.

Look, I know my…inexperience was unexpected, but…

I’m not usually like this. I don’t go off with random strangers and end up in secluded spaces with an excitement to kiss them.

I was waiting for the right one. Then you came along, and you… .”

Pushing up her height with a tiptoe, she gently cradled my cheeks and brushed her thumb over my lips.

“Damien, you’re electric.”

Without thinking, I parted my lips and sucked in her thumb with an insatiable hunger licking at the very center of my core. She gasped, partly feeding me with a glimpse of her wet tongue, and the hairs on my skin sang unreasonably for this woman.

Lust swam in her eyes, reforming the green in them to a much darker, wilder shade. Pure unadulterated desire. And before I dove in again, the familiar traditional tune from my phone sliced through the moment, disorienting both of us.

I released her thumb, turning away from her as I snatched the phone from my pocket.

“ Eto dolzhno byt’ vazhno.” This had better be important.

Over the phone speaker, the heavy thrums of music resounded in high volume, and I had to press the phone closer to my ear to pick up Fedor’s words. “You’ll have to decide whether it’s important or not, but I think it’s something you should see for yourself.”

The call disconnected, and I faced Elena, now feeling nothing but the familiar coldness I was at home with. Crouching, I picked the blazer from the floor and handed it to her. Confused, she received it.

“Cover yourself up,” I said brusquely and ignored the flash of hurt schooling her features.

“I admire your boldness and decision to maintain your purity. In a world like mine, that sort of shit takes guts. But trust me, I’m not the right one.

Fair enough, I might be electric , but that only makes me the bad guy. ”

With her mouth opening and closing, she was back to being the fish on dry land. But I walked past her and strode out before she got the chance to speak.

By the time I arrived on the main floor, it was in more of a frenzy than I had left it. The dance floor was flocked with a larger crowd. Smoke and the thick stench of alcohol curled in the air, and, somehow, the atmosphere seemed warped in a spellbound synchronization.

Looking over at the bar, I scanned faces, one after the other, until I caught Fedor’s eyes. Seemingly relaxed, he had a bottle fixed in his mouth, but his eyes motioned to the center of the dance floor.

While I followed his subtle directions, the frown on my face deepened, and my fingers gravitated to the holster positioned between my belt. When I finally found what I was looking for, my heart exploded in my chest as if it had taken a bullet.

There, in the middle of the madness and flashing lights, was my daughter, sensuously swaying her body in a man’s arms, with her half-naked back pressed against his chest, her ass digging into his groin, and her head swung back on his shoulder.

We might have been apart for years, but I could recognize my daughter as well as I knew my own fucking name.

He whispered into her ear, and I thought I heard her laughter spread through the deafening bass.

I gritted my teeth until a headache hit hard. And for some unfathomable reason, almost like she felt the heat of my gaze on her, she lifted her head and looked in my direction.

Through the swarm of gyrating silhouettes and pulsating lights, our eyes met. Her excitement morphed to dread, and very slowly, the laughter on her lips died.

The man kept talking, but Katya didn’t take her eyes off me.

She whispered into his ear, unwound his arms from her waist, and half-ran through the crowd until the unconcerned human beings swallowed her up and she disappeared from sight.