The Darkest Temptation (Made Book 3)

hagridden

(n.) troubled or tormented, as by a witch

RONAN

If someone asked how I envisioned my five-year life plan, it wouldn’t have included carrying a bloody American back to a guest room where I was keeping her hostage. I had a specific area for hostages in the basement. I also didn’t pick up a woman unless my dick was wet, and the angle was wrong.

Mila remained silent as I carried her up the stairs. Her weight felt solid in my arms. She was shaped like the kind of woman I preferred—the kind who could take a hard fuck without the worry she might break.

Just the feel of her body against mine sent a rush of blood to my groin. Meanwhile, the object of my hard-on reeked of despair.

As she should.

She actually elbowed me in the face. I didn’t want to kill the girl—necrophilia wasn’t my kink—so, after she split my lip and self-control, I released her with the belief Adrik holding an AK-47 in the hall would stop her in her tracks. I didn’t account for her ability to lay him out and take his fucking gun.

Oddly enough, when I heard her cry of pain, a hot and unpleasant sensation expanded in my chest. I could only relate the feeling to the anticipation of receiving a package in the mail, only for the delivery man to shake it like a Christmas present and break it. Adrik had fucked with my package.

Mila may have been raised as a soft-hearted American, but it was now clear she could be a Mikhailov when she needed to be. The fact shouldn’t turn me on, though after she’d gotten one over on me and I watched her unload three bullets into Adrik, all I could think about was fucking her raw in his blood. The urge was a little twisted, even for me.

Annoyed with this girl and the constant hard-on she aroused, I dropped her to the floor in her room.

She gasped, tossed the hair from her face, and shot me a look of resentment. I suppressed a smile and moved to the dresser to grab the discarded ropes from the top. Mila got to her feet, and, warily, piercing blue eyes met mine.

Fuck, she was stunning—even while she emulated Stephen King’s Carrie with a singular obsession for Elvis.

She was drenched in blood and hadn’t fainted. Maybe I’d broken my pet’s phobia. I walked toward her, evading the broken chair on the floor, with the ropes in my hand.

She backed up and shook her head. “No.”

There she went with that word again.

My eyes narrowed. “We’ve had this talk.”

Her almond eyes softened with something almost pleading, and the sight hit me in the chest and ached in my cock both at once. The unsettling sensation brought anger to the forefront. She drew my blood when I was focused on her naked ass. Foolish error on my part. And now, with a single look, she was making me question my ill intentions.

When she only stood there, I warned, “You don’t want to fight me right now.”

I’d do something I’d regret, like hurt her or fuck her. I realized I didn’t like the former, and I didn’t want to force the latter.

After a momentary stare down, she took my threat seriously and moved to the bed to lie on her back. As she dutifully raised her hands above her head, her shirt rode up her thighs. Forcing my gaze from the sight of the shadowed apex between her legs, I started to tie her wrists to the headboard.

She stared at the ceiling and didn’t say a word. So blue and clear, her eyes were practically transparent, and right now they were drifting to that absent place I hated.

While I was held up in Moscow for the past two days dealing with the unsavory business aspects of being “D’yavol,” wild blonde hair and a soft American accent drifted through my mind far too often for comfort—even between Yulia’s hourly updates on Mila’s activities. Just for invading my thoughts, I should leave her to stew in her misery alone. But I needed something from her. Something to hold me over. Something to tell me she thought about me inside her as much as I did.

With her wrists secured, I sat on the side of the bed and was unable to stop myself from trailing a hand up her bare thigh. She wasn’t given a razor on the off chance she might slit her wrists, but now I had the feeling she wouldn’t take the easy way out.

There was something novel and innocently sexy about running my hand over smooth skin and a light dusting of blonde hair. I hadn’t been with an unwaxed woman since I was a teenager, and those were usually clothed fucks against an alley wall.

“You need to shave, kotyonok.”

“You need to reach into your darkened soul and find your conscience.”

I chuckled and slid my palm up, bypassing the place I wanted inside the most, and beneath her shirt, where I caressed the flare of her hip with a thumb. “I’m not the one who just killed a man, am I?”

