Page 63 of Toxic Temptation (Krayev Bratva #1)

VESPER

The lie is becoming easy.

Way, way too easy.

When Kovan pulls me against him and kisses me until my knees forget how to work, it doesn’t feel like a performance.

When his fingers find my hair while we’re sitting together, twisting the strands around his thumb, it feels real .

When his eyes track my every movement across the room, hungry and possessive, my body believes every heated, hushed, hair-raising second of it.

And yeah, sure, Eliza Murphy is here for all of it. She’s the intended audience, after all. She’s supposed to see the lingering touches and lusty glances. She’s supposed to buy into our perfect couple routine.

But no one is this good an actor…

… Are they?

Eliza clears her throat and stands, smoothing down her severe gray skirt. “Thank you for your time, Mr. Krayev. Ms. Fairfax.” Her sharp eyes flit between us warily. “I’ll be in touch.”

“I’ll walk you out.” I untangle myself from Kovan’s arms, though I find myself immediately missing his warmth.

Eliza isn’t one for small talk, but when we reach the front door, she pauses.

Her harsh features soften by degrees in the hazy afternoon light.

“I have to admit, I didn’t expect this relationship to last. But seeing you two together…

” She shakes her head with the tiniest smile. “It makes sense now.”

Everything in me wants to grab her arm. How does it make sense?! What do you see that I’m missing?! Because I’m drowning here and I don’t know what’s real and what’s fake anymore.

Instead, I do the only reasonable thing: I smile and nod. “Thank you, Eliza. It’s been a pleasure inviting you into our home.”

The moment her car disappears down the driveway, Luka scampers over to me. “Guess what? Uncle Kovan says we can go to the park!”

Kovan follows behind him, flaunting long limbs and casual confidence.

I try not to think about this morning, when I walked into the bathroom to find him naked in the shower, water streaming down every ridge and valley of muscle.

I’d fled back to the bedroom and buried myself under the covers, thighs pressed together so tightly they cramped.

I can’t be having that. A few more of those little incidents and I’ll be a pile of horny mush, unable to do my fake job, my real one, or anything in between.

Therefore, I’ve come up with a plan. My new survival strategy is simple: Get through this fake relationship with minimal damage.

To do that, I’ve established three essential rules.

Rule #1: No flirting with Kovan.

Rule #2: No kissing Kovan.

Rule #3: Absolutely, positively, under no circumstances is there to be so much as a single instance of having sex with Kovan.

Sleeping with him once was a mistake. Yes, an earth-shattering, life-changing, best-orgasm-of-my-life mistake, but still a mistake.

Yes, a mistake that makes every other man I’ve ever so much as glanced at seem like a grotesque, sexually incompetent amoeba in comparison—but definitely, undeniably a mistake nonetheless.

Too many of those mistakes might just kill me.

“What do you say, Vesper?” Kovan asks. The way he purrs my name does things to my insides that should be illegal. “We’ll stop by Carino’s. I know you love their chocolate espresso.”

“How do you know that?” I ask in surprise. “I mentioned it, like, once.”

“I pay attention to you.” He runs a hand through his thick black hair and shrugs, like that’s just a matter-of-fact thing that it’s completely reasonable for him to do. I beg to differ, but before I can argue, he grabs my hand and says, “Let’s go.”

So we go. And if I let him hold my hand until we get to the car, well…

There’s no rule against that, is there?

Halfway to the park, Kovan suddenly jerks the wheel left and makes a U-turn that has my stomach dropping into my shoes.

“Um, Kovan? Where are we going?”

“Testing a theory.”

His eyes keep flicking to the rearview mirror where Luka is absorbed in his GameBoy, oblivious to the tension radiating from his uncle.

But I notice. I notice everything about this man now, same as he notices me—and that’s the heart and soul of the problem.

“See that white Lexus two cars back?” he murmurs.

I check my mirror. “Yeah.”

“Been following us since we left the house. Pretty sure the passenger has a telephoto lens.”

I spot the white Lexus weaving between cars, trying to look normal and failing. The glint of camera equipment in the passenger window confirms Kovan’s suspicions.

“I see it,” I whisper hoarsely, fear clogging my throat.

“Watch what happens.” Kovan makes another U-turn, heading back toward the park. The Lexus drives past, then executes its own U-turn thirty seconds later. “Looks like we have company.”

“Yana?”

His jaw turns to granite. “Has to be. She’s hoping to catch us off-guard. Fighting, maybe. Or looking bored with each other. Whatever it takes to paint a bad picture.”

“What do we do?”

His smile frightens me. “We perform, krasivyy . Time for the show of our lives.”

He takes my hand once again, and despite the warmth of his palm, ice floods my veins.

