Chapter 28
LEO
The car door slammed hard enough to rattle the frame, the impact jolting through the vehicle, but I didn’t stop.
Didn’t look back. Didn’t even think to apologize.
I just moved quickly toward the front door.
Behind me, boots hit the pavement in hurried strides, but I kept going, my pulse pounding and vision blurring.
The hand that reached out to unlock the door shook so hard that I flubbed the first attempt.
Breathe.
In.
Out.
It didn’t work.
My hands were still shaking. My chest felt too tight, like there wasn’t enough air in the world left for me to breathe. Suppressed fear, anger, and disbelief burned like acid at the back of my throat, but at least this time the security system acknowledged my fingerprint.
I had to get away from him.
Did he even care about the trauma he’d just caused? I’d watched him murder a man without so much as a hitch in his breath. And the look in his eyes afterward had been so normal, too. They weren’t vacant as if he’d had to go somewhere deep inside his mind to be able to commit such an act.
Sergei looked like it was the most natural thing in the world to get blood on his hands.
And what did that say? That those green eyes that glowed when I made love to him could be plotting my murder, and I wouldn’t even know.
I could still see it.
The blood. The way it soaked through the bandages I’d so carefully applied to save a man’s life that he’d been so quick to destroy. We were opposites. We had nothing in common except our compatibility in bed, and I knew damn well that didn’t make a relationship.
I’m in way over my head. He’ll kill me too. The second he finds out what I’ve been doing—the SD card I took this morning—he will silence me permanently.
“Leo!”
I flinched.
God, I hated that my body reacted to his voice like that. Hated that something in me still recognized it with affection, still responded to it, even now.
I shoved the door open and slipped inside, already pushing it closed behind me like I could shut him out along with everything else. Like I could put a barrier between me and what I’d just seen.
What I now knew for sure he was capable of. He might not have killed Brad himself, but if he’d been there, Morozov wouldn’t have had to do it himself. He was no better than his boss, and I felt ashamed I’d let good sex shadow that.
Sergei’s hand shot out to press against the panel before the door could slam shut, his grip firm enough that the wood stopped with a jar.
“Leo, wait.”
“No.” The word came out sharper than I intended, breathless and edged with panic.
“We need to talk.”
“I don’t want to talk to you right now. Okay? Just go away. I think we shouldn’t see each other for a while.”
Like, forever.
“Leo, don’t shut me out again. I’m begging you.”
Close the door. Don’t respond to the hurt in his tone. He’s just pretending.
“Goodbye, Sergei.”
I shoved the door harder to close it. At the last second, I saw his hand shoot into the space between the edge of the door and the frame. I yanked the door back, but not before the door grazed him.
“What the fuck?”
I released the door and grabbed his wrist, yanking him inside with me. A couple of his fingers were already turning red.
“Does it hurt?”
With his good hand, Sergei reached for my chin and lowered his head. I struggled to push him away, but even with an injured hand, I was no match for him. His mouth settled over mine, and my back hit the wall. He ravaged my mouth, lips demanding, tongue hot and urgent against mine.
“You care about me,” he said softly. “Admit it, Leo.”
When I didn’t respond—mostly due to how dazed I was from the kiss—he dipped his head again.
I reacted and squeezed the fingers I’d just smashed in the door.
He hissed from the pain but still kept coming, his teeth sinking into my bottom lip.
I threw my head back against the wall, but there was no escape.
I couldn’t breathe. All the blood rushed into my groin, and I was dangerously close to forgetting that those hands sliding under my shirt were the same ones that had just killed a man.
He’d died, and if I hadn’t acted swiftly…
“Sergei, please, don’t,” I begged even as my hips punched forward, and I grabbed his hips.
“I’d rather you want me than be mad at me.”
His lips came down on my cheek, my neck.
His kisses were rough, the prickly growth of his beard rubbing against my flesh as he sucked his ownership into my skin.
But it was my hands that reached for his belt buckle.
It was my hands that got both of us out of our clothes and coaxed him closer so I could align our cocks together.
It was my hands coating us in saliva as we ground against each other, thrusting desperately, moaning, groaning.
And all it took from him to obliterate everything else from my mind was his kisses. God, did he know how to kiss. It was unfair how he could use his mouth to make me irrational with need. That sexy mouth of his.
“Always feels so damn good, Leo,” he said on a grunt, his hips moving faster.
One of his hands was in my hair, tugging my head back as he sucked on different areas of my neck.
I should stop him since my skin bruised so easily and they would be hard to cover up later, but each time my skin pinched between his lips in a stinging bite, the sensation raced right down to my cock.
“You don’t deserve to come,” I said hoarsely, desperate to reclaim a sense of authority with him. “You did a very bad thing today, Sergei.”
“Please, Leo,” he whined. “I need it. I need you.”
“Will you do it again?”
“No,” he said hoarsely. “I’ll do whatever you want.”
I knew he was lying, and he knew he was lying. But in that moment, none of it mattered. Just the illusion of his words to make me feel better about how weak I truly was when it came to him.
“Tell me I can come,” he begged. “Please, Leo. I’m almost there. Give me your permission to come.”
“You don’t need it. You do whatever you want to do anyway.” Some of my earlier bitterness returned.
