12. Nadia
12
NADIA
A s soon as I woke up, one thing registered.
My nudity. I’d fallen asleep without anything on, and that wasn’t the norm. Then again, nothing felt normal or ordinary anymore. How could it? Rushing across the world. Losing my virginity…
I lay there on the bed without moving or opening my eyes. I came more aware, more alert, and with this increasing consciousness, I noticed the differences. The ache between my legs. The tingling sensation of phantom heat where Maxim had smacked my ass.
I mentally cringed, instantly reminded of how good it felt, how wild it made me for more. How much it turned me on like the filthy slut he’d taunted me to be.
I never understood how a woman would be considered slutty for ever talking back. Like that idiot in the bar assumed, a woman with backbone somehow meant she was playing hard to get.
Stupid men.
That generalization didn’t apply to Maxim, though. It couldn’t. I didn’t know him. I’d just met him, technically, and under weird circumstances with him hunting me down to deliver me to my fiancé.
Maxim, whoever he was, was a master. He called me a slut and a bad girl, likely not actually meaning it but realizing how much that degrading, naughty talk turned me on. He spanked me once he noticed how much I liked it, somehow unearthing and discovering a dormant need for pain I’d never known I had.
That Valkov brother wasn’t stupid, but oh, so skilled to blow my mind. It was almost enough to make me forget that he’d taken my virginity.
No. He didn’t take it.
I smiled, still keeping my eyes closed.
I gave it to him. Only him.
No one else would claim me like that. I’d decided, perhaps rashly, that I wanted Maxim’s hard dick inside me before any other. I chose it. And with a lifetime of knowing I was supposed to belong to some old, creepy man I had no desire to even meet, it was a powerful thing to make such a decision about my virginity.
I was damned glad I lost it to Maxim. Opening my eyes, I sought him out and wondered if he might be interested in breaking me in more.
He stood to the side of the room, peering out the window. Curtains were pulled closed, but with the tip of his finger, he slitted the drapes to peek outside.
Without moving much, I stayed out of his range of sight. Having this rare moment just to gaze at him was a treat I doubted I’d get a repeat of. I wanted to look my fill. To check him out. To really get a good look at the sexy, powerful man who'd fucked me so well and unexpectedly last night.
His thick brown hair fell over his brow, and the shading over his face lent him more mysteriousness. It wasn’t long enough to tie back, but if he hadn’t bound my hands like he had, I would’ve wanted to grip it and feel how soft it was.
The lean, sharp angles on his face made him more rugged, and as he frowned, watching out the window, I was struck with how quickly he could change. He was a charmer, a cocky, arrogant man who had to know exactly how good-looking he was. He was aware and used his fine looks to his advantage, but at the same time, I knew firsthand how he could shift into a more serious, sensual, and commanding mood. Like he had when he teased me and fucked me last night.
Now, though, he was serious. Locked in concentration. He was pensive and seemed deep in thought, and I realized I’d be a fool to dismiss him as just another charmer.
Maxim had layers. And I wanted to peel them back and see who the real man was.
“Sleep well?” His deep voice floated to me, husky and smooth.
I smirked. He knew I’d been looking at him. He had yet to make eye contact with me, and I learned a second, quick lesson I would be stupid to ignore.
He wasn’t just a stupid charmer. He was observant to the point of not missing anything.
“Do you care?” I sassed back.
He shrugged, and that nonanswer seemed like both a yes and no at the same time.
He’d cared to clean me up last night. I just barely registered that before I drifted into a deep sleep. He’d taken the time to carry me to the bed when I fumbled to stand and speak.
And what could I have said, anyway? When he pulled out of me, I was overwhelmed by the intensity of having my first real orgasm. He’d stunned me, leaving me so confused. Not only was I floundering to figure out why he’d fucked me when he was well aware that I was supposed to be Lev’s bride, but I was also scrambling—then and now—to understand why I reacted the way I had.
Maxim orchestrated my arousal and commandeered my body so skillfully that he’d prompted me to learn new things about myself. That the right kind of pain could precede the sweetest pleasure.
It wasn’t rational for me to like it so much. It was wrong for me to want more of his hard hand on my ass, his fingers rubbing my clit, and his thickness shoving into me without pause.
He knows it, too.
Coming like he demanded me to, I’d shown how vulnerable I could be around him. I wasn’t practiced to know how to tame my arousal and shut it down. I was too inexperienced to know how to handle a man like him. On one hand, I wished he could be my teacher, my instructor, and show me how good it could be. But on the other hand, I feared him more.
He knew how easily he could turn me into putty, and I was instantly warier of him than I had been before.
“What are you watching?” I asked instead. He hadn’t moved away from the window, still tense and alert.
“Men have been driving by.” As if on cue, the distant roar of a motorbike zoomed by. It’d been raining too hard last night for me to notice where the house was that we’d broken into. With the steady deluge and the jungle looking all the same—green and wet—I hadn’t noticed how near the rugged road we were.
“Just driving by?” That didn’t seem like enough to make him so alert.
Another shrug was all he offered me. He did move away from the window, though. Eyeing me with an unreadable expression, he sighed and seemed to hesitate before speaking again.
“Just driving by?” I asked again, refusing to be kept from any details that I felt I needed to know.
“It seems like that.”
“But you’re suspicious.”
He nodded, smirking. “Hard not to be.”
