Sinful Hearts: Chapter 14

“Fucking hell, man. You were a beast out there tonight.”

I grin through the blood in my mouth, spitting some of it out onto the grimy floor between my feet. I look up from the locker room bench to see Sean shaking his head.

“Bring that intensity to one of our sparring matches, and you might actually beat me.”

“Now I you’re jerking me off.”

He chuckles and snaps a towel at me. “Well, you might not lose as badly, at least.”

The dingy locker room we’re in is so gross it’s actually legitimately condemned. The whole building is—an old Boys and Girls Club of America gymnasium that was shut down in the late eighties for fire code violations and lead paint or some shit.

Normally, it would be unheard-of for real estate like this to sit around unsold or undeveloped for so long in New York. But we’re out in Brooklyn—past the hipster hangouts and ironic bars, past the Marcy Projects, past, well, everything.

This is no-man’s land. Which actually makes it pretty ideal for the underground boxing matches and occasional EDM raves the two Israeli dudes who own this place use it for.

“How’s Lamar?”

“Ech, he’ll be fine. But you reset him to default passwords with that last hit. Holy , Hades.”

I grimace. I know these underground fights are supposed to be outlets for anger. It’s where you’re to go to blow off steam, and everyone involved understands that.

But I doubt Lamar—whom I’ve fought before—expected me to come at him like a grizzly bear on cocaine tonight. Like, I’m sitting here with just a couple of bruises, and they’re still peeling him off the floor of the ring.

“He’s really okay?”

Sean chuckles. “Relax. He’s gonna be fine. But for real, man. Where the fuck did that come from tonight? Who were you fighting out there?”

Elsa, that’s who. I was fighting out there.

I mean, not literally or figuratively. I wasn’t hitting Lamar picturing her face or anything psycho like that. But I swinging to smash away the chemical addiction to her I seem to have developed.

Break the chain that keeps me circling her like a snarling dog, unable to run away. But I have to break it. I to pull myself back from whatever insane, irrational attraction I have toward the snarky, frosty little lawyer.

There’s no way anything good would come from any of that. Not a chance. The best-case scenario that could come of me pursuing…whatever this is with Elsa Guin…is that she would become just one more woman out there with an ax to grind with me after I invariably piss her off or ghost her.

Worst-case scenario, she could drop my family from her legal schedule. Not just refuse to become our full-time counsel, like Ares keeps gunning for. I mean drop us as in quit whatever she’s working on with us through Crown and Black. And that’s a .

Attorney-client privilege is one thing. But as much as I’ve grumbled about her, there’s something about Elsa that just when it comes to handling my family’s legal—or at times not-so-legal—needs.

I know Elsa makes a big show of distancing herself from the darker and more sinister work she’s done for us—like overseeing the removal of that dead body from Ares and Neve’s wedding, for instance, and locking down the band and the guests on the official story. But I can tell she secretly kind of it. There’s a thrill she desperately tries to hide in her eyes that I know I’ve spotted while she’s working things like that for us, and it makes her just click with the Drakos family.

That’s a rare thing to find. And I don’t think it would be easily found again in other legal counsel. Which means fucking around with her, and inevitably pissing her off, is a gigantically terrible idea.

If I could just convince the rest of me that can’t stop thinking about the taste of her lips, the whimper of her submission, the silken feel of her cunt swallowing my cock, and the sensual way her body begged me for more…

Well, that would be fucking swell.

After I shower and get dressed, Sean and I head over to the other locker room to check on Lamar. He gives me a wary look from where he’s slumped on a bench. But he does grin and shake my hand when I squat down to tell him what a good fight it was.

“Bro, you were a fuckin’

out there.”

“Sorry about that.”

“All good, brother. All good.”

When we’re done there, Sean takes off to go meet Maya after her shift at the restaurant. I sit on the fender of my Z28, sipping a beer under the dingy glow of flickering streetlight.

“Does it work?”

I frown, startled by the voice from the shadows. When I turn and peer into them, a slender, pale young guy with dark, beady eye, a shaved head, and a pock-marked face slips out of the darkness. The acid-wash jeans and tight jean jacket paint him pretty clearly to me as European.

I eye him warily, not moving from the car.

“Does what work? The Camaro?”

He grins a toothy, yellowed smile.

“No. Fighting in the gutter. Does it make you feel less like the privileged little princeling you are?”

Nope, not European.

.

And slowly, I realize I know him: Pascha Andreev, one of Leo Stavrin’s goons. I’ve seen him around The Pearl here and there, and skulking around with Leo the couple of times I’ve tailed him.

