Chapter 21
Anya
Do not apologize to anybody… not for anything.
The words feel so foreign to me. I, like so many other women before me, apologize far too much. I think that the entirety of my whole situation is starting to really overwhelm me. That was why I wanted to paint, just to do something so that I wasn’t sitting here worrying about things that do not concern me. I should not be adjusting to this. I should be fighting more… but having had so much time to think, I do not know what comes next. I think the fact that I am no longer in control of my life, again, paired with the unknown future in front of me; I am listless.
“I think I am ready to ask my last question now,” I say softly. I can’t tear my eyes from him. Nikolai’s hands encircle my ankles and loosely slide up the backs of my calves. When he reaches the backs of my knees, he pulls me forward toward him.
I don’t know why I feel so nervous to ask him a question. I have spent the better part of the day waffling between two possible options, and each one seems like they are equally important. Both questions would help me. Both questions would give me an idea as to what’s going to happen to me here. I can’t believe that Nikolai is going to keep me as his captive forever. But given that I have spent time with him now, he can’t just let me go either. There is no good option.
For a moment, I’m transfixed. My eyes are locked onto his as if I can somehow pull out a direction that I’m supposed to go in, that I can pick between the two options if only he would wink a particular eye or something. Yet, all I see reflected back to me is openness. He’s waiting, and I think he can feel the weight in the air between us. His warm hands on my legs, the sight of him on one knee in front of me. I”m sure there aren”t many women who have seen him from this vantage point. Here he is, on his knees for me without my having done anything at all to deserve it.
I realize then that it just doesn’t matter. The tension, the threat of tomorrow, the possible outcomes of this terrible situation doesn’t matter. Neither one of us got to choose who our fathers are. Neither one of us can change the past, and Nikolai would not even if he could. The answers to my questions don’t matter, not really. Whether my father has come looking for me, or if Nikolai will be required to kill me when this is all over. Knowing the answers will not make me feel better.
Slowly, I reach forward and trail my knuckles down the side of his jaw. He would tell me if I asked him, and I believe that he would be honest. I just needed to be able to look him in the eyes like this to know that I want to experience whatever time that I have left with him.
“Can we have ice cream for dinner?” I ask with a deep sigh.
Nikolai smiles for only a moment. “What?” I can’t say I blame him for being confused, given that the question is completely random. It’s below freezing outside and yet, that is what I want. Nikolai cocks his head to the side and blinks at me, waiting for an explanation that I do not have.
“Are you certain that you want that to be your last question?”
“Yes,” I say simply. Nothing else that I could ask him matters.
“Alright.” Something in his eyes seems to come alive, I think he was prepared for the very worst thing that I could have thrown at him. Perhaps he is taking the pass, and choosing to trust me a little more because of it. I thought for a moment that perhaps the sense of having wasted my opportunity would make me feel guilty, but it doesn’t. Whatever comes next, I cannot deny that I like his company. Against all sense of reason his touch makes me feel alive. Nobody has ever made me feel like he does. Even his soft touches now leave electricity in their wake against my skin.
“We can have ice cream for dinner then. What kind would you like?”
“What do you have?”
“I must tell you a secret,” he says, waggling his eyebrows at me ominously. “I have a touch of a sweet tooth… and we have many ice cream flavors here at all times. So, tell me what your favorite flavor is and it shall be prepared.”
“You’re going to laugh at me,” I say, this is normally the part of the conversation where I would start to physically fold into myself but with him positioned between my legs, I can’t. His hands start to run up the outside of my thighs toward my hips. “I like chocolate chip cookie dough… the most basic flavor in the whole world. I already know this, so you do not need to tell me.”
Just as I predicted, Nikolai chuckles at me. “That is fine. We have this.”
“What is yours?”
“Black currant.”
“I’ve never even heard of that!”
“I am not surprised. It is not common to find outside of Russia, but it is my favorite. Particularly with the little bits of fruit that can be found inside of it,” he shrugs, “it is surprising, and now you must try it, of course.”
I smile slowly. It was such a simple comment, but the fact that he wants me to try his favorite ice cream makes my stomach flutter.
