Page 13 of Twisted Pact

“Then leave. Go home. Prepare your presentation. Pretend this never happened.”

She doesn’t move. Just stands there staring up at me with those hazel eyes that shift between gold and green depending on how the candlelight catches them.

“I should,” she finally replies. “I really should.”

I reach out and cup her face in my hands. “Tell me what you want, Mila. Not what your father wants. Not what you think you should want. Tell me what you want.”

Mila leans into my touch, and the gesture is so trusting it makes something in my chest constrict. She bites her bottom lip, and my eyes drop to follow the movement.

Jesus, I want to bite that lip. To taste her again. To see if she’s still as sweet as I remember.

“Want to know what I want, little bunny?”

She draws in a shaky breath. “Do I even have a choice?”

My grin sharpens. I lean in until my mouth brushes her ear. “No, Zaika. You don’t get choices with me. You get what I giveyou. And you’ll take it, because your body already knows it wants me.”

Her breath catches, and her pupils dilate. But she doesn’t back away or slap me or do any of the things a smart woman should do when a dangerous man says something like that.

Instead, she leans the slightest bit closer like she can’t help herself. And that’s when I know without a doubt that I’m right.

Mila Andreeva wants me.

5

Mila

One night won’t change anything.

That’s what I tell myself as I stand in this candlelit safe house with Alexei staring at me like he wants to devour me whole.

One night to burn it out of my system. To prove to myself that he’s just a man. Nothing special. Nothing I can’t walk away from in the morning.

If I’m going to burn, it will be on my terms.

Except my hands are shaking, and I’m pretty sure he can see it.

“Well?” The scent of cedar and whiskey wraps around me. “What’s it going to be, Zaika?”

I hate that nickname. Hate how it makes me feel small and vulnerable. I hate even more that my body responds anyway.

“One night,” I hear myself say. “That’s all this is.”

“One night,” he agrees, but something in his voice tells me he doesn’t believe it anymore than I do.

“And we don’t talk about it after. We don’t tell anyone. This stays between us.”

“Fine.”

“I’m serious, Alexei. My father can’t know. No one can know.”

My face is still in his hands, and he tilts my head back until I’m forced to meet his eyes. “No one will know. I promise.”

The gentleness in his touch contradicts everything I know about him. Everything I’ve heard. Alexei Kozlov doesn’t do gentle. He takes what he wants and destroys anyone who gets in his way.

But right now, he’s touching me like I might break.

“Stop thinking so much,” he says against my mouth. “Just feel.”