I almost regretted saying it when a single tear slipped down her cheek. She probably wanted to attend Adrik’s funeral and apologize to every member of his worthless family. In actuality, I didn’t know if they were worthless, but most family was.

“Stop crying.”

“I’m not crying,” she insisted as another tear escaped.

Fuck. This was killing the mood.

“It was self-defense,” I said, not giving a shit she’d killed Adrik. I didn’t need men on my side who got bested by soft-hearted women. “Say it.”

“But—”

“Say it.”

“It was self-defense,” she parried emotionlessly.

I didn’t know why I was offering out a tiny olive branch. The unsettling tears, maybe, but it was more so the fact it’d been a long time—if ever—since I met a woman with feelings. Mila was uncharted waters to me, filled to the brim with a selflessness I didn’t understand. And like a cat with a mouse, I wanted to play with her for a while.

I gripped the indent of her bare waist, which was so small I could probably touch fingers if I wrapped my hands around it. A waist wasn’t exactly the first thing I noticed about a woman, but ever since I’d stripped Mila naked in her hotel room, I wanted to hold her there while she rode me—a position I normally couldn’t stomach. I attributed the weird desire to the fact this was the longest I’d ever had to wait to fuck a woman I wanted before, and the smallest things about this one made me feel like I was just released from prison after abstaining from sex for four years again.

I rested my other hand next to her head and pulled a blonde curl between my fingers. “I’ll put a cross in the hall like you Americans do at car crash sites. We can even spread his ashes together if it’ll make you feel better.”

A disgusted gaze met mine, and it lifted a soft laugh from me.

“Shouldn’t you be out stealing virgins and terrorizing Moscow?” she asked.

“Unless I run into your papa tonight, the city’s safe from me.” While that may be a lie, I was an optimist when it came to things like business and murder.

She swallowed and pulled her gaze back to the ceiling. “How magnanimous of you.”

“When you say big words, it makes it harder to do the right thing here,” I drawled before nipping her jawline.

She released a shaky breath. “You’re beyond help, you know that?”

“And here I thought all I needed was an intervention.” I swept my thumb beneath the curve of her breast, back and forth, the lightest of caresses. Her breasts lifted with every breath, her nipples visible beneath her shirt, and it reminded me of how sensitive and sweet they were.

Sliding my lips to the shell of her ear, I said, “I bet I could make you come just from sucking your tits, kotyonok.”

The shiver that rolled through her was the only tell she hadn’t shut me out yet, so I pushed a little further. Palming the weight of her bare breast, I squeezed the soft flesh and ran my thumb around her nipple, then sucked the pulse point on her neck, pulling the skin between my teeth to leave another mark behind. Her chest rose and fell quicker, but she refused to acknowledge my hands on her.

I didn’t know why this girl smelled so good even covered in blood, but the feel of her breast in my hand and her soft scent was beginning to dim my vision. The relentless ache in my groin swelled, while Mila acted as bored as a baptist sitting in a church pew.

Her apathy was starting to irritate me, so I moved lower and bit down hard. She hissed in pain, but when I soothed the bite with my tongue, the ropes pulled taut, her head lolled to the side, and the subtle arch of her body told me she wasn’t so fucking indifferent anymore.

I pulled back to see my handiwork—the dark hickeys I left behind. While I didn’t think I’d ever given one before Mila, something primal inside of me enjoyed marking her up like my own little checkerboard.

“I think red is your color,” I told her, this girl in my guest bed adorned in blood and hickeys.

“You would,” she countered, but her words were husky, lacking heat.

When I finally ran my thumb across her nipple and pinched it, her ragged exhale came between wet, parted lips, though she still tried her best to ignore me.

“You call me sick,” I drawled, “but I think you might be a little twisted too.”

“I’m nothing like you.”

I raised a brow. “Sure about that?”

“That I’m not a psychopath? Yes.”

“I prefer ‘sociopath.’ More socially acceptable.”

“Because this scene screams ‘socially acceptable.’”

This girl had the odd ability to amuse me even while I was trying to be serious about breaking her down as my temporary, mindless sex slave. And I didn’t like when people threw a wrench into my plans.

I slid my hand down her stomach, between her legs, and pressed my thumb against her clit, applying the slightest amount of pressure. She closed her eyes tight, trying to fight the sensation, but when I gave her a little friction, she pulled her bottom lip between straight white teeth and faintly rolled her hips.

