Chapter 20
Ayla
Maksim Korsakov’s tongue is otherworldly, but he is not fucking me.
Hell no.
“No,” I say, keeping my voice steady despite the fact that my legs are still shaking from what he just did to me.
His eyes darken. “No?”
“You heard me.” I try to wriggle my wrists free from his grip. No luck. “That was... that was good. But we’re not—”
“Not what?” His hips grind against me again, and I feel exactly how hard he is through his sweatpants. “Not fucking?”
My breath catches. My body is screaming yes, yes, yes, but my brain, the part that’s kept me alive this long, knows better.
Gabriel wanted this. Told me to let Maksim use my body, get intel.
No.
“I don’t like you enough to let you fuck me,” I manage to get out despite the feel of his cock insistent between my legs through fabric.
His grip on my wrists loosens slightly. “Not yet?”
I take advantage of the shift and twist free, rolling out from under him. My ribs protest the movement, sharp and insistent, but I ignore it. I slip off the bed, swipe my shorts off the floor and tug them on.