“When I was a child, my mother would always give me ice cream whenever something bad happened. No matter where we lived, it was always one of the first things that she put into the house. I got a bad grade, somebody fought with me at school, the weather was too gross to go outside—her solution was always ice cream. It’s a bad habit that I’ve carried well into my adulthood.”
I shake my head, I don’t know why I’m telling him this but it feels good to get it off my chest. “After she died, my father took me to go get ice cream for the first time. Before that moment I didn’t think that he ever really paid any attention to the things that my mother and I did.”
The mention of my father makes something like sadness flicker in Nikolai’s eyes. “He has not come looking for you.”
Pain lances through my chest at his confession. I knew it. I can feel a knot forming in my throat, and tears start to well in my eyes that I refuse to allow to fall.
“I do not know if he has simply not noticed that you are missing, or if he has decided that he does not care. I do not say these things to harm you, Anya, but I know that you should know.”
I pull my bottom lip between my teeth and nod. I don’t want this to hurt as much as it does. My hands drop to the tops of my thighs and close into fists. I press the heels of my hands into my thighs to try to force myself to calm down enough to process the information that he’s just given to me.
“I am sorry that this information hurts you, Anya…” his voice sounds different whenever he speaks like he’s actually saddened by the fact that his enemy has not come looking for his daughter. Perhaps it is more than that… but I don’t want to press it. There are some things that are better to not know.
“So, what now?”
“What do you mean? Now we have ice cream for dinner.” Nikolai forces a soft smile meant to comfort me. The fact that he cares about my feelings at all—I don’t know how to process it.
“Okay,” I say simply, and try to stop myself from asking the next questions but I can’t. I thought that they didn’t matter and that I had no say in whatever happens next, but if my father isn’t even going to notice that I”m gone, the length of my remaining lifespan is entirely dependent on this giant of a man in front of me. “And… and me? What will happen to me now?”
Nikolai’s throat bobs, “I… I am not certain.”
I nod. What else can I do? This situation is out of my hands.
“I am very torn,” he continues, “there is normally a way that these things are handled and this way does not seem possible with… this shift that has happened here.” He looks away from me, off to the side of the room but he pulls me even closer, almost crushed against him. My hands rest on his shoulders.
“Just a couple of days ago you would have been biting and slapping me if I tried to have you in my arms like this, and now you allow it. Things have changed here.”
I scrape my fingers through the short hair on the back of his head, letting the trimmed hair prickle against the pads of my fingers.
“I never thought… you have made me feel more things than I thought were possible…” the sort of passion that we have whenever we are together is unlike anything else I’ve seen.
My friends used to tell me stories about all their lovers and the wild experiences that they would get into with Vegas’ crazy dating scene. Their stories and encounters were all very varied in experience, but they hadn’t ever described the sort of heat that fills me every time that Nikolai touches me. This might be normal for him, but it isn’t for me.
“My business here is concluded for the time being.”
He can tell that I want to ask him what his business was, that I’m having to bite my tongue to keep from asking.
“We should go somewhere else for a while. Away from the land in which my mother died—away from this house until I make a choice.” He grins up at me. “Though, if I decide to leave then you do not really have any choice but to come with me.”
The tension between us breaks, just like that. “Oh, is that so? Don’t think that I’m some docile little house cat now, you know.”
“I certainly hope that you are not.” He leans closer, my thighs spread to accommodate his size. I can feel my thighs straining and protesting the movement when they are still so sore.
“I like the way that you fight, you know this.” Even on his knees, his long, muscled torso is almost at eye level with me. Impossibly tall, but it makes it all the easier for me to press my lips against his.
“I think you will like me when I’m soft, too,” I whisper into his skin. Nikolai slides his hands around my hips and curves them up my back underneath my camisole. His calloused hands send gooseflesh racing across my arms. He shifts back onto his ass, and pulls me with him until I’m seated over him.
“I can be very… very soft, when I want to be.”
I can feel the bulge of him against me through his slacks. He kisses me softly, and I match his movements passionately. It feels different than the times before this. The points where he holds me are firm as ever, as if Nikolai doesn’t know how to be gentle, but for my sake he’s trying.