I arched a brow, leaning up to sit while keeping the sheets over me. “What… kind of men?”
He stared down at me, roving his gaze up the length of my body hidden from his sight. “What do you mean?”
“Just because you fucked my brains out doesn’t mean you can act like I’m suddenly dumb now. Avilov. Did they look like anyone Mr. Avilov would employ?”
He rubbed a hand over his face and sighed. “No. Not yet, at least.”
“What would you do if it was someone who worked for Mr. Avilov?” I asked. I didn’t want to know the answer. My gut told me that despite his having sex with me last night, he’d hand me over. He was duty-bound. I didn’t know everything about him, but I felt confident that I was correct in that assessment.
“I was tasked with bringing you home. For Lev Avilov to collect you from your father.”
“But if they showed up here?—”
“If Lev showed up here, in the jungle?” He tilted his head to the side, narrowing his eyes. “Then he’d take you.”
My stomach tensed. “You’d hand me over?” I snapped my fingers. “Just like that?”
He snapped. “Just like that. It’s the result I’m collaborating for.”
“You would just give me up.” I kneeled on the bed, letting the sheet fall so he could see all of me. All that he’d desired last night. Still, he walked around the bed, ignoring me.
“You’re not mine , Nadia.”
But I felt like it after last night.
“You’re not mine to give up. You belong to him. Not me.”
I stood, rushing to grab the clothes he must have found for me. They were folded, waiting at the foot of the bed. Now that he could be so cruel as to dismiss me—with words—I wanted the safety of clothing to hide me from his eyes again.
“No. You slept with me.” I scowled at him as I pulled shorts on. “We had sex.”
“I was there. I do remember that part.”
I growled, hating his cocky, taunting tone. “You took my virginity.”
He nodded. “I did.”
“So I can’t go to Lev now.” I’d use whatever excuse I could.
“Bullshit. Your virginity wasn’t a requirement for your marriage. Arranged marriages happen every day in our world. And virgins aren’t always a necessity.”
Dammit. I wrestled to get the shirt on, annoyed at how tight this bra was.
As he rolled his eyes, amused with my struggle, he came closer. “Want help?”
I scowled and stepped away.
“The promise your father made with Lev was just that he would give him his first daughter. No other stipulations applied.”
I wasn’t done. I refused to think he could be so good, fit me so well, and be this quick to give me up. “Oh, so you’ll sleep with me but let me go?”
He pierced me with his serious stare for such a long moment that I almost caved to the pressure of his silence.
“You’re not anything special, sweetheart.”
I stepped forward and lifted my hand to slap him. He caught it, and I fumed as he smiled down at me.
“So, we had sex. It happens.”
Not for me. I hated how he cheapened and belittled what we’d shared. To him, I supposed it was nothing out of the ordinary. I was just another easy piece of ass to him. To me, it was magical. Wonderfully dark and sensual.
“You’re not damaged goods now, Nadia. He didn’t need you to be a virgin.” He tugged me closer before releasing me with a slight push. “And I don’t need you to make me fail at completing a job my brother gave me to do.”
I was nothing. Nothing to him but a convenient pussy to fuck and a woman to deliver as he checked a chore off his to-do list.
I opened my mouth to retort, but I didn’t get any words out.
A bang sounded. Glass shattered. As the window burst apart, another gunshot pierced through the morning quiet.
Maxim clenched his jaw and pulled me to the ground. He was quick—again—to keep me safe, but he wasn’t fast enough. A bullet caught him. His deep grunt of pain and annoyance worried me, and as we fell to the floor, he was delayed in taking the brunt of the drop.
I landed on my back, and a shard of glass cut right through the bandage I’d put on my skin from slamming into the brick wall in London.
Agony lanced through me from so many causes. The sting of the new cut and the reopening of whatever had already scabbed over. All the weight of Maxim’s hard body on top of mine. The hard, unforgiving surface of the floor we crashed to.
Before I could moan in pain or attempt to inhale deeply to stave off this whole-body ache, he lifted his head and covered my mouth with his hand.
He narrowed his eyes, silently telling me to be quiet. I didn’t need to hear him tell me. I got it. Voices carried from outside, and as I waited, caught in suspense, I watched him strain to listen.
“Let’s go,” he whispered as he helped me stand with him, sticking to the walls and staying away from a clear view of the windows.
We were near enough for me to see what the issue was, and it was just what I’d suspected. The local men had returned. These guys sounded just like the drugged-up trio who’d mugged me yesterday.
I didn’t know what they wanted now. Maybe they guessed we’d snuck in here. Perhaps they thought they could get more money out of us. Something. I wasn’t so afraid of them getting ahold of me, not with Maxim here.
All I knew was that we were surrounded.
We’d never get out of here alive. I counted five men outside, all armed with guns aimed at this house we’d crashed in overnight.
Sometime while I’d been recovering from Maxim’s hard loving, I’d forgotten one crucial detail.
This wasn’t my neck of the woods. It didn’t seem like his, either. We were in dangerous territory, away from the protected consumerist areas.
Maxim stood between me and windows, blocking me. With his back to me, I saw the gash on his arm where the bullet had grazed him.
He was wounded.
I was too.
It didn’t matter what job he wanted to fulfil or how eagerly I wanted to escape my fiancé. We were both well and truly fucked, cornered with nowhere to turn.