Chapter 12
CHAPTER
TWELVE
VIKTOR
Fuck, does he look pretty like that. With his mouth filled with my cum and those tear-struck eyes lifted to me, wide and unguarded, he feels like mine.
That thought should scare the shit out of me.
I've never wanted to claim another person.
Never wanted to be exclusive. But then I never met a person who didn't know who I was before they tried to impress me.
With their money, their status. With their body.
Tracing the line of Jonah's throat, I feel the hitch when he swallows.
“So delicate, krasavchik. So pretty. You're so good to me.” My thumb presses lightly beneath his jaw. “Do I taste good?”
His cheeks flush. He nods, barely. The submission hits harder than it should. Hauling him up, I take his mouth in a bruising kiss, groaning when I drag myself across his lips.
“All the bad things I want to do to you,” I breathe against his skin.
“Not now, Viktor.” His voice shakes, but he tightens his grip on my arm. He's pulling me in and pushing me away at the same time. Jonah's fingers spread as if to feel my heartbeat. “Your legs are shaking. Let me get you back to bed. Please.”
Reaching past me, he turns the water off. He might be right, but my dick doesn't agree. Despite the mind-blowing orgasm he just gave me, I'm definitely up for another round.
“I could fuck you against the tiles,” I propose. His breathy chuckle is both infuriating and cute.
“Later.” Grabbing towels, he presses one into my palms. “If you faint in the shower, I have a bigger problem. Please.”
Fuck me. I'm a goner for his pleas. I want to hear them all the time while I have him on his knees, crying, begging me for more.
But I stumble when I step out of the shower.
He's right. My knees wobble, and my vision blacks out for a beat.
Jonah sits me on the edge of the toilet, facing me. His fingertips trace my jaw.
“Your pupils are blown. Did they sedate you again?”
I shrug.
“Tell me what happened.” His thumb stills beneath my cheekbone. “I can take it.”
“I can take it,” I scoff. I feel both annoyed and touched by his genuine concern.
“Yes.” Jonah's eyes are still wide. His lashes are damp. His face is all soft curves and concern.
“You do realize that if I tell you what's really going on here, your chances of surviving drop to almost nothing?”
“Um—yes?”
“Okay. If you insist.” I let out a slow breath. I shouldn't tell him. The more he knows, the more fragile his position becomes. But then I could save him. Again. And again. And again. He's becoming a habit I don't want to break.
“Sergei brought me to the basement for a meeting. Meaning, he shot me full of drugs, then invited the men who served my father. Men who are supposed to serve me as his rightful Pakhan.” My mouth twists.
“Only that piece of shit has been sitting on my throne for far too long. He told them he wanted an assessment. Said he was worried about my recovery. Worried I might be impulsive. Unstable.”
Jonah follows me into the bedroom. “Assessment? What kind of assessment?”
“You know how these things go.” Pulling back the sheets, I gesture for him to climb into bed first without arguing.
“No, I don't.” He watches my face, fingers worrying the sheet. “But I want to. So he drugged you before the meeting, then made you defend yourself?”
“Da.” My jaw tightens. “And I couldn't get the fucking words to leave my mouth.”
“What did your uncle do?”
A humorless laugh slips out of me. “What he always does. Spoke for me. Smoothed it over. Said I was weak from the hospital, that he'd handle things until I was ready, that the family couldn't afford another misstep.”
Jonah's motion stills on the towel. “He wanted to make you look… sick?”
“He wanted them to doubt my sanity,” I say flatly, “so their loyalty cracks.”
The realization sits in my gut. Sergei didn't just steal the throne. He's trying to make me forget who I was before he touched me.
“Did any of them speak up?”
“No.”
He rolls himself on his side, leaning on an elbow as he takes me in. “They didn't lay a hand on you?”
I shake my head. “No.”
“Good.” It comes out soft. I trace a finger over his forearm, watching the way he shivers as goosebumps rise. He's so responsive. So easy to read. “You know I'm not a good man, do you? Hm?”
“I… I guess so.”
Curling a palm around his throat, I think of how he let me fuck his mouth earlier, how he let me hurt him just enough. Even now, Jonah doesn't pull back. He keeps his eyes lingering on mine, his body pliant to my touch. “You know I'll take back what's mine and kill those who stood in the way?”
He gives a jerk of his chin. “What will happen now?”