He obviously knows who I am. But I don’t know a thing about him, aside from the fact that he looks like a complete, utter creep. And that fixed smile of his and the unblinking way he’s just staring at me aren’t exactly doing much to change that impression.

“Nope,” I shrug, answering his question with a dry smile. “But what can I say? I just like hitting people.”

I keep my body language casual. But I do tense a little on the inside when he slips a hand into the pocket of his jacket. The hand comes back out, but only with a pack of Russian cigarettes, not a weapon. I watch coolly as he slips one between his lips and lights it before holding the pack out to me.

“You want?”

“I’m good.”

He nods, inhaling. “You Americans don’t smoke anymore, do you?”

“Nah. Apparently they’re bad for your health.”

He nods, his eyes locking with mine. “So is continuing to spend time with Elsa Guin.”

I go still, my hands involuntarily curling into fists as my jaw clenches.

“Excuse me?”

A smug grin spreads across his face.

“The Englishwoman,” he grunts. “Stay away from her.”

Slowly, I slide off the fender of the Camaro, my gaze lasering through the flickering light from the streetlamp between us.

“Might be a little tough, given that she’s the family lawyer.”

Pascha smiles eerily. “Socially, I mean.”

I slowly cross the distance between us. “You know what? I’ve got something else you can add to that list of things that are bad for your health.” I come to a stop right in front of him, glaring darkly at him. “

.”

He doesn’t respond. He just drags on his smoke, his eyes never leaving mine.

Yeah, fuck this.

I turn and begin to walk away. Then he opens his goddamn mouth again.

“She’s a whore, you know.”

And I see fucking . Pure, malignant, vengeful . I know strategically I should cage my emotions right now. But one, fuck that. And two, there’s no way I can contain the snarl of fury that explodes from my mouth.

“

?” I hiss venomously.

Pascha’s grin widens. “She fucks random men.”

My vision glitches from the effort it’s taking not to snap right now and break his face.

Hitting Pascha could, in fact probably would, launch a not-so-great chain reaction. We’re not in open hostilities with the Bratva, but we’re also not exactly bound by any sort of peace treaties with them, either.

But honestly, the fact that I’m even this point, that it even bothers me this much, is much more worrisome than the fact that I’m ready to throw down with one of Gavan Tsarenko’s underlings.

Because I am this man. I don’t get all territorial with women. Not because I’m a pussy or because I’m not willing to fight for what I want, or what’s mine. But because I’ve simply .

Well, apparently, that’s changed. Because right now, I very much give shits about what the fuck this little creep is saying about Elsa.

“I’m going to give you some free diplomatic advice,” I snarl quietly. “Walk away. Right—”

“Yes, she fucks random men, little prince,” Pascha leers at me, clearly enjoying himself. “She fucked one to lose her maidenhood just the other night, like a complete slut.”

Everything goes still. I tense, blinking, as I try and process what he just said.

My lips curl dangerously. “What did you just say?”

He laughs. “I said Elsa Guin let some man take her one valuable, tradable asset at a club of sin just the other night.”

Holy.

Fucking.

.

She jumped me that night and had me bring her back to one of the rooms to fuck her…to take her goddamn ?

“What ,” I snarl.

Pascha all but giggles in his glee to tell me. “Club Venom. A place for whores like her to fuck strange men with masks on, as if to hide their shamefulness.”

I can’t tell if I wanted him to say something different—to name some other club where Elsa might have recently gone to screw some other guy and lose her virginity. Or if hearing that would have sent me into a murderous rage.

Either way, there it is, right on the table.

Club Venom.

The other night.

A stranger taking her virginity.

And that fucking stranger was .

“Who knows?” Pascha chuckles, tossing his cigarette away. “Maybe it wasn’t even only one man. Maybe she fucked a whole room full of dick—”

“You will shut your fucking mouth and you will go tell your boss to keep his nose out of my family’s business. Whom we do business with, or who we use for legal services, are none of his concern. Consider this a warn—”

“It’s a shame, isn’t it?” Pascha drones on. “What a sweet, fuckable mouth she has, no? And that tight little ass? I’m actually a little angry. The number of times I’ve emptied my balls imagining being the first man to pound through that sweet little cunt—”

He chokes as my fist smashes into his nose, shattering it and sending blood streaming down his face. He squeals like a stuck pig as he collapses to the ground, holding his ruined face. I crouch down next to him, my lips curled dangerously.

“Next time I tell you to shut your mouth,” I snarl. “I’d suggest you . And tell Leo to go fuck himself.”

