Gripping the edge of the sink until my knuckles turn white, I try to steady my voice. “Kal won’t be here. He never comes to these parties.”
She shrugs, unaware of my sudden change in breathing. “A girl can hope, can’t she?”
She shouldn’t, my heart screams, wanting to lash out and hurt her. Hurtsomeone, rid myself of the fingerprints the bad doctor left on my soul.
Not wanting me is one thing.
Humiliation is another, and when he left me tied up outside our house just yesterday, I’d resigned myself to a fate of not knowing Dr. Anderson beyond the persona he wields in public like a weapon.
A dull ache flares in my temple, but I ignore it as I give my sister a phony smile. “Well, good luck with that endeavor. You couldn’tpayme to try to impress that vile man.”
Ari smirks, flitting to the doorway, leaving a trail of floral perfume and sunshine I can’t begin to understand in her wake. “Luckily, you’re not the hooker.”
The door swings shut as she pushes past it, and I buckle, my elbows landing on the counter with a harsh thud as another wave rolls through me.
But this time, there’s no pain accompanying it; instead, the nausea ripples from the cracks in my bleeding heart and the knowledge that mafia women don’t ever get what they want.
Pinching my eyes shut, I suck in several deep breaths, trying to steel myself against the emotions warring on my insides.
The air around me seems to shift, dropping significantly enough to cause goose bumps to crop up along my skin, and a dark, inky presence settles in, gluing to my body like a second skin.
I swallow over the dryness in my throat, slowly lifting my head and peeling my eyelids back, meeting the harsh, hungry gaze of the man my mother calls Hades incarnate.
“Good thing my admiration of you comes free of charge, little one.”
CHAPTER8
Kal
Elena’swarm body tries to escape mine, but I move in closer, trapping her against the bathroom sink.
Her heat calls out to me, flames I want to burn my skin, and I can’t force myself away, even as logic screams at me to stop and take stock of our situation.
But reason has given way to obsession; this girl bleeds into even the recesses of my brain, blotting out everything I know to be fact.
Years of medicine, murder, the quest to regain a family that never wanted me in the first place and leave the one I chose long ago—Elena Ricci blots all of it out, a black hole absorbing my entire universe until all that’s left to see andfeelis her.
“What are you doing here?” she snaps, caramel eyes glaring at me through her reflection, making my cock twitch against the curve of her ass.
Pushing her dark hair over her shoulder, I glide my palms over the crisscrossed back of her dress, reveling in the way the fabric paints a checkerboard on her creamy skin.
I freeze, fisting the material where her back ends and using it to pull her more fully into me. “What do youthinkI’m doing here?”
“If you think I’m letting you anywhere near me after yesterday—”
Gripping her throat in one hand and her shoulder in the other, I step back just enough to spin her around, shoving her into the counter once again, this time forcing a harsh breath of air from deep in her lungs.
It rips through her chest, our bodies vibrating where they connect, and something inside of me shifts. A tectonic plate loosening, gearing up for an earth-shattering quake.
“It’s your birthday. I owe you a gift, don’t I?”
Her pulse jumps beneath my hand, and a bead of sweat pops up along my hairline as I rake my gaze over her form, practically fucking drooling at the perfection.
Her tits press obscenely against my chest, threatening to spill out of the tight dress she’s in, and the bite mark I left on her almost preens in the soft lighting, glistening beneath the makeup she tried to hide it with.
Bending down, I run the flat of my tongue over the mangled flesh, ignoring the powdery taste and reveling in the shiver that skates along her spine.
“Do you suddenly not want me, little one? Is that where that sentence was going?” Sucking the spot between my lips, I feast on her until she bows into me, a low whimper escaping her perfect mouth.