Tempted by Deception (Deception Trilogy #2) by Rina Kent

How far she’ll go.

I have a feeling I’ll come to regret my decision either way, so I might as well indulge my curiosity first.

The car comes to a halt in the parking garage of Lia’s building.

Yan opens the door and I step out with Lia in my arms. She’s light, tiny, and too soft. Her head drops against my chest, arm falling lifelessly to the side.

“Get some rest,” I tell my men and stride to the elevator. I tap in the code for her floor and after we reach her apartment, I enter a few other digits until a beeping sound fills the hall.

There isn’t a code my hackers can’t get me. We’ve dealt with more hardcore situations than her fancy building.

An automatic light goes off in the entrance as soon as I step inside. I stand with her nestled into me. Her weight—or lack thereof—strikes me again. She’s feather-light, almost like a child’s, and sometimes, when she dances, it looks as if she has no bones, or as few as possible compared to normal people.

Holding her tight, I take note of her apartment. It’s spacious and has a direct view over the city with its glinting lights. The shining flooring is spotless and she has soft pink sofas.

Countless ballerinas’ pictures hang on the walls, but their faces are either shadowed or invisible.

My gaze searches every wall and every surface, but there are no pictures of her.

Not a single one.

Several awards are displayed on glass shelves, but there’s no trace of her face.

Hmm. This engraves a few theories in my mind. The most prominent of all is that she doesn’t like being trapped with herself.

It doesn’t take me long to find her bedroom. I place her on the bed and slide her coat down her arms. Her cheeks are flushed red and her lips are parted.

When I rid her of the coat, she mumbles something unintelligible in her sleep before her breathing evens out. I watch her for a beat before my gaze flits to the rest of the room. This one is spacious, too, even though the furniture is minimal.

Two pill bottles on her nightstand catch my attention. According to her medical reports, she takes sleeping pills and antidepressants. While her depression comes and goes on a whim, as she told her supervising psychotherapist, her insomnia is persistent.

What she paid a shitload of money to hide from her reports, however, is her consumption of something a lot stronger than her antidepressants.

My attention strays back to her. She sleeps completely still and in a straight position. Her feet are parallel and her arms are on either side of her.

This woman is still alive but already sleeps like the dead.

Her eyes move behind her lids and her lips and chin tremble. A pained moan slips from her mouth as she bunches both hands in the duvet on either side of her.

There.

The reason she paid money to erase her record and even resorted to morphine a few years back.

Her body arches off the bed at an uncomfortable-looking angle before she flops back in her earlier position. Her moans of pain escalate in volume, gaining a turbulent edge.

This is why she lives in a soundproof apartment.

Though I have every intention of watching her, I don’t think it adds anything to what I already know.

Usually, I want to experience what I’ve learned firsthand in order to have a better grasp of the situation, but her broken moans and tears don’t bring me the desired effect.

What I’m seeing is different from the angelic face she commemorates on Instagram or the characters she fuses herself with when she’s on stage.

This is her, uncensored.

The real Lia Morelli, who ran from her past yet allows it to continue to haunt her.

I touch her shoulder to wake her up and her hands shoot up and grab my wrist.

Her eyes open, bleak at first, like a gloomy sky, but then she focuses on me, and although her hold slackens, she doesn’t let me go.

“You,” she murmurs with that slight slur.

“Me.”

“Are you going to fuck me now?”

I raise a brow. “Is that an offer?”

“Do you need one?” Her eyes are half-droopy and I have no doubt that she’ll probably remember nothing of this conversation come morning.

“No, Lenochka. I don’t.”

“Then why don’t you take what you planned all along, Adrian Volkov?”

The sound of my name coming from her soft lips makes me want to stuff them with my dick and see what type of other sounds she’ll make.

“Don’t tempt me.” There’s nothing I want more than to rip off her dress and the clothes underneath and sink inside her. If I get her out of my system, my vision will be a lot clearer.

She sits up, releasing my wrist, and reaches to the back of her dress and lowers the zipper. Her process is messy at best as she shimmies out of it and throws it on the floor.

Lia kicks away her flimsy skirt that she wore during rehearsal, leaving her in a tight thing that barely covers her pussy and the crack of her ass.

Her nipples peak against the pink material and I’m tempted to pull on them to see if they get harder. Better yet, suck them into my mouth and feel them tighten against my tongue.

She lies back on the bed, her hair cascading on the pillow and her bare fair legs slightly parted. When she speaks, her voice is husky with arousal, “I’m tempting you then.”

“Is that so?”

“You’re going to take me, anyway. So do it and leave me alone.”