Page 4 of Until Death or Defeat

“Get fucking lost. I’m not in the mood tonight,” she says. She tries to push past me, but she can’t get away that easily.

“You can’t leave yet,solnishko,” I retort lowly as I grab her arm, and she resists with all her might. Feeling her struggling in my arms sends a shock wave straight down to my cock, and it’s just the distraction I needed tonight.

“What do you want, you asshole? To rub it in?” Her hazel eyes glint in the moonlight when she looks at me, and it’sonly the third time in the last nine years that I’ve seen her cry.

“That was quite the announcement your father had tonight, although I don’t think he needed to even say it out loud.”

Her face contorts with rage and her jaw clenches.

There it is. The expression I needed to see.

“Why? What the hell is it to you anyway?” She starts hitting my chest with her free hand.

“Is that why you dressed like that tonight? A cry for attention?‘Look at me daddy, please—” I mock, but her small fist meets with my jaw. I chuckle darkly as I bring my hand to my face adjust my jaw. “Did I hit the nail on the head,solnishko? Looks like I might have hit a nerve too.”

I move my hand to grab her chin, and she quickly whips her face out of my grasp, but she’s unable to stop the tear running down her cheek. I lean into her face, and her weak effort to push me off just makes this all the more enjoyable. I run my tongue up her cheek, and I feel her body tense as I see her tighten her thighs together.

“Your tears are fucking delicious. I wonder if there’s something else you’ll let me force out of you that tastes just as sweet.”

My hand feels up her bare thigh through the high slit in this fucking pathetic but divine excuse for a dress that leaves nothing to the imagination.

“Get your hands off me, you psycho!”

She finally breaks out of my grasp and kicks me as I drop to my knees before her, holding my balls with my hands.

“Fucking mind your own business,” she says coldly as she turns and opens the door before running downstairs.

I can’t help but mock-chuckle to myself and slowly get myself back up. She’ll pay for that.

I adjust my collar as I step back into the ballroom. My brother Roman laughs when he notices the small cut on my lip as I walk back up to him and my other brother, Maxim.

“This is probably the least beat up I’ve seen you at one of these, bro. Did she go easy on you tonight?”

I’m quiet as I clear my throat and adjust my shoulders, and Roman laughs at Maxim’s words.

“You know, if you guys would just fuck, I think you’d both be less tense,” Roman suggests.

Maxim chimes in with an annoying fucking smirk, “Nah, she’d never let him, that’s why he’s so fucking wound up over her.”

“Enough.” My word silences them, and they realize I’m in no fucking mood to hear them talk shit tonight. I run my hands through my hair as I storm off to the bar to get another drink.

I sit at the table with my drink in my hand. The voices echoing the ballroom fade into the background as a painful memory resurfaces.

“Artem, please, help! No!” Her screams fill the warehouse and my body is frozen, my arms held painfully behind my back. The man behind me chuckles and hooks his arm around to grab my chin to lift it back up, before whispering in my ear the four words I’ll never forget. “Don’t look away,mal’chik...”

“Artem? My lord, get a fucking grip,” my brother snaps as he slaps my back, jolting me back to reality.

No matter what I do, I can’t get Sara’s face out of my goddamn head. Not when I’m forced to see Giselle’s fucking eyes still full of resolve and determination to go against everything I throw at her at every turn.

“You look like shit tonight.” Roman says it with such a straight face that I know he’s actually worried about me.

“I’m tired, and I’m sober,” I spit out as I down the rest of the gin in my glass.

I can still feel the weight of her lifeless body in my arms. The way her head unnaturally lay to the side as I tried to lift her up from the cold, concrete floor. Whenever I see Giselle, I can’t help but feel all my fucking rage boil to the surface. She’s everything I hate, and I’m going to break her for it.

I feel a soft hand run down my back and lips press against my ear. Lana.

“Not tonight.”