Chapter 9 Maxim
MAXIM
Each night she asks me to lay with her because my presence helps her sleep and keeps the nightmares away.
I don’t tell her that the same thing happens to me, too, each night I get into bed with her.
As well as an aching dick, thanks to being nestled against Grace’s tight little ass every night and my hand on her breast. It seems something we have continued from that first night.
I pull up the covers and lay my hand across her waist, and she moves that hand from its place to her breast. How can I say no if that relaxes her.
It certainly doesn’t relax me, but I breathe through it and enjoy the quiet between us and of course the feeling of her breast against my hand.
They are the perfect size for me, not too big and not too small, they sit just right in my large hand.
And every morning when the sun rises, I leave her bed, jerk off in the shower, and make her breakfast. Then we sit and talk as if we don’t have a care in the world.
It’s a perfect illusion, one neither of us is ready to shatter just yet.
Then we head to the pool where she swims, and I watch her while I work.
If this is what domestic bliss feels like, then consider me domesticated.
Today, I’m distracted from my work like I am every day as my eyes focus on the beautiful creature enjoying the water.
Watching her swim laps back and forth, her lithe arms gliding through the water.
After thirty minutes, she sometimes hops out, grabs a book from the library, and lazes beside me reading while other days she lays back and enjoys the sun, which is beginning to tan her white skin.
The first day after getting out of the pool, I noticed how pink her skin was at lunch and I insisted on lathering her up with sunscreen.
Didn’t think that through other than I didn’t want her to burn because as soon as my hands began rubbing in the lotion, my dick was saluting the fucking sky.
The moans that my fingers were pulling from her mouth had all kinds of images projecting through my mind, and most were not PG-rated.
When she eventually turned around her nipples were hard peaks, so I guess I’m not the only one having impure thoughts about the other.
I would never cross that line with Grace no matter how much I may want to, something terrible has happened to her, and I would never want her to class me the same as Dmitri.
I would never hurt or force a woman, ever.
My phone begins ringing, and I pick it up without looking, thinking it’s Sergei.
“Maxim, my man,” Dmitri greets me as if we’re old friends.
Last time we spoke he was almost pissing himself while I had a gun to his head. It takes me a couple of moments to collect my thoughts and make sure that Grace can’t hear this phone call. She’s currently doing her morning laps, so she will be done in the next ten minutes, Dmitri has five.
“What do you want?” I’m unable to hide my disdain for the man.
“A little birdy told me you might have captured a jewel for me.”
I still.
What the actual fuck? Who the hell told him that?
I don’t answer, waiting for him to reveal more than I do.
“Interpol is looking for her. Missing person flyers are circulating throughout the Police stations in Europe.”
Aw. One of his police contacts has told him.
“The heat is a little much at the moment. I’m being followed. I can’t take her yet.”
You were never getting her.
“I need you to look after her for like a month.”
“I’m not a fucking babysitter,” I bite back.
“Please, man. You know how it is? She’s high profile now. We need to stay low.”
“Do you have any of the other jewels?”
“I’m on a fucking goose chase around Europe. People really don’t want these bitches to be found.” He chuckles as if we are both in on the joke.
We aren’t, and I’m not amused.
“Where are you?” I ask, wondering if this little fucker is doing as he’s supposed to be.
“Baby, come back to bed,” I hear a female voice say in the background.
Is he fucking serious right now? He’s supposed to be helping my boss locate the jewels, but instead, he’s been thinking with his dick.
“Babe, I’m on the fucking phone,” Dmitri calls out to the woman.
“Who’s that?” I ask.
“No one,” he says, brushing me off.
“Time’s ticking, Dmitri. Remember that. Your dick won’t get sucked when you’re six feet under,” I warn him.
“I’m working on it. I promise,” he says through gritted teeth.
Having enough of this conversation I hang up on him, just as Grace finishes her laps.
She turns and looks over at me and gives me a bright smile like she does every day when she’s finished.
How can I let this woman go? I can’t. At least now I don’t have to come up with any excuses to Dmitri for why I haven’t delivered Grace to him.
Grace jumps out of the pool, walks over to my sun lounger, and grabs her towel.
“Everything okay?” she asks as she dries herself off.
“Everything’s fine,” I reassure her.
“You look tense.”
“Usually happens after talking with idiots.”
This makes her smile. “I can give you a massage if you want?”
My eyes widen at her request.
Then her own open as she realized how her request sounded. “In a platonic sort of way. You just looked stressed, and I thought … you know, it was the right thing to do. Because you’ve been there for me when I’ve been stressed.”
“Any excuse to get your hands on me, Wildcat. I know your game,” I joke with her.
Grace’s face flushes red with embarrassment and splutters to find her words.
“I’m only teasing, Grace. If you have five minutes, I wouldn’t mind as I have some tension in my shoulders. I think it’s my sleeping position,” I add, raising a brow at her.
“Why didn’t you tell me it was so uncomfortable?”
“And deny you the opportunity to place my hand on your tit every night. Never,” I joke.
Grace shakes her head. “Roll over, and I’ll grab some of that coconut suntan oil you won’t let me use.”
“Because it will burn your skin.”
Grace rolls her eyes at me which makes me smile. Her sass turns me on.
Then I pull off my t-shirt and roll over onto my stomach.
Moments later Grace is back, I can hear the padding of her feet across the pavers. She then squirts a generous amount of oil onto my back, the liquid is cool.
“I’m going to have to straddle you, otherwise I can’t reach,” she mumbles.
Turning my head to the side, I say, “Not going to say no to having your thighs wrapped around me.”
A hard hand slaps my back as she begins to rub the oil into my skin, which makes me chuckle. Wow, her fingers are amazing as they begin to dig into the tension clinging to my muscles.
“I used to work in a day spa when I was studying.”
That explains why her fingers are magic. The more she works the heavier my lids feel, and the next thing I know, I’m falling asleep.
I stand looking out at the swirling ocean as a storm rolls in. The waves are crashing against the beach and yet I walk toward them.
“Elena!” I call to the sea. “Where are you?” I hope someone will reply, but no one does, no one ever does. “Let me save you!” I scream into the wind, but my words are carried away and dissolve into the nothingness.
I step further into the waves. I need to find her, she must be here. I scream her name over and over. I’m soaked, the cold Atlantic water chilling my bones, but I don’t care, I have to find her. She has to be here, she can’t just disappear like that.
“Elena!” I scream out into the ocean as a wave hits me, filling my mouth with salty water before knocking me over.
I’m pushed deep under the water, swirling around the darkness unable to find my footing.
When I eventually come up for air, I’m hit by another wave and its power knocks the wind from my chest. Another wave hits me, and the next thing I know I’m floating out to sea in the turbulent water.
The angry waves pull me far away from the shoreline and further into the darkness.
Then my feet find the sandy floor, and I’m able to stand up.
“Elena!” I scream one last time. It is all I have left in me.
Then I hear her voice.
“Maxim!” She sounds like an angel calling me from beneath the water.
“Elena, I’m coming.”
“Maxim!”
I’m so close.
I follow her voice further into the ocean. She has to be here, but I can’t see anything. I swear she was there. I feel her around me, she’s close.
I do one last sweep of the inky black ocean, and then I see her.
“No. No. Not my Elena,” I scream as a disfigured, bloated corpse floats by. Her eyes are open staring back at me with those forest-green eyes. Her skin is white, pale, her lips are blue. There are marks on her wrists and ankles as if she’s been locked up and the metal has rubbed against the skin.
She is dead.
“No!” I scream.