Page 27 of The Darkness is Calling

“Are you hurt?”

Does she actually seem worried about me? Strange.

“I have never been better. What gift?”

An arrogant but slightly strained smile lifts the corner of her beautifully shaped mouth. Every move she makes, feels like a challenge from a small animal standing too close to a predator. Every sharp look, every reply only stirs my interest more.

7A term used in the Bratva for trusted men responsible for the security of a house or a person

Make her ours.

We want her.

Alive or dead, ours.

Nashi.

8

I take a deep breath, until air fills my lungs, searching for a trace of her perfume, especially when she moves toward us.

Toward me and my voices.

“Or maybe it was a gift from you to me, and I would like to return it?”

Two more steps, and she is in front of me, proud and elegant, her gaze turning cold as she extends her right hand toward me and opens her palm.

I blink, calm, even though I am surprised to see three microphones I recognize from her room lying in her delicate hand. I wonder if she knows there are more, or if she simply gave up searching and thinks 3 is her lucky number.

I do not exactly see her as superstitious.

“I don’t know how many more there are or what surveillance cameras you may have installed. But if you don’t want me to turn that entire room upside down and then set it on fire while you sleep peacefully in your comfortable bed, you’d better sweep that bedroom clean of any filthy little thing that invades my privacy.”

I would smile at the proof of her intelligence and courage if I were not too busy controlling the urge to touch her.

To wrap my fingers around her fragile throat and squeeze until every spark of defiance disappears from her eyes and is replaced by the desire to submit to me.

8(ru.) Ours

Yes

!

Nashi

!

No.

She is not mine, and she is not allowed to be. “And since you want to be such a good host, I

would appreciate it if you did that now.”

I don’t think even my mother ever spoke to me so directly, as if she were the one in charge. And yet, before me stands the first woman who apparently has far more courage than is wise for someone hoping to survive the night under my roof.

“This is my house, and I can put microphones or surveillance cameras anywhere I wish,” I inform her with indifference, tossing the jacket and vest in my hand into a corner of the room.

Now is not the time to worry about clothes I will burn anyway, because my attention remains on the rebellious princess and on the microphones I take from her palm.