Page 98 of Ruthless Rustanovs

Luckily, she really hadn’t been kidding about not being afraid of anything.

But she still couldn’t believe he was here.

In her room. Threating to splinter her little wooden chair with the sheer heft of his body.

She couldn’t stop herself from stealing several glances at him.

He was huge and nothing like the other fighters she’d seen come through this place.

He looked big and Slavic, but the tilt of his eyes told her he might also have some farther East Asian in his background.

He had ink black hair tied into a tight knot at the base of his neck—a strong ‘fuck you’ to would-be competitors, because most fighters wouldn’t dare go into a no-holds-barred fight with long hair.

Talk about an instant vulnerability! But this dude definitely didn’t have to worry about being taken down in a fight because of his hair.

Instead of swagger, he oozed absolute certainty, and she didn’t have a doubt in the world that he could beat down any man who came at him.

She could feel his cold gaze on her as she rooted through her waist pack with deliberate slowness, searching for the mini flashlight she used to see cuts better.

But she could only pretend for so long. Eventually she had to find the flashlight and come stand in front of him to perform her bullshit exam.

The dude was beyond huge. Nearly as tall as her, despite the fact that he was seated and she was standing.

She moved between his legs in order to get a good look at his cut.

Those glittering black diamonds he called eyes tracked her every movement as she came in closer.

It felt like being observed by a straight-up predator.

The weight of his stare did something to her insides. Made that pretty song she’d heard the other day chew on her chest even louder, just begging to get out.

Trying to ignore the song, she took him by the chin and lifted his face further into the light.

“You’re right, this cut ain’t that deep,” she said after a quick inspection. She clicked off the flashlight and returned it to the waist pack before pulling out a small band-aid.

Outside, the sound of the men cheering on a new set of fighters erupted. Which meant they must have successfully removed the body. The Albanian was probably on his way to get unceremoniously dumped somewhere. If the dude was lucky, outside a hospital. If not…

As if reading her thoughts, The Russian Beast asked, “Why are you here with me? Other fighter is much worse.”

“True,” she agreed, smoothing the band-aid over his itty bit cut—the only indicator he’d even been in a fight. “But he’s beyond my nursing skills. Cyrus wanted me to see to you.”

He stared at her for a dead-eyed second before saying. “He doesn’t want me to fight his Greek. Not good for bets. So he sends you to distract me.”

“Wow,” she said, stepping out from between his legs. “Has anyone ever told you you’re real perceptive, Mr. Beast?”

“I do not usually talk enough for people to say this about me,” he answered.

“Really? Why not?” she asked, genuinely curious about the answer, which was way more curious than she’d felt about anything in a real long time.

“Because I scare them. People do not wish to talk to that which scares them.”

“Oh, I get it,” she said with a shrug. “Well, like I said, you don’t scare me, so talk away.”

Another slitted look, like he was trying to figure her out. And then. “No more talk. I need to fight now.”

“But you just said yourself Cyrus doesn’t want you to.”

He came to his feet, already rolling his neck. “What Cyrus wants does not matter.”

She believed him. This hulking beast didn’t look like he gave two fucks about Cyrus or anything else but his next fight.

“How did you get that?” she asked, nodding toward the ugly scar running a diagonal line across his heavily muscled gut.

He glanced down as if just now realizing the scar was there.

“Fight,” he answered with a sneer. “It is just scratch.”

“Looks like more than a scratch to me.”

A dark second ticked between them. And then he said, “I need to fight now.”

“Want to or need to?”

He stared at her, his black diamond eyes blank. And she clarified. “Most guys come in here wanting to fight. But you got something inside you, don’t you? Something that makes you have to do this?”

She must have hit it on the head, because he looked away. Dropping his black stare from her to the dingy linoleum floor.

Was he ashamed? Upset she’d seen through all his hulking insistence to his real motivation? Not his mother’s honor. But that he had a dark rage burning inside him. Her heart went out to him then, like it used to go out to the road dogs her and Trevor made a habit of rescuing.

Dear oldest daughter, you can’t keep bringing these sad animals home, her mother would say when she and Trevor showed up at the door, him carrying yet another dog some cruel person had left on the side of the road.

