Defiant. Sweet. Alluring.
A business deal gone wrong brought me to her doorstep.
She's everything I shouldn't want; everything I was against after watching my mother's obsession destroy her.
Still, I can't stop myself from craving her.
I should know...
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I WOKE UP ON cloud nine the next morning.
I could still speak, and the rope showed no signs of returning. I stood in front of the mirror this morning in disbelief, patting my face to make sure I wasn't living in a false reality I made up in my head.
I smiled. God, I couldn't wait to get home and surprise everyone with the news. Mom, Matteo, Enzo, Drea, everyone!
"Did you and Aleksei finally get it over with?" Mikhail asked, dryly, guzzling down a shot of vodka.
It was just seven in the morning, and he was already drinking. I pointed it out to him when he first joined me earlier, and he'd merely shrugged it off.
I didn't have to dig deep to know where he got his devil-may-care attitude from. His brother possessed it in spades; case in point, ignoring those people at dinner yesterday when they talked shit about his family.
As expected, Aleksei was long gone when I woke up this morning. His side of the bed was cold, and the room showed no signs of him being there in the first place.
I'd have chalked it all up to alcohol and my wild imagination, but I hadn't sipped alcohol since I stepped out of that plane.
"Get what over with?" I feigned innocence, even though I knew what he was talking about.
He leveled me with a stare that said 'really'. "Fuck. Did you two fuck? You're smiling too much and buzzing with excitement. Your skin is glowing, too."
I laughed. "Why, thank you. I did my skincare routine this morning."
He huffed, rolling his eyes at me. "Not that type of glow. I'm talking about the post-fuck glow. You know, the one where the woman is all smiley and relaxed and shit like she just got the best fuck of her life—which she did. Not-a-single-thought-in-her-head type of relaxed? Boneless? Come on, you know what I'm talking about."
I cleared my throat. "No, I don't." Was it burning hot in here, or it was just me?
"Yes, you do. Look, you're even wearing his clothes."
I adjusted the hoodie I indeed stole from Aleksei. "They had nothing comfortable packed aside from these leggings. It was either this, or the crop top, and I wasn't about to freeze on this plane."
Don't even get me started on the underwear they'd packed for me.
I didn't even know I had such lacy, seductive underwear in my possession until I saw them in the bag packed for me. It was almost as if they were meant for Aleksei's eyes with how much skin they showed. I could as well be wearing nothing, but seductive underwear was better than no underwear, right?
"Excuses, excuses." He waved me off. "The point here is you know what I'm talking about."
"No, I don't," I denied. "Do you even know what you're talking about? That post-fuck glow nonsense is made up."