I stand, spit on him, and leave him where he is on the filthy ground before I storm back to my car and roar away.

Despite smashing Pascha’s nose, and driving around the city like a maniac for the last two hours, by the time I finally get back home I’m still on fire.

I’m still ready to crack the world in half.

I pour a heavy splash of whiskey into a glass and flop onto the couch with my laptop. Glaring death at the screen, I immediately start bringing up everything I have on Elsa.

It’s honestly not much.

I really don’t think there’s any connection between her and Leo, or Gavan. Unless it’s all under-the-table shit, but I sincerely doubt that. Even the times she’s helped our family with less than squeaky-clean things—like the body at Ares and Neve’s wedding—she’s insisted on billing us the hours using squeaky-clean methods. Even if it meant invoices with things like “privacy and marriage consultations”, in the case of that wedding.

No, she’s not working for the Russians. Though, that does beg the question of what the fuck Leo’s little bitch-boy was doing telling me to stay away from Elsa. Like, why do they care?

I slug back half of my drink, my jaw grinding as I go through the dossier I’ve compiled on her. There really isn’t much. Government-funded schooling in the UK’s version of a poor, crumbling public school, and then a merit-based scholarship to Cambridge, where she got her BA in law in two years instead of the usual three. Top of her class, because obviously.

She clawed her way up through three of the most prestigious firms in the UK, rising all the way to senior associate at her last job before the offer of partner status at Crown and Black brought her to New York. Her trial record is nearly perfect, too, with a staggering ninety-two percent win rate.

Pounding back more of my drink, I bring up some of Elsa’s social media pages.

She’s twenty-six.

.

As much as the idea of her being with any other man makes me want to crush the crystal tumbler in my hand to dust, there’s no goddamn I was the first guy she slept with. I understand I’ve had a less than healthy sex life that started entirely too young. But —especially anyone as fucking hot as Elsa—stays a virgin until they’re twenty-six. Not a chance.

But the more I scroll through and stalk her admittedly sparse social media presence, the less sure I become of that conviction.

Sure, there’s pictures of her all dolled up at galas and work functions, some where she’s even standing next to and smiling with men. But none of them look even remotely like romantic or sexual partners. They’re very obviously coworkers and colleagues.

I keep digging, finding more recent pictures of her here in New York—some taken at a function standing next to Gabriel and Alistair Black. A few with some other legal-looking dipshit.

But that’s it. There’s not a single man in any picture with her who looks like an obvious boyfriend.

Swallowing, I sit back, letting it all sink in.

It be true.

Unless it is.

I mean, she works a million hours a week. Her workload is insane. And on top of that, she’s basically been raising a kid. Maybe she’s truly never had time for a boyfriend. But you don’t need to be in an established relationship to get fucked now and again. I mean I’ve literally never had a girlfriend, and I’ve been with more women than I can remember.

A vicious scowl suddenly tightens across my face at the thought of Elsa out there having casual sex with random men.

Or any sex at all, with any man who isn’t .

Just like earlier, in the parking lot with Pascha, the violence I feel rising up inside me even thinking about her with another man shocks me.

What if the other night with me, despite all the improbabilities, really was her first time? I know most guys would feel smug about that—all triumphant and puffed up.

Not me.

I’ve never wanted to be anyone’s first. Because . It’s not because I’m worried about virgins “getting clingy”, which seems to be a serious concern for every male character in every teen comedy ever.

I’ve never wanted to deal with virgins because your first time means something.

Or at least, it should. And I’ve never wanted that responsibility.

Sex is an escape for me, nothing more. A way to tune out the world and the darkness inside of me. I don’t lose myself in women.

I use them to stop feeling anything at all.

But the other reason I’m not fist-pumping or patting myself on the goddamn back for the very real potential that I was Elsa’s first is that she me, from the sounds of it.

And I fucking hate when a woman uses me and sex to get something she wants.

Gritting my teeth, I close the laptop, plunging the room into darkness. I can feel my fury surging inside, my anger at Elsa and her bullshit boiling up into a frenzy.

Except it doesn’t boil over. I it to. But every time I try to push it there, I get sidetracked by replays of that night.

Her mouth. Her skin. Her eagerness.

That hungry look in her eyes as she dragged her nails down my back and begged for more.

Something dark inside of me snarls and licks its lips.

.

I’ve never wanted to be someone’s first. Except suddenly, the idea of being first fills me with…

Hunger.

Desire.

Possessiveness.

And a fucking insatiable need for .