“Easier when you have someone who looks like you to be the face of the company,” Ivory said, a comment that might have sounded sexist coming from a man, but there was no judgement in her tone. Only respect and an acknowledgement that sometimes beauty could be used for the right purposes.
“It probably doesn’t hurt,” Irina agreed, taking us around the rest of the common areas. I was overcome with the sudden urge to see her office, to know how she spent her day and what that could tell me about her. Who she was outside of her job and her identity as the daughter of the most notorious and respected judge in Chicago.
But she led us to the doors, the tour over.
I’d see her office one day. She just probably wouldn’t be in it, since I’d evidently become a stalker in the last few days.
This was getting ridiculous.
Three nights in a row, as soon as Matteo finished up with his work and the sun went down, I hauled my ass into my SUV and to the apartment building Butterfly called home. She was two stories up, not in the penthouse like I would have expected of someone with her wealth. The building was clean and well maintained, but far from the luxury she could have afforded.
I couldn’t seem to stay away, even knowing I would only catch a glimpse of her when she passed by the windows in her living room or kitchen. Something about those brief moments reassured me she was okay.
I spent most of the night in the SUV, watching her apartment and making sure she was safe. Her wellbeing had become an obsession I couldn’t shake. An addiction that was every bit as toxic as the heroin and coke that had destroyed my entire family.
It had to stop.
I shook my head, prepared to go back to my room at the Bellandi Estate and lie awake in my bed—wondering if she was okay but unwilling to drive myself back to the apartment and see for myself.
I had a much better understanding why the others had packed their women up and moved them in with them. Irina wasn’t even mine and I felt like this, so I couldn’t imagine what it was to have a woman you were willing to claim as yours and be apart from her.
To worry that way sounded agonizing.
Irina stepped in front of the window, the hour late and approaching the time when she would close the blinds and turn the lights off for bed. Instead, she stopped in front of the glass, the light behind her illuminating her silhouette perfectly.
She lifted a hand to her hair, releasing the clip that held it up while she worked, so that the long raven layers fell over her shoulders and spine. She turned her side to the window, twisting an arm behind her back and sliding the zipper of her dress down.
The navy fabric gaped at the back, loosening around her torso until she lifted a hand to her shoulder and brushed the straps off.
Fury rose in me, absolute rage that she would be so careless as to endanger herself. My heart raced with the rushing of blood through my body, but I couldn’t seem to move, rooted to the spot and staring at her bare breasts.
The dress caught at her hips, and she gave a little shimmy to push it down the last few inches until it fell into a puddle at her feet. She lifted her feet, one at a time, to pull the heels off, finally, after being home for hours, showing just how comfortable she’d gotten with wearing them.
With only a thin scrap of fabric covering her pussy, she raised her hands above her head and shook out her hair until it hung tousled. Turning to face the window, she touched her hands to the sill and leaned forward until her breasts nearly brushed against the glass.
She looked right at my SUV and smiled. Then the cruel little thing fucking waved, closing her blinds finally and disappearing behind them. I jabbed my finger into the button to power off the car, then exited, slamming the door behind me. I’d been paralyzed by the sight of her, ensnared in the trap she’d deliberately set for me, but with her body shielded from view, my body could finally fucking function again.
I shoved my way past a person exiting her building, heading straight for the stairs that would take me less time than the elevator. I raced up them two at a time, emerging onto the second floor and pausing for a moment to get my bearings and find her apartment.
By the time I made it to her door, she’d flung it open and stared at me in defiance. Her body was barely covered by a silk robe that hung from her slender shoulders. “Are you fucking stupid?” I growled. “You’re going to tempt some kind of predator.”
“That was kind of the point,” she murmured, leaning her shoulder on the door frame and staring up at me as if she could challenge me and convince me to do something I had no business doing, with just that look alone.
Mischief danced in her green eyes, drawing me closer before my brain could connect with what my body already knew.
This woman would ruin me. She already had.
“Fuck it,” I groaned, charging forward and closing the distance between us. My mouth slammed down on hers, my hands enveloping her head in an unyielding grip as she moaned into my lips. There was no finesse on my end, only inexperienced, driving desire to taste every inch of her mouth as I plundered her.
I knew it would be our only kiss. The only time I could let myself slip like this. Already panic seized my lungs, memories long buried trying to rear up and take this from me, too.
To steal this one good moment that I would never have again.
I pulled back as quickly as I’d attacked her, sucking back lungfuls of air and trying to keep my face neutral despite the storm raging inside me. Her lips were swollen, her cheeks flushed.
I wanted nothing more than to push through my aversion to being touched and take her inside.
But I couldn’t. I couldn’t and she deserved someone who could love her.
“That can’t happen again,” I muttered, turning to walk back down the hallway toward the elevator this time. I’d walk away for real, leave her and never even allow myself to think of the green-eyed girl who made me do stupid things.
Until she spoke and proved that Irina-fucking-Ryan was just a little messed up like me.
“I know you’ve been following me,” she called.
I spun, finding her face smoothed back into the careful mask she wore when she knew people were watching. Staring back at her, I waited for her to condemn me for it. But that never happened.
“I think I like it,” she said, sinking her teeth into her bottom lip. “That probably makes me just as twisted as you are.”
“You like being stalked?” I asked, feeling like a rock settled in my gut. To think that she wanted to be violated, to be abused in that way, by just anyone…
“I like it when you stalk me,” she corrected, shaking her head and following me into the hall. My eyes dropped to where the silk fell open at her chest, revealing a thin line of cleavage between her breasts, knowing with a single pull I could bare her entire body.
With one tug, I could witness absolute perfection.
“You shouldn’t,” I growled.
“Are you planning on hurting me? Or are you following me to keep me safe?” she asked, closing the last of the gap between us until she stared up into my face with a challenge in the set of her jaw. “Your intentions change everything in this situation.”
“What you do is important. Someone needs to protect you for the sake of those kids,” I said, forcing the words to come. I’d thought them countless times, tried to convince myself that it was the truth of my obsession and why it was so right to follow her home at night every chance I got. But I watched her face fall, the rejection landing with a harsh sting.