An hour of public foreplay later, I’m ready to combust.

We’ve held hands, laughed, talked, kissed, and flirted until I’m dizzy with want. The only thing we haven’t done is strip each other naked and go at it on the playground equipment.

Not that I’m opposed to the idea.

I just prefer my exhibitionism without an audience of private investigators.

But Kovan thrives under scrutiny. The PIs that Yana hired have been tailing us faithfully, and they’ve forced us to turn our park visit into an Oscar-worthy performance.

While they lurk in the bushes, Kovan wipes ice cream from my chin with his thumb, then sucks it clean while maintaining eye contact.

He kisses my nose when I laugh. He pushes me on the swings while Luka conquers the slide, his hands lingering on my lower back each time he gives me momentum.

It’s sickeningly sweet and couple-y and absolutely perfect.

And it’s killing me because none of it is real.

Last night, when he held me while I cried, when he promised to stay as long as I needed him, he was being kind. A friend helping another friend through a crisis. He didn’t mean any of it.

How could he? Our entire arrangement has an expiration date.

But this feels cruel and unusual. I know why we’re doing it, I know we have to, I know the motive is pure—but does it have to hurt so bad while it’s happening?

“Hey,” I mumble, “I need to talk to you about something.”

Luka has moved to the swings, and Kovan and I have taken shelter under a massive oak tree. The moment I turn to face him, he grabs my waist and pulls me flush against his body. The solid wall of muscle beneath my palms makes my brain short-circuit.

“What is it?” he rumbles. I feel his voice more than I hear it, and my whole body vibrates along with his.

“Could you—” I squirm in his arms. “Do you mind? I’m trying to have a conversation.”

“So talk.”

I glare up at him. “You’re too close.”

“Since when is that a problem?”

Damn him and those hypnotic green eyes. How is anyone supposed to think straight under these circumstances? “Since right now. Can we talk with a reasonable amount of personal space between us?”

He smirks, brushing his knuckles across my cheek. “We’re still being watched. We need to look like the perfect couple.”

Swallowing my frustrated sigh, I slide my hands up his arms. For the performance, of course. Definitely not for my own personal satisfaction. Definitely not because his biceps are lean and gleaming beneath the cuffs of his clean white t-shirt.

“Fine. Jeremy texted me this morning. The pediatric ward is getting three new incubators and two radiant warmers.”

“Good.”

I narrow my eyes. “That’s it? ‘Good’? That’s your entire response?”

“What do you want me to say?”

“This is because of you, isn’t it?” My hands tighten around the back of his neck. “You went to see Jeremy. That’s why you were at the hospital when the shooting happened.”

He shrugs, which I can already tell is the only confirmation I’m going to get. “You needed new equipment and you needed that piece of shit to lay off your case. I accomplished both.”

“What did you say to him?”

“The short version? If he messes with you, he messes with me.”

It’s difficult to hide my surprise. “I wouldn’t have thought he’d respond well to threats.”

Kovan laughs, the sound rich and warm and utterly out of place, given the subject we’re discussing. “Jeremy Fleming is a bully. And like all bullies, he is a coward wearing a tough-guy mask. I could destroy him with my eyes closed and both hands tied behind my back.”

“Thank you,” I breathe in shaky gratitude. “This will make a real difference for my patients.”

“I’m only doing what we agreed on.”

My hands drop from him. “Right. Of course. But still… thank you.”

He hooks a finger under my chin, forcing me to meet his eyes. “For the record, though, even if we hadn’t agreed on anything, I would have done it anyway.”

My heart stops. Starts. Stops again. “Why?”

He looks genuinely taken aback by the question, as if it simply does not compute. “Because you needed those machines, and I want to give you whatever you need.”

He says it as if it’s all so easy. And when he does, when he says things like that and touches me like this and looks at me in his way, nothing else seems to matter.

The park fades away. The noise disappears. I forget we’re being watched, forget this is all pretend, forget everything except the way he’s looking at me.

“You have no idea what this means to me,” I whisper.

“Actually,” he says, leaning closer, “I think I do.”

When he kisses me, it’s soft at first. Almost tentative. Then his lips part mine and it becomes something else entirely. Something desperate and real and impossible to fake.

At least, not for me.

With that one kiss, he obliterates every rule I made this morning.

He wants to flirt? I’m his. He wants to kiss me?

He can have my mouth whenever he wants it.

He wants to make love to me? My body is already putty in his hands, and so long as the PIs don’t photograph the private bits too closely, I’ll be whatever he’d like for me to be, for as long as he’d like it.

Do no harm? Ha. That’s a joke. Loving Kovan is the most harmful thing I’ve ever done.

And yet I can’t find it in me to regret it.