“But I do. Please, Leo.” The pitch of his voice turned high with need. “Leo, please. I want to come so badly, but only if that’s what you want.”
I bit the insides of my cheek to prevent myself from responding.
Our hips still frantically moved in tandem, and I never let up, stroking both of us in my hands.
He was at the edge. I could feel it. All I needed to do was give him my permission, but I stalled, finding a sick, twisted satisfaction in the way he held himself together, from tipping over the edge without my consent.
He made a whimper, and his biting kisses ceased. Sergei placed a placating kiss, soft and tender, in the crook of my neck and shoulder.
“Please, Leo.” His voice was a mere whisper of hot breath hitting my skin. “Give your baby permission to come.”
Fuck. He broke me. The way he referred to himself as my baby—
“Go ahead,” I said, my tone gravelly. “Come for me.”
“Oh fuck. Thank you.”
His gratitude was unexpected and drove a conflicting nail inside my chest. With one act, he’d convinced me he was one of the worst men I’d ever met—second only to Morozov. And with another act, he made me want to hold him in my arms and…and protect him.
But he doesn’t need protection.
Sergei’s breath stuttered, catching unevenly in his chest before breaking into a low, strained sound he couldn’t quite hold back. His release spurted out of him, coating my cock as his composure fractured.
His eyes squeezed shut, brows pulling together like he was bracing against something, and I couldn’t stop staring.
For a moment, Sergei didn’t look like the man who terrified me earlier. In the throes of passion, he was left bare. He looked…younger. Stripped down to a quieter version of himself that seemed almost fragile beneath all that discipline and restraint.
And that, more than anything, unsettled me.
While I was still reeling from the different versions of Sergei, he fell to his knees in front of me.
As if daring me to stop him, he held my gaze as he licked his own cum from my cock.
I sucked in a deep breath but held still, watching him watch me while he cleaned me off.
By the time he was done and took me to the back of his throat, I was at the breaking point.
When he released me, I stopped him with a hand in his hair before he could suck me back in.
“Open up.”
He opened his mouth, tongue hanging out as I stroked myself with my free hand. A gasp was the only warning he had as my skin tightened against my palm. I slapped the head of my cock against his tongue and shot my load into his mouth.
“Don’t swallow.”
I released my dick and gripped his chin, guiding him to his feet and forward.
I kissed him, sweeping my tongue into his mouth so we could both share my spend.
The kiss went on—did I mention he was a damn good kisser?
—until my mouth started to get dry. I leaned against the wall with a sigh.
Sergei leaned into me, his face in my neck, nuzzling me there.
“Am I good?” he asked in a whisper.
He knew damn well he wasn’t.
I nodded, lying through my teeth. “Yes, you’re very good, dollface.”
His lips curled into a smile, and I clamped my eyes shut. How much longer could I do this? Pretend as if I wasn’t telling him exactly what he wanted to hear, even as I plotted behind his back, which might be his very downfall?
I don’t want to hurt him.
“We still need to talk about what you did,” I said.
He gave a heavy sigh. “Not with our pants down our thighs.”
I quickly fixed his clothes, then mine, and ducked out from under his arms. “You damn near sucked me dry. I need to rehydrate. Do you want something to drink as well?”
I pretended I didn’t see his grin, turning my back to him and leading the way to the kitchen.
“Sure. Something sweeter, though—like you.”
I rolled my eyes and got myself a bottle of chilled water. I found a bottle of Lucozade for him. He made a face, and I scowled, pulling it back. “What? You don’t want it?”
“No, it’s fine.” He took the bottle from me and twisted the cap off.
“If you wanted something else, be specific next time.”
I pulled out a stool and sat across from him at the island. He came around to my side and took the seat right next to me, spreading so our legs brushed.
“What do you want to know?” he asked.
“What did Morozov want?”
His thigh pressed against mine went rigid. “Why do you think Maxim wanted something?”
“Because you were doing fine until he showed up, and all of a sudden you became this killing machine that wouldn’t listen to reason.”
“I listened. I just knew what I had to do.”
“What did killing him solve?”
“He’s hardly dead now. Is he?”
“Only because I was there to resuscitate him.”
“What do you want me to do, Leo? Promise not to kill him again?”
“That would be a start.”
“Well, I can’t do that.”
“Right.” I got up and pushed back the stool. “Because Morozov’s needs will always override mine.”
“Leo, it’s not the same thing.”
“I-I thought you loved me.”
Well, I’ve just sunk as low as I possibly can, using his perceived love for me against him.
“I do.”
“You’ve got a funny way of showing it.”
Sergei fell silent, his hand flexing on the bottle. His nostrils flared, then he inhaled deeply and lowered his head. “Leo, do you know I have something to ask you?”
“Then ask.”
Slowly, Sergei rose to his feet. “Maxim thinks you’re using me or something.
I’m afraid of the answer, so I don’t ask.
” He hooked a finger into the waistband of his sweatpants I wore and pulled me close.
“But if you are, please don’t let me find out about it.
I hate to think of the person I might become if you do, and I don’t ever want to hurt you. ”
Despite the water I’d just drunk, my mouth went dry again, and my heart pounded at the warning in his voice. I should insist on my innocence, but the words would not come. It was becoming increasingly difficult to say no to him.
He released me and took a step back. “I won’t kill him again. You have my word.”