Chapter 31

thirty-one

Nevaeh

“I still can’t get over the fact you’re having twins!” Candace shouts over the sound of Devils Heartbreak, and their adoring crowd as we stand at the bar at Addy’s Ace, a club they’d all frequented when they’d lived here in New York.

“I know, right?” Wrenlee sighs, a small smile of memory playing at her lips as she glances around. “I can’t believe I used to work here.”

“Here?” My finger dips to the floor as though to say, here, here?

A woman with short violet hair, quite literally spiked at the downward tips, slams hands with black painted nails on the bar, making all of us—okay, not Wrenlee—jump. “Wren. Girl who can’t serve to save her life. How’re ya doin’, babe?”

Wrenlee laughs, her hand touching her belly. “I’m having babies.” She’s beaming with happiness. “How are you, Addy?”

“Babies?” Addy shouts, eyes dropping to Wren’s hand on her belly. “Tacked an extra S on there, girl, less you got another at home that never made headlines.”

“Aww,” Wrenlee says, touched. “You follow us?”

“Ya’ll started right here. Course I follow you.”

Wrenlee giggles and leans into the bar to stage whisper, “I’m having twins.”

Cash and Wrenlee told us over dinner before the show that they are, in fact, pregnant, and having twins. Now that the cat’s out of the bag, it’s really out of the bag. Wrenlee is telling anyone who will listen, overcome with excitement.

She’s even more excited to go home after this mini tour to tell her dad.

Addy leans back, holding onto the bar as she does. “Well, shit.” She shakes her head as her eyes drift to the stage. “Cash doesn’t know how to do a damn thing half-ass, does he?”

“Don’t think any of them do,” Candace huffs, a note of laughter in her tone as she touches her hand to my back. “This one is Kane’s. As in he met her a few months ago and they’re married now.”

Addy’s eyes land on me. “Heard about you in the news.”

“Kane pursued her with the same craziness Cash did me,” Wrenlee assures, and the eyes that narrowed on me soften just a bit.

“Well, I’m happy to see life is treatin’ you all good.” She points to a booth. “Got your booth reserved for you. Go have fun.”

We all take our drinks from the bar, including Wrenlee’s virgin margarita, and head to our booth. The venue isn’t as big as the ones the guys usually play at, but Kane explained that while they were home, they’d agreed to play at a few of the clubs where they’d played a lot before getting signed, as a thank you to the clubs and the people who saw them there and became loyal fans who supported them while they were still little. To say the club is packed is an understatement.

I pop my straw into my mouth and suck back a yummy sip as I fix my eyes on the stage and watch my man in his element.

They go through a few familiar songs, and I go through a couple drinks (Candace ordered them to keep coming) when a song I don’t recognize begins to play. It’s a little different from the others. There’s a dangerous edge. A lovely lilt of seduction.

It’s a lady killer. I know as much by the collective sigh from the first few lines alone. But what really gets me is the mic Kane steps up to beside Cash.

Sunshine painted strokes just for me

Cotton candy lips so sweet

I’ll taint it all with smoke and winter

Holding tight in all my dark

The beautiful beat of this captured heart

An invasion of a man so dark

Not for the faint of heart

Deals with devils in the dark

A kiss to seal

This unwritten deal

A promise to bind your heart to mine

I won’t let her go

Firelight dances on smooth skin

The taste of marshmallow and sin

I’m falling into this

The burn of vodka, the sweep of your tongue

I’m on my knees

Tasting caramel cream

I’ll keep falling into this dream

Not for the faint of heart

Deals with devils in the dark

A kiss to seal

This unwritten deal

A promise to bind your heart to mine

I won’t let you go

The sound of breathy sighs

This barren soul comes alive

In two gold bands I’ll bind you to me

My Queen, you’ll be my Persephone

Sunshine feasting on this dark

A devil at the mercy of your gold heart

Not for the faint of heart

Deals with devils in the dark

A kiss to seal

This unwritten deal

A promise to bind your heart to mine

I won’t let you go

This love like obsession, unhinged possession

A devil bound in blood to you

Legs locked around me, chains that bound me

My stealth invasion into you

A taste of heaven, of bliss, redemption

A kingdom thrown to the cinders of temptation

Amnesty for a devil, the spare is the King

When mere man devours a soul of sunshine

So pure, so true

This heaven I’ve found in you

Not for the faint of heart

Deals with devils in the dark

A kiss to seal

This unwritten deal

A promise to bind your heart to mine

I won’t let you go

Never letting you go

You go, you go, you go

Never

Let you go

“That’s—a song.” Wrenlee breathes, I can hear the emotion in her voice. Misting it. But I can’t take my eyes from the stage to look at her.