He tries to hold me to him as we deepen the kiss, but the force of it threatens to pull the oxygen from my lungs. I wouldn’t have it any other way. His hands slide up my back, taking the camisole with him until he can pull it up and over my head. His lips leave mine and trail a path of hot kisses down the side of my neck, my collar bone, between my breasts until he captures my peaked nipple in his mouth.
My head falls backward, lost in the sensation as his name is a ghost on my lips. He bites and sucks at my skin, catching himself every time he loses his precarious hold on his fire.
I run my fingers through his hair, and his hands move lower, picking at the waist of my shorts until he finds a seam, then ripping the thin fabric apart until it”s nothing more than a useless barrier between us. I yank his shirt off, lamenting even the brief separation of his lips from my skin before he finds my other breast, sucking it into his mouth and pulling me closer to him.
I grind my hips downward into his erection and he groans. Oh, I love that sound. The air in the room feels hotter now as I experimentally repeat my movements. His dark eyes flick up to mine. He’s warning me not to test him. Not to toy with him right now and that is all that I want to do.
I round his bare shoulders and rake my fingers down his chest—the sting of my nails on his skin makes him bite me in retribution, his hands on my hips tighten, the pressure slow but crushing, I can feel it deep in my bones. I moan low and soft as the pain twists inside me, cooling into a slow burning desire. I unfasten his belt when I reach it, the leather opening for me as my fingers move for the button on his pants. My fingers are shaking. I don’t know why I’m shaking. It feels like this moment could change everything, for better or for worse.
My shoulder drops as I reach down between us to free him from the confines of his pants while he pulls the scraps of silk keeping us apart.
I position him at my entrance, the muscles in my thighs straining before I lower myself onto him slowly. Each inch fills me, stretches me and I can hardly breathe as I sit back down fully. The way that pleasure twists his whole face is intoxicating, the lines smoothing out from his brows, his eyes closing and he actually looks calm, unburdened for just a moment. I want to memorize that face.
As he blinks open his eyes, I”m frozen to the spot. He looks at me with surprise, as if he doesn”t believe I”d actually do it—that I”d choose this. I can”t imagine the amount of pressure he has to put on himself every single day. The kind of stress and hardship that comes with being the boss—the man in charge, the one who is responsible for everything that goes wrong in the lives of all of his men. I have no idea how big his empire is, but judging by the size of his house, the weight of that responsibility would crush someone like me.
His hands turn reverent as they slide up my hips to my waist. Everything unsaid between us is palpable. He nods softly, as if he understands my intentions. Maybe it”s okay if he can”t return me. I roll my hips against him, feeling more confident in my decision. I bend forward, cupping his face in my hands, my hair falling around both of us as I ride him slowly, gradually climbing that wave of pleasure. He leans the two of us back, allowing me to move faster. My inexperienced movements don”t seem to bother him. I lower my hands to his chest, straightening my spine as I find a more comfortable pace. I can see his jaw tense with restraint, probably wanting me to go faster, to reclaim the control that I currently have.
I can’t deny that it’s a powerful feeling. A temperamental, highly feared and respected Bratva boss between my thighs, stilled by my hips.
At least for a moment he lets me be in control.
Nikolai plants his feet on the ground and his hands drop to my hips. “Touch yourself, let me see it,” he commands.
I comply without even thinking. My hand drops to my center, circling my clit, attempting to replicate the movements that he has done so many times before.
My other hand clamps firmly around my left breast, pinching and rolling my nipple into a hard peak. I gasp at the pain, massaging the skin he had bitten with renewed electricity that pulsates straight into my core.
Then he moves. He lifts my small hips ever so slightly, and pounds upward into me. The sensation takes my breath away. He might as well have put dynamite inside of me, it ignites and I rocket toward the sudden burst of my climax. I can’t stop the scream of pleasure as my body bows forward, continuing the rapid circles around my clit until my movements become jerky and as erratic as my breathing.
It seems a crest without end, carrying me further and further until it tapers off and crests again. Nikolai does not falter or stop, his beautiful muscles tensed and displayed wonderfully until his breathing stops, and I can feel him cum inside of me, possessing me, marking his ownership. I am the spoils of the war that he won and I can’t even deny to myself anymore that I am his.