The Russian Bodyguard (Krasnov Brothers #3) - Rie Warren
1
Maksim
“MAKSIM, CAN YOU HELP me?”
Upon hearing Sasha’s voice, my brow fell to a heavy scowl. I ignored the printsessa and smoothed out the shoulders of my lightweight suit jacket.
“I know you can hear me,” she wheedled in a smoky voice laced in sugary sweetness.
Grumble, frown, scowl some more.
I flipped my tie around my neck, popped up the collar of my shirt, peered into the mirror.
“I need you to zip up the back of my dress,” she called out to me again. “Pretty please?”
Not only was Sasha a pain in the ass, she was persistent. I knew she would not stop needling me until I at least answered her.
Stalking from my room, I stuck my head around her doorway to see the twenty-three-year-old Bratva heiress in a state of undress. Her dress hung off her rounded shoulders, open all the way down her back to the point where I could make out the twin indents at the base of her spine just above the curve of her ass.
Sasha Zolotov had a very plump ass.
I snapped my eyes away to catch her gaze in the full-length mirror she faced.
She shimmied her hips a little, purring out, “Come on. I won’t bite. Promise.”
My teeth ground together like I was trying to pulverize my molars to dust. “I am not your personal dresser, Sashenka.”
Her pale blue eyes flared in the reflection as her shoulders stiffened.
No. I wasn’t her personal dresser. And she was not a sexual object to be ogled. Sasha was the brat I had to babysit twenty-four hours a day because that was my pakhan’s—her father’s—decree.
“Fine then.” With a flip of her wavy hair, she pivoted to face me.
Her dress slipped lower, revealing the upper mounds of her breasts.
“I’ll just go hunt down Lucky and get his help.” Sasha taunted me yet again, and my blood grew hot.
Before she could take a step toward the door, I yanked her to me, and none too fucking gently at that.
A gasp fell from her lips—a much more pleasing sound than her constant bitching—and I held her clasped to my front.
Our hearts pounded in sync for one tumultuous moment. Then I spun her around and pushed her a pace away.
Sasha teetered on her impractically high heels that made her legs look a mile long. Not that I was looking.
I cursed myself for answering her call for help in the first place, but ignoring the woman was impossible due to the proximity of our rooms at the pakhan’s mansion. Yury would have me glued to his only daughter’s back if such a thing were possible.
He had no sons. Only my brothers and me, the three street criminals he’d taken out of the Moscow slums when I was just a kid.
Sasha’s suite of rooms was larger than mine as befitting the printsessa, but I did not need much. In most ways, my room here was monastic, a cell to sleep in. One bed large enough for my long frame. A desk. A chair. A very large collection of vodka I kept chilled in my one luxury, the small refrigerator beneath an unadorned window.
What the fuck did I care if anyone got a gander of me through the curtainless panes of glass?
Living at the mansion had become a trial over the years. The place was a good thirty minutes from the heart of Boston’s darker side, which I preferred over this rural retreat. No bars. No clubs. No danger unless it tried to come knocking down the door—good fucking luck with that what with the security across the entire perimeter of the extensive grounds.
Somehow though, Sasha found a way to sneak pathetic assholes into the heavily armed fortress. On more than one occasion, I’d stormed her suite to chase boys from her bed.
Putting the fear of the almighty into those pretty boy pizdas who had almost gotten into her panties was one small consolation for putting up with her biting tongue instead of taking a belt to her bare ass.
Those nights when I squashed her hookups invariably ended with Sasha slamming all the doors and shouting to the rooftops, not that anybody could hear.
Too fucking bad, printsessa. Sexual frustration happened to us all.
And I was her human chastity belt.
Thankfully, I at least had my own lair now. The space hadn’t come without some hard bargaining with Papa on my part. I had earned my time away from Sasha, the bratty bane of my existence.
I’d earned the luxury of my own little fuck-pad in the city.