Kane didn’t sing the whole song, but he sang enough for everyone to know who wrote the song. He sang enough for me to know who it was for. Infused the melody with words meant just for me.

“I—I thought Cash did the writing.”

My words are hardly loud enough for me to hear, an absent muttering I don’t expect an answer to, but Candace answers anyway, “They all write, but Cash does most of it.”

Wrenlee finally turns to me. “That man loves you. All the way kind of loves you.”

I can’t take my eyes off the man as he strums his guitar with fingers that move like they were made to explore music—music and me.

Wrenlee scoots to the edge of the booth. “I need to pee.”

“Me too,” Candace points to me. “You coming or can you watch the stuff?”

“I’ll stay.”

They scoot from the booth and disappear into the crowd as I suck on my straw and watch Kane in his element. It was only last night that he had me so thoroughly, I’d passed out in the bathtub against his chest. Now, though, I feel that familiar want for him building deep in my core. That need I sense only he can sate beginning to burn in my blood.

A body slides into the booth close to mine, a big hand covered in ink sliding a fresh margarita in front of me. I blink, caught entirely off guard by the stranger’s bold intrusion.

But before I even have time to utter a single syllable, the man is speaking, “If I didn’t already know it, that song would have told me everything.”

I blink at the man. He’s—impossibly attractive. He’s the kind of attractive that is so attractive women everywhere stand and stare—or more accurately, gawk. He’s the kind of attractive that intimidates. That shuts things down before they even begin, because with one slash of those bright blue eyes ringed in a burst of ominous black, I get the sense that I’m a very small, very appealing prey between the paws of a very dangerous, very lethal top predator.

My head cocks to the side stiltedly, because he’s also familiar.

My heart begins to drum in my chest.

“What do you already know?” The words are out before I can do the sensible thing and swallow them down.

Those cutting black-ringed blue eyes take me in. All of me.

I want to shrink, or better yet, flee. But that’s the thing about predator and prey. If the latter runs, the former chases. Catches. Devours.

I shiver.

His fingers slide over the glass of uncut vodka he has yet to take a sip from. Most would think the movement is absent, thoughtless. But I know better. Without knowing who this man is, I know there’s not a thing he does absently. Everything is done with thought, with intent. There’s nothing lazy about the way those capable fingers move slowly over the glass—not with the way the rest of his body sits unnaturally still. It almost feels as though he’s crafting the human act—for me—because he knows if he doesn’t, the little ease I feel will vanish completely.

Does he want me at ease?

My eyes lift from his hand to his eyes. Big mistake. They’re filled with—I feel as though he’s slowly undressing me of clothes and skin—peaking beneath it all to the layers of myself even I haven’t yet discovered.

I want to look away, but I can’t. I’m trapped.

Fear thunders in my heart, but my muscles are locked in place as the man speaks in a voice that I just know is capable of dark and terrible things. Commands of venom and ice.

“My baby brother loves you.”

The familiarity, I see it now. It’s in the line of his jaw, the set of that wide, full mouth. It’s in the brilliant blue of their eyes. But where Kane’s eyes are all blue, the eyes of the man before me appear to drip shadows, as though demons ooze from within, pouring from the very soul of him. That’s where the similarities end. Where Kane feels like big, organized chaos, this man is order. He’s crisp to a fault, all hard lines and cutting perfection.

Kane didn’t even wear a suit on the day we married. He wore a black dress shirt and jeans, so—Kane.

This man feels as though he was born in luxury, the undoubtedly astronomically priced suit he wears a second skin. Beneath his suit, he might as well be a crocodile—cold and ruthless and lethal. His unnatural stillness, and the way his eyes track every movement, every breath, every jump of my pulse where it flutters quickly beneath my flesh—all of it combines to make me think I’m in the presence of a different kind of monster. A monster who could strike quick as a flash of lightening, never even giving his prey a chance.

