The King - S.R. Jones Page 0,66
gets out of the pool and grabs his towel, wiping his hair as he leaves.
Konstantin sits on the edge of the pool and lets his feet dangle in the water. Does he expect me to go up to him?
I don’t. Instead, I stay where I am and get a good look at his body for the first time. His shoulders are massive, he’s bigger built than Vasily, who is leaner and sinewy. Konstantin’s pecs are huge slabs of muscle. His arms, where they are bunched as his hands grip the side of the pool, are nothing but columns of defined power.
My God, he’s impressive. Mouth-watering. I don’t think I’ve seen a man with a more powerful build. He’s not like those bodybuilders from the eighties, though. He’s got a head that matches his body, not a tiny head on big shoulders, and his neck is thick, his wrists too.
His ink is interesting, and the most beautiful is on his arm. On one bicep is a bird of prey in flight with something in its beak. I can’t tell what without going closer, and I’m not going closer.
“First time you’ve been out of your room in days,” he says casually.
“I don’t enjoy mixing with the mother of your child,” I snap.
“You and me both,” he says ruefully. “But if she is the mother of my child, and I will be getting a test, I have to do right by her.”
“So you’re going to marry her.”
“Christ, no. I’d rather swallow glass. I don’t know what I’m going to do, Cassie. My life is a fucking mess. A joke. My son is getting married in a few weeks, and I’m not sure he wants to. My ex, a woman I don’t care for at all, is pregnant, and she says it is my child. A woman I do care for has fucked up beyond belief and pressed the starting shot of a war I didn’t want to begin yet. And now, she hates my guts.”
I don’t deny it because I do hate his guts. I also want him. Still. Despite everything he’s done. I must be a total glutton for punishment. I don’t believe he cares for me for one second, though, because I don’t believe he’s capable of such ordinary emotion.
“Come here, Cassie.” He lifts a hand and crooks a finger at me.
I shake my head.
“Come here,” he repeats.
“No.”
“Fine.” He slides into the pool, sleek like an alligator that’s spotted its prey. Silently, he moves through the water to where I’m standing at the edge, and he does the exact same thing Vasily did—he brackets me in.
This time my heart beats too fast for an entirely different reason. Konstantin is a threat to me, but not the way Vasily is. No, he’s worse. He’s a threat to my heart.
“Cassie,” he just says my name, only it makes my heart rate spike and my breathing increase.
He leans in close, nose brushing my neck. “I can hear your heartbeat,” he whispers against my skin.
“What are you, a superhero? Or a vampire with extra-sensory hearing?” I joke lamely.
“I wish I were a vampire. I wouldn’t drink your blood, Cassie. I’d steal your sunshine.”
I hold my breath. Whoa. Sometimes, for such a hard bastard, he says very poetic things.
“Would you let me? Hhmmm, Cassie? Would you let me take your sunshine and fill myself with it?”
His nose leaves the crook of my neck, and I raise my eyes slowly to see him staring at me. His gaze lowers, and lowers some more as he looks down my body. One finger traces my collarbone, then dips down between the swell of my breasts, down, down, as it follows the slit in the fabric.
He raises his gaze, those amazing thick lashes of his slowly lifting to reveal his deep blue eyes.
We’re both breathing rapidly now, in sync. We breathe together, watching one another. His finger doesn’t move from where it caresses the place where fabric meets skin, right above my belly button.
I want that finger to trail lower. To touch me where I crave it the most.
I shouldn’t.
He’s the last thing I need, but the first thing I want when I wake up. Every morning since I’ve been in this damn house, knowing he’s so near, I’ve awoken sticky between my thighs, needy. Thirsty. Not for water, for him. This man. This beast of a man who I just know will be the most intense encounter of my life, if we ever go there.
“Konstantin?” It’s Denis. I know