The sight flooded thick heat through me that curled down my spine and settled heavily in my cock. She was hot and wet, and, from what I’d learned, tighter than a fist. I wanted to give her what she needed; to slide two fingers home just to watch her eyes roll back. The idea she would let me at this point singed every ounce of willpower inside until my blood began to pound in my ears.

I may not give oral or let a woman take control, but I was hardly a selfish lover. Still, I’d never been so interested in making a woman come before. I couldn’t even say three women at once got me harder than this single girl. The fact she was Alexei’s daughter was just the icing on that nauseating cake.

She had to be a professional at this innocent act; at drawing men in. Just like her mother was before Alexei showed up to put a bullet between their eyes.

Mila fisted the ropes, eyes closed, a pink flush warming her cheeks. I’d barely touched her, and she was close to coming. Only an idiot would believe they were the first to get her off. She was a hair trigger, and there wasn’t a chance she’d remained celibate considering how she threw herself at me.

I stilled my hand and asked, “How many men have made you come?”

She inhaled deeply, in relief or frustration. I wasn’t sure she even knew which, but it was clear she had no desire to respond.

“Answer me,” I demanded.

Silence.

She was stubborn, but so was I.

I slapped her between the legs.

A gasp escaped her before she slayed me with a lethal gaze. “Sorry, was I supposed to keep count?”

My teeth clenched. I vowed to make her count every orgasm I gave her until she begged me to stop. Before I could give in to the desire to start right then and there, I pulled my hand away and stood.

“Bad pets don’t get rewarded.”

Fury cooled all of the desire in her gaze. “You’ll get what’s coming to you, D’yavol. And when you do, I’ll smile when they cover you with dirt.”

Fuck. That was kind of hot. And annoying.

I gripped her face. “If I go down, I’ll take you with me. Your Mikhailov blood will keep me cool in hell.”

An uncertain flicker passed through her eyes, and then she looked at the ceiling, dismissing me in an arrogant way no one else would dare. I released her roughly, and with a hot rush of frustration, I walked out of the room to find Yulia scrubbing up blood with an obsessive mentality.

The woman had knocked on my front door seven years ago, unperturbed by the guards and guns, and announced, “I would like job.”

I recognized her from two different occasions.

In my preteens, she fed me and my brother a hot meal and gave us a place to sleep for the night when she found us camping out in her car during a snowstorm. She was also on the news for butchering her husband with a meat cleaver without a single explanation, serving a decade in the looney bin. I should have thought twice about it, but instead, I opened the door wide and said, “You can start today.”

She’d proven to be a loyal servant, which was invaluable in this house.

Standing on the front porch, I grabbed a pack of cigarettes from Ilya’s jacket pocket, took one out, and put it between my lips. Blood trailed across the driveway to the garage, where Albert was busy dealing with the body.

I slipped the pack back into Ilya’s pocket. “Lighter?”

He shuffled for his Zippo, flicking it open. I lit my smoke, inhaled on it deeply, and headed to the car parked in the drive before hollering at Pavel across the yard.

My newest recruit, lanky and still in his late teens, hesitated.

I watched him mosey his way over here, inhaling on my cigarette. “You got a stick up your ass or something?” I asked, blowing smoke out of the side of my mouth. “Or did your girlfriend try something new last night?”

Laughter resounded through the yard.

The kid turned red. “No.”

“Let’s go. You’re driving.” I flicked the smoke to the snow and sat in the back seat.

I hated the taste of cigarettes, but I’d needed a hit of nicotine. I pulled a piece of Big Red out of the center console, tossed one onto Pavel’s lap, and watched him grip the wheel with white knuckles.

“You know how to drive, don’t you?”

“I can figure it out,” he stammered.

Jesus.

Viktor recruited and trained my men, but apparently, driving wasn’t included. I could get someone else to take me, but instead, I sat back in my seat and prepared for a sketchy ride into Moscow. Pavel had to learn eventually.

I checked my watch, noting the blood on my hand and shirt. The kid must have gotten the brake and gas pedal backward; the car suddenly lurched forward and then stopped abruptly.