“Now we sleep.”
“Viktor—”
“Patience, krasavchik. Now I let Sergei think this will work. Let him think he knows me.” Leaning forward, I brace my elbows as tension pulls tight through my shoulders. “He wants me to slip up, but really he's the one who'll end with a dagger through his heart. Mark my words.”
This time Jonah visibly shudders. He must realize the same thing as I do.
“Now you know.” I hold his face. The weight of the secret is a collar around his neck, and I'm the one holding the chain. “And knowing has a cost.”
“I—I didn't mean to…” Jonah mumbles.
“I know you didn't.” Pressing a kiss to his forehead, I nudge him until the back of his head hits the pillow. “But that doesn't change the outcome.”
My mouth traces from his nose to his lips, and I take them.
He gasps into me, the rest of his sounds lost when I pull him into a hard kiss.
Fuck, he's precious. Soft in my hands, but not weak.
He has shown me more care than most people ever have, unless I pay them. That shouldn't turn me on, but it does.
I’m addicted to the way he looks at me without seeing a monster.
It’s a clean, unblemished kind of innocence that Sergei hasn't had the chance to rot yet. I’ll keep it that way, because owning something this pure is the only way I'll remember what it feels like to have power that isn't bought with blood.
It drives me feral with a need to claim and protect. I want to burn the world down just to keep him in the embers. “Come on now, krasavchik. Sleep.”
The first thing I register is Jonah's body against mine. He's pressed close, one leg thrown over my thigh, his arm laid across my stomach. His cheek rests on my chest. His breath is warm against my skin.
I don't move. Light from the window reaches the ceiling. I watch it for a moment before I look back down at him. Someone gave me back my dagger. That means someone here, in this house I used to call mine, is on my side.
In the basement, Sergei openly made a fool of me.
He smiled at men who were Father's allies while he had me restrained.
Like a goddamn animal. He talked like this was business, like pain was just a step in a process.
I remember the weight of him watching. I remember the moment he thought I was finished.
I curl my fingers once, feeling the shape of the hilt in my palm again.
Sergei's making a mistake. He assumes I'll crack at some point. I won't.
I don't need to rush it. I just need time and the right moment to remind him whose throne he's sitting on.
Jonah's fingers twitch against my ribs. I slide my palm to the back of his neck and feel his warm skin, his hair, and the rhythm of his pulse. He melts into it instinctively, shifting even closer. Dangerous. All of this. But I don't pull away.
Jonah stirs slowly, blinking up at me. “Morning.”
“Hi.”
He gives me a small smile. “I don't know why, but I thought you'd have left last night after everything that happened. Escaped through the windows and jumped the fence.”
“Trust me, I know those gardens. We used to play in them as kids. They were guarded even then. Sergei will've doubled it by now.”
Jonah looks around him. “I can't imagine what it's like to grow up in a place like this.”
“Busy. Father used to hold large meetings. There's lots of money. Lots of drugs. There are many secrets.” I grin when Jonah looks up at me with his big, blue eyes. He's the sexiest thing I've ever had in my bed, and the most fragile.
He breathes it instead of saying it. “Mafia.”
“Such a dirty word, krasavchik.” But he's got me grinning. Mafia is such an underrated term. It doesn't include the danger, or the power that comes with it. I better not tell him that.
Trailing a finger over his face, I catch a strand of blond hair and curl it around my finger. Moving him how I want him, I slowly rock our hips together. Jonah shakes his head, but I don't miss how his face flushes.
“What’s it?”
“I…” His voice breaks. “I—I need you. I don't understand it. I've never… I shouldn't want you like this.”
“Yet you do.”
He nods. “I do.”
His words bring a dirty satisfaction I can't name. “And you're not scared.”
He shakes his head. “Not of you. I don't know if that makes me brave or stupid.”
I lower my mouth to his throat, kissing him slow first, then harder.
His fingers grip my back. His hips lift.
I kiss him until he's shaking, until he makes small sounds into my mouth that I keep.
Trailing my mouth to the purple marks I left, I admire my handiwork before licking the bruises.
I like him marked. I want everyone who looks at him to know he belongs to a monster.
“You're too sweet to be stupid.”
“That doesn't mean anything,” he giggles, but lets himself be rolled onto his stomach, face against the pillow.
I grin. “It does when I say it.”