Chapter 3 #2
The pressure makes my vision swim. Makes every nerve ending in my body ignite. I'm pinned between cold glass and hot skin, his cock splitting me open, his hand around my throat, and I've never felt more present. More real.
More like myself.
"Eyes on me." His grip on my throat tilts my head forward. "I want to watch you fall apart."
I force my eyes open. His face is inches from mine, jaw tight, grey eyes black with something that looks like hunger and obsession mixed into a cocktail that should terrify me.
It doesn't.
He rolls his hips, hitting that spot inside me that makes my entire body seize, and I clench around him so hard his rhythm stutters.
"Fuck." The word punches out of him. "You're so goddamn tight."
"Less talking."
"You like it when I talk." He punctuates each word with a thrust that has my spine scraping against glass. "You like hearing how good you feel wrapped around my cock. How I've thought about this every night on your couch. How I've jerked off in your guest bathroom imagining exactly this."
The image hits me like a shot of whiskey—Sergei, hand wrapped around himself, biting back my name while I slept oblivious in the next room.
"You're filthy," I manage.
"And you're dripping down my thighs. Guess we're even."
His thumb presses harder against my pulse. The world narrows to this—his cock driving into me, his hand on my throat, the sound of skin against skin echoing off glass that's completely fogged now. Someone in the building across the street is definitely getting a show.
Let them watch.
The orgasm builds at the base of my spine like pressure behind a dam. I can feel it coming, inevitable and devastating, and part of me wants to fight it. Wants to stay in this moment where nothing exists except his body and mine.
But he's not letting me postpone anything.
"Come for me." Not a request. Not a question. A command that resonates somewhere deep in my chest. "Right now, Isabelle. I want to feel it."
"Make me."
His eyes flash. He shifts his grip on my thigh, changes the angle, and drives up into me so deep I swear I can feel him in my throat.
I shatter.
The orgasm doesn't build—it detonates. My back bows off the glass, his name tearing from my throat in a scream that probably wakes my neighbors. My entire body clamps down on him, shaking, convulsing, pleasure so sharp it edges into pain.
He fucks me through it. Hard. Relentless. His hand tight on my throat, his cock hitting that spot over and over until I'm sobbing, until the first orgasm bleeds into a second, until I'm nothing but nerve endings and need.
Then his rhythm stutters. His jaw goes tight. He buries himself to the hilt with a groan that sounds like my name and something else—something that sounds like surrender—and I feel him pulse inside me, hot and thick.
For a long moment, neither of us moves.
We just stay there. Bodies joined. Hearts pounding. The city glittering around us like we're suspended in a snowglobe full of stars.
Then Sergei sets me down, his hands lingering on my waist while I find my footing. His thumbprint bruises are already forming on my thighs. I press my fingers against one and watch his eyes darken.
I'll keep them. Wear them like jewelry. Something real to hold onto when everything else feels like smoke.
My legs are shaking.
Everything is shaking.
"Isabelle," he says, voice hoarse.
"Don't." I cut him off before he can say something that ruins this. Something logical. Something about how this was a mistake and it can't happen again. "Don't ruin it."
He looks at me for a long moment. I don't know what he sees—this wrecked woman with sex-mussed hair and bruises blooming on her skin—but whatever it is makes his jaw tighten.
He doesn't argue. Just follows me to the bedroom and we fall onto my sheets and do it all over again.
Slower this time. Deeper. His mouth mapping every inch of skin while I arch beneath him and forget how to speak.
He learns what makes me gasp, what makes me moan, what makes me dig my nails into his back and beg for more.
And I learn him—the scar on his ribs that makes him hiss when I kiss it, the spot on his neck that makes him groan, the way he says my name when he's close like it's the only word he remembers.
We don't talk.
We just exist in it. Two broken people using each other's bodies to forget, just for a few hours, that the world outside this bedroom is full of people trying to destroy us.
It's not healthy.
It's not smart.
But fuck if it isn't exactly what I need.
After, I can't sleep.
Sergei's passed out beside me, one arm thrown over his head, chest rising and falling in steady rhythm. Even unconscious he looks dangerous. Jaw tight. Silver threading through dark hair. That scar bisecting his left eyebrow that I traced with my tongue earlier.
Tasting violence.
I slip out of bed, wrapping myself in silk.
The lighter sits on my nightstand where I left it. I pick it up, running my thumb over the engraving. The metal is warm.
In the living room, I light the candle on the coffee table. Vanilla and bergamot—my favorite scent. The flame catches, small and defiant against the darkness.
I sink onto the couch and stare at it.
Behind me, I hear Sergei's breathing. Deep and even. A man who just took me apart with his hands and mouth and cock.
One night.
The flame flickers.
I need a husband in two and a half months.
The lighter's metal bites into my palm.
And I think I just found him. My weapon. My shield. My way out of this nightmare and into something that might actually survive the fire.
The Wolf doesn't know it yet.
But I'm about to make him an offer he can't refuse.
Even if it destroys us both.