No.
Behave, Brennan.
Focus.
The clerk’s office was the most plebeian place I’d ever been, and I frequented the goddamn docks for a living. Everything in here was mediocre, middling, and mildewed. Including the staff who were buttoned up—not just their blouses, but their mouths. Pursed like assholes, each of the three women were middle-aged and matronly.
A woman in her forties could be more banging than a bitch in her twenties, but these ones really needed to wear some fucking lipstick and take a goddamn chill pill.
I knew what petty tyrants looked like—I’d been raised by one—and these three were it to a T. They were also enough to quench any and all of my arousal.
“You really sound like you’re listening,” Forrest groused, making me roll my eyes.
The faint scent of chamomile, sunblock, and horses disappeared, jolting my attention toward the woman who was no longer at my side, but who was staring at one of the hot pink pieces of paper. Her brow was puckered as she read the stark black text, and though I had the chance to read it as well, I was more interested in her than in the flyer. Something I regretted when she unpinned it, folded it, then shoved it in her pocket.
The move drew my gaze to her ass, which had me peering over the rest of her once more.
She was, without a doubt, hot.
I mean, I’d banged pole-dancers whose asses weren’t like Camille’s, but it was more than that. There was something about the set to her shoulders, the tilt of her chin. Call me crazy, but I could see royalty in her.
Maybe Vasov’s clan were fucking serfs—I didn’t know, did I?—but Camille wasn’t born to tend to the earth.
She was born to sit on a throne. And I wasn’t talking the porcelain kind.
Did women like her even take shits? Did they puke or need to piss?
Biologically, they had to.
But Christ.
Such perfection...
It would be unnerving if the thought of destroying that wasn’t so enticing.
Her skin was like fresh cream. Her eyes like gemstones. Her hair like spun gold. She was a doll. Pure and simple. A rich man’s daughter who was reared to become a rich man’s wife.
But I saw more than the surface.
I thought about those bright red lips being plump and sore from tongue-fucking her mouth for hours.
I thought about those cheeks being marred with mascara streaks from the tears she shed as she gagged on my cock.
I thought about those gemstone orbs turning glassy as she screamed out in orgasm.
Perfection was boring.
Dolls were boring.
Camille was not boring.
Tedious people didn’t approach renowned Irish mobsters and attempt to force their hand into marriage. She was Bratva. She knew the rules of the game, but she’d broken them anyway.
If my mind wasn’t already set on this path, there was fuck all she could have said to convince me otherwise.
Honor was important to me because of my past, but few people in my line of work felt the same way. Most grew hardened over time, and while I had, knowing I was the reason Ma had been abducted…
Christ, there was no denying it—it made me a pussy around women.