Immediately I pull out of her clinging body and turn away, but not before I glimpse into her half-hooded eyes. At the desire and need still shining in them.

‘Zane, I—’ she whispers.

‘Get out,’ I say coldly.

I hear the sound of her clothes rustling, a small sulky sniff. It’s nearly time to get rid of her. She leaves and I feel like punching the wall.

‘Damn you,’ I grate. ‘Damn you to hell.’





Three months later…





Four


Dahlia Fury

www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxRQNO8vg2Y

‘You look beautiful tonight,’ Mark says.

‘Thank you,’ I murmur sweetly.

Mark Sterling is gorgeous, and in the candlelight he seems even brooding and mysterious like a romantic figure from one of Byron’s poems. So why, dammit, is there not even a tiny sliver of the seething desire and excitement I felt when I stood in front of the Russian? Maybe because the Russian was hotter than the devil’s dick.

Shit! I’m at it again. I pull the handbrake on my runaway thoughts.

Zane, I remind myself firmly, is a cold-blooded criminal, a total jerk, and almost certainly, a dyed in the wool misogynist. He treated me shamefully. To be precise: like a piece of meat. Any smart person would have just chalked the experience up as the shittiest day of their lives and promptly put it behind them, but what do I do?

During the first week—and if I am honest for the two weeks that followed—I jumped like a demented frog every time the phone rang, and paced the living room carpet like a caged animal from the moment Stella left to go to her appointments with him until she came back. As soon as I heard her key in the door I would hop onto the couch and pretend I was watching TV. Then I would pathetically try to engage her in conversations designed to make her mention him. The end result of all my efforts was: no phone calls, no text messages, and apparently no change in his attitude towards Stella either.

There was no other conclusion to be had. He was an asshole and I was a moron. To my everlasting disgust I even used to dream of him. Some of my dreams should be classified as nightmares.

The worst one was when I dreamt I was lying in my bed and he entered my bedroom. He stood over my bed and calmly started peeling off that big-assed cobra tattoo, the one that started at his shoulder and curled itself all the way down his arm right down to his wrist. The skin-cobra suddenly became a real cobra in his hand, and the asshole threw it at me.

In order to be faster than the snake, I kicked at the wall like a Ninja boss and launched myself out of bed. The plan was essentially to land precisely and lightly the way a cat would on the floor, but I woke up on my back, shooting pains in my shoulders and hips. While I was still groaning in pain and trying to get off the floor, Stella opened the door and switched on the light.

‘Fucking hell, what was that bloody noise?’ she asked, blinking in the bright light.

‘I fell.’

‘Well, you must be a darn sight heavier than you look, then,’ she grumbled before switching off the light and stumbling back to her room.

Inexplicably, months later, I still can’t seem to stop myself from drooling over the Mafia don. He is like an ache … an itch that hasn’t been taken care of. I just don’t know what to do about it.

‘More wine?’ Mark asks.

I am about to shake my head when the obvious occurs to me. Why the hell not? What am I waiting for? For my unhealthy obsession with the Russian to magically disappear? Why not be proactive? Why not get totally wasted and sleep with Mark tonight? It’s only a freaking itch. Let him scratch it. It’s high time I move on, and Mark is actually the kind of guy any mother would kill, oh well, maybe not kill, but she’d maybe walk a few miles barefoot on hot coals, to have as her son-in-law. He is kind, well educated, good-looking (he might even be prettier than me), polite, strong, stable, to all intents and purposes, fairly loaded; and he treats me like a Princess.