Something—someone—truly capable of evil.

“You—you’re Kane’s brother.”

His head tips just the smallest amount. “And you are his wife, Nevaeh Isabella Volkov.” His full lips curl slowly. “That makes you, my sister. I’ve never had one of those, but I always thought if I did, I’d be impossibly protective.”

I swallow hard as he continues stroking his glass in that mockery of absentmindedness.

And then it all clicks. The words Antonio had said when he’d pleaded with me to call off my dogs. The gangster. The man in the suit. The way he puts his hands inside people.

The relief I saw in my husband’s eyes when I told him of what happened to Antonio, and the way he’d told me an even bigger monster had joined in the game.

This man—he’s the bigger monster. The biggest monster.

“You—” I shake my head once.

He cocks his. “Me?”

“You’re the one who hurt Antonio?”

He raises a single arched brow. “Hmm.”

“I’ve never seen him so afraid.”

The black ring around his blue eyes seems to swirl and grow. I know it’s impossible, a trick of my fear-infused imagination playing tricks on me as the perfectly practiced American accent with which he’d been speaking only a moment ago is now fully Russian. “I told him not to make contact with you again. Warned him. He disobeyed.” He finally lifts that glass of vodka. “He will not bother you again.”

I think I’m trembling now as I blink at him in shock. “Why is that?”

His eyes slide again to me. Most people would shrug here. This man does nothing apart from state in that thick accent, “He will bother no one.”

“Oh my God,” I whisper, feeling truly faint even though I’ve never fainted a day in my life.

“You can call me Ilya, or brother.”

I say nothing as I stare in shock at the man—my new brother-in-law. He takes another sip of his vodka in that way that says he could leave it as easily as take it. I suspect the same is true for most things in his life.

I wonder, am I sitting in the presence of a true psychopath? A truly unfeeling beast of man—an abomination of nature?

I’m not sure.

I just know that this beautiful creature is more predator than man. He’s filled with so much darkness, even his gleaming suits can’t hide it. Can’t contain it. It’s leaking from the very pores of him, swirling in the depths of those brilliantly captivating eyes. He’s shrouded in shadows. Cloaked in darkness. Dripping danger.

I’d caught a glimpse of that darkness I see now in Ilya last night in Kane. It’s inherited, I realize, the darkness they possess. I can only imagine the terror that lurks within their father to have crafted sons such as them. Even now as I study Ilya, the hard set of his ocean eyes fixed on me as though waiting for me to reply, his devastating ruthlessness, the beauty masking the monster beneath, I can’t help but think I’m beyond lucky I caught the attention of Kane and not him. Because I’m confident that this man steals souls with kisses, laying waste to every heart he encounters.

I’m not even sure that he’s capable of love. That emotions of any true nature even exist within him to possibly grow into the kinds of feelings normal people experience.

He terrifies me just as he piques my curiosity.

Heaven help the poor woman Ilya finally fixates on, she’s going to need iron grit, a stomach of nails, and skin thicker than leather to survive him.

I surprise myself and Ilya when my laugh slips free.

“Something is funny?”

“Sorry.” Since he’s terrifying and I’ve just laughed at him, I feel the blood drain from my face.

“Tell me.”

“It’s nothing.” He doesn’t reply, simply waits in that throbbing silence he possesses. I crack, the words vomiting from the deep of me. “I was pitying the woman you end up making yours.” My hands clap over my mouth and my eyes pop wide. Oh shit, I said that out loud. I squeak, “Don’t kill me.”

Ilya moves with that lethal grace that nearly stops my heart. “I would never hurt a woman or a child, Nevaeh. For such crimes I’ve peeled flesh from the bones of men while they sung screams to me.” He gives his head a single, slow shake. “For killing a woman, I’ve done much worse.” He sits back again, taking a slow, calculated sip. “I am not interested in a life partner. No need to pity anyone, sweet sister, I am content to live as I am.” A slow, measured smirk plays at the edges of his lips. “Mother is going to love you.”

I swallow hard and loudly.

This time, it’s Ilya who laughs.

The sound is shockingly lovely. I suspect it’s also terribly, sadly rare.