Their little house lay on the very outskirts of the small Virginia town they’d moved to when she was seventeen.

Which made the road right outside their home the perfect place for folks from the surrounding bigger cities to dump aging or hurt pets they no longer wanted.

She’d felt compelled to start rescuing those poor dogs, sometimes going as far as to nurse them back to health before taking them on to the local shelter.

Her younger brother, Trevor, had been the perfect assistant for her unofficial fostering service.

Big and mentally disabled, his kindness continued to know no bounds, even after the age when most boys became cruel with raging hormones.

And now here was a man everyone called The Russian Beast, hurting bad from something—she could tell—and fighting demons only he could see. She stepped closer to him on instinct.

But then he asked, “How much?”

“Excuse me?”

“I have been to these fights before. I know how it works with Cyrus’s ring girls. Especially the ones he lets room here.”

Her eyebrows shot up. “Oh, you want to have sex with me.” She threw him an apologetic look.

“Yeah, Cyrus told me that’s a good way to make extra money down here, but I’m still…

” she searched for the right words to describe her current mental state and could only come up with, “…not quite there yet. Maybe next time.”

His dark eyes flickered with angry confusion. “Next time I can have you? This is what you are saying?”

“Yes, maybe next time,” she answered. “Like I said, I’m still working up to it.”

“You are being serious? You are not like Cyrus’s other ring girls? You do not take fighters into your bed after the fights?” he asked, obviously not believing her.

“So I’m assuming you’ve been in this room before?” she asked, her tone dry. “With all the other ring girls?”

He just continued to stare down at her, his unrelenting gaze heavy as stone. “My brother tells me my English is good. Better than his when he was my age. But I do not understand you.”

She tilted her head up at him. Liking him. Liking the way he made her laugh, even if it wasn’t anywhere near intentional on his part. “I’m saying it sounds like you’ve fucked a few girls before me in this bedroom, Beast. Is that clear enough for you?” she asked.

He actually seemed to consider her question. Then surprised the hell out of her when he quietly confessed. “Sometimes the fighting is not enough. Sometimes I need more.”

“More,” she repeated. “For the demons you mean?”

He nodded, looking wary like he expected her to run or something.

But when she continued to stand there, waiting to hear what he’d say next, he surprised her again by asking. “Sirena. This is your name, da, little ring girl?”

“Yep!” she lied with a pleasant smile. “Sirena Gale. My passport got stolen a few days ago, so I figured that was life telling me to start over. So now I’m Sirena Gale, ring girl-slash-nurse maid. At least until I find the funds to move on.”

He frowned. “Your passport was stolen, but you are not upset.”

She shrugged. “It’s cool. I came over here to be somebody else for a little while. Now I can be.”

“But you are not ready to sell your body?”

“No, not yet,” she answered with another shrug and a smile.

Her answer made his glower go even darker. “I do not like being teased.”

“You should reconsider your position on that, Mr. Beast,” she replied with a grin. “Teasing’s kind of fun under the right circumstances.”

Now he regarded her with a suspicious glare. “Do you know my real last name?”

“It’s not Beast?”

His square jaw gritted back and forward. “You are teasing me again.”

She grinned. “You got me.”

But he didn’t smile back at her. Like at all. “No, I do not have you. Yet.”

The girl standing in front of him, so close but so far away, was not making this easy for him. With her sultry eyes and her teasing voice. But his erection was pounding now inside his shorts, and he was done with her games.

“Tell me this, Sirena,” he said. “You guessed the truth about me having to fight, but do you really understand about me now? What has to happen if you do not get out of my way and let me return to the circle?”

He got a brazen satisfaction out of watching the girl visibly swallow in response to his question, her throat working up and down. And just in case she had any remaining illusions, he told her the hard facts of their situation without any softness whatsoever.

“Fight or fuck, Sirena. That is only choice you will ever have with me.”

Her eyes widened slightly, but she remained where she was. And he had to admire her for not fleeing like a small animal. As most girls would do given a set of similar choices.

Now it was he who stepped closer to her, head dropping so he could get a better look at her as he said, “You lie about your name. Are you lying about other thing?”

“Other thing?”

“When you say you aren’t afraid of me.”

“No, I ain’t lying about that,” she answered. Voice soft but fierce.