I ignored it.

One of my mother’s clients taught me how to drive when I was eleven. He was high as fuck when he put a gun to my thigh and told me to keep it at sixty kmph. Longest drive of my life.

I had a meeting with Alfonso in an hour. The Colombian drug lord’s latest shipment of cocaine was cut with laundry detergent, and I made it a priority to make sure what I put out was pure. A chemist in Rublyovka tested all my product in his basement. It was an interesting meeting in front of me, but all I could think about was the girl tied to my guest room bed.

I ran a thumb over my split bottom lip wondering how I was going to work her over. Diamonds and furs wouldn’t do it, unfortunately. She responded to a little seduction a moment ago, but I didn’t want to push her to a point of simply needing to get off. I wanted her to need me; to beg, live, and breathe just for me.

On second thought, I probably wouldn’t have time for all that, so I’d settle for a hard and willing fuck.

Unsure of the angle to take with this girl, the thrill of the chase mixed with the pent-up frustration tightening in my groin. I had multiple women I could call, Nadia included, but somehow, I knew I wouldn’t. The only lips I wanted on my dick right now tasted like strawberries.

The longer Mila made me wait, the more she’d regret it.

Her phone rang in my pocket. I turned it back on this morning, having the urge to gloat a little. When I saw Ivan’s name onscreen, a smile pulled on my lips. I answered the call and brought it to my ear.

“Ronan’s Steakhouse. Home of the largest sausage in Moscow.”

“Ty sukin syn.” You son of a bitch.

I chuckled. “Bitch is appropriate, but ‘cunt’ would be a better description of my mother.”

“You touched her,” he gritted through clenched teeth.

“My mother?” I parried with amusement. “No. Even I find incest unappealing.” Then I added, “Not to mention, not a huge fan of STDs.”

He made a bitter sound. “I’m sure you have a history with them. You’ve fucked half the city.”

“Nah. I always wrap it up.” And then I drawled a popular health provider’s slogan. “Prevention is the key to health and happiness.”

“You’re a dead man walking, you know that?”

“Living on the edge always did make my cock feel a little tingly.”

Pavel blew a stop sign, narrowly missing a T-bone collision with a farm truck.

“Jesus, kid,” I snapped.

He white-knuckled the wheel. “Fuck, I’m sorry!”

“How did you coerce her to make that video?” Ivan growled.

This was all fun and games until now. My blood heated at the idea he’d watched it; that he’d seen Mila’s body in person before; that he’d fucked her. My chest twisted with aversion, but from years of training, I managed to keep my voice indifferent. “Good show, huh?”

“I’d rather fuck your mother’s corpse than watch that.”

Good.

That was good.

Although, I now regretted sending that video to her papa. I didn’t think he would show it to others, but if he did, they were dead men. She was mine for the time being, every goddamn inch of her, whether she liked it or not. I refused to analyze the feeling. I had enough shit to do.

“She wouldn’t have done it unless you blackmailed her.”

Interesting he was so concerned about whether she was willing or not, rather than if I’d harmed her since. Maybe he knew a hard shell of viciousness encased her soft heart.

“You know her so well, do you?” I asked.

“Better than anyone.”

My grip tightened on the ridiculous sparkly phone. “Obviously not as well as you believe.” The innuendo was clear: there was no blackmail necessary.

“You’re an idiot if you think I’ll believe anything you say, D’yavol.” A hint of vulnerability touched his voice, and I realized, with a sense of disgust, the man had feelings for her. I wondered if she shared them. The idea seemed more repulsive than watching the Hallmark channel for twenty-four hours straight.

“I prefer to talk about my prowess in bed over tea, but I’ll make an exception today. I assure you, Mila has no complaints.” Had, I corrected in my head.

“Remember, when you have your revenge, Mila will come back to me. We’ll see who has better prowess then.”

I gritted my teeth, and a murderous buzz flared to life beneath my skin. “Run, Ivan,” I warned with a deadly calm. “Run fast. Because if I catch you, I’ll rip you apart with my bare hands.”

I ended the call.

The bastard was in my city, but he knew how to play the game. Not as good as me though.

I would find him.

And when I did, there was a space on my mantel with his name on it.