LOGIN"Which is why I want you there.""Yes." A beat. "Yes, I'll come today. Give me two hours." A pause, and then, softer: "Have you told her? About any of this?"He looked out at the city."Not yet.""Dimitri....""I'll tell her. When I know how much there is to tell."Nonna made a sound that conveyed, with remarkable economy, that she found this answer inadequate but was choosing her battles. "She deserves to be prepared.""I know.""The girl loves you. That means she'll walk into whatever is coming without hesitating. The least you can do is make sure she can see it coming.""I said I know, Nonna.""Then act like it." The warmth crept back into her voice, tempering the sharpness. "Two hours. Have someone make up the east guest room....I'm bringing my good pots, I refuse to cook with what you have in that kitchen."Despite everything, the corner of his mouth moved. "You've used that kitchen for three years.""Under protest. Two hours, caro."She hung up.Dimitri stood at the window for a
POV: DIMITRIThe call came at half past ten on a Tuesday morning.Dimitri was in his office, three floors of city noise below him and silence above, working through the Rotterdam problem with Marco when his personal phone lit up on the desk. Not the business phone. Not the secure line he used for operations.The personal one.The number that only seven people in the world had.He saw the name on the screen and went very still.Marco, who had spent fifteen years learning to read Dimitri Valentino the way sailors read weather, stopped mid-sentence and stood up without being asked."I'll wait outside," he said.The door closed.Dimitri looked at the phone for two more seconds....long enough to arrange his face into something that felt nothing, which was the only appropriate expression for this particular caller....and answered."Antonio.""Dimitri." His father's voice was exactly what it had always been. Smooth. Measured. The voice of a man who had never needed to raise it because the we
The word landed visibly. She watched it hit him....watched something in his expression crack open slightly, the way it had when she'd said I love you for the first time. Like he'd expected many possible answers and not that one.His hand came up and cupped her face, his thumb at her cheekbone, and he looked at her for a long moment with those storm-grey eyes that usually kept everything out.They weren't keeping anything out right now."We're leaving," he said, his voice rougher than usual."Okay.""Now.""Okay, Dimitri."He kissed her in the middle of the warehouse, in front of hundreds of dangerous people, without appearing to care even slightly. One hand in her hair, one at her jaw, unhurried and absolute and claiming in the way that everything he did was claiming.When he pulled back, the room around them had gone interestingly quiet.He didn't acknowledge it."Marco," he said, already turning. "Car."Eve followed him out with her heart in her throat and that word still sitting be
POV: EVEEve had learned, over the past five weeks, that when Dimitri said get dressed, we're going out with that particular flatness in his voice, asking questions was pointless.He'd tell her what she needed to know. Nothing more.So she'd put on the dress Marco had laid out....deep emerald, fitted, more conservative than she'd expected...and followed Dimitri to the elevator without asking where they were going. He was dressed differently tonight. No suit jacket. Dark trousers, a black shirt with the sleeves already rolled, shoes that were expensive but built for movement rather than boardrooms.She noticed his knuckles.He'd wrapped them. Both hands, clean white athletic tape wound with practiced efficiency from mid-palm to just below the first knuckle. She'd stared at them in the elevator and said nothing.The drive took forty minutes.She watched the city change outside the window...the clean geometry of the financial district giving way to older neighborhoods, wider streets, ind
He rewarded her immediately....no more teasing, mouth finding her center with precision, and her whole body lifted off the bed.He worked her slowly, thoroughly, keeping her right at the edge without letting her fall. When she was sobbing....actually sobbing, her knuckles white against the silk restraints, his name broken into syllables in her throat.....he pulled back."No....no, don't stop...""Breathe," he said."Dimitri I swear to God...""Breathe, Eve."She breathed. Ragged, furious breaths.He waited until the edge dulled slightly, then reached for the drawer again.The vibrator was small, precise, designed for exactly this kind of work. He turned it on low and watched her hips jerk at the first contact."Too much?" he asked."Not enough," she gritted out.He turned it up.She cried out.He brought her to the edge twice more....each time holding her there until she was incoherent, each time pulling back before she could fall. By the third time she was past words entirely, just s
The arousal was shameful and involuntary and made absolutely no logical sense, and it was there regardless, coiled low in her stomach alongside the shock, the two things existing in completely contradictory parallel the way they had since the warehouse.She heard the shower run.She heard it stop.She heard his footsteps in the hallway.....unhurried, measured....and then the bedroom door opened and Dimitri came in.He'd changed his shirt. His hair was damp. The blade was gone. But there was still a faint darkness at his jawline that might have been shadow and might not, and his eyes when they found her on the edge of the bed were sharp and assessing and already knew everything.He crossed the room and crouched in front of her, bringing himself to her eye level, his forearms resting on his knees."Look at me," he said.She looked at him."Tell me where you are.""I'm...." Her voice came out smaller than she intended. She cleared her throat. "I'm okay.""That's not what I asked."She he
Her fingers moved desperately over her clit, her other hand squeezing her breast, and she came with a broken cry, her body shuddering.Dimitri groaned, his strokes becoming erratic, and then he was coming too....hot ropes of cum painting her breasts, her stomach, marking her.Claiming her.When he
POV: EVEPhoenix Talent Agency's offices were located on the fifteenth floor of a sleek building in Midtown. Glass walls, modern furniture, photos of their successful clients lining the hallways.Eve had built this. From nothing to something. From a dream to a thriving business.And today, walking
POV: EVEEve woke to sunlight streaming through the floor-to-ceiling windows and the immediate, uncomfortable awareness of wetness between her thighs.Again.She'd been dreaming about him. About his hands, his mouth, his cock—the cock he still refused to give her despite making her come so many tim
POV: EVEThe ride back to Dimitri's penthouse felt like driving toward her own execution.Or her salvation.Eve couldn't tell which anymore.She sat in the back of the SUV, her thighs pressed together, her body humming with a need she'd never experienced before. Every bump in the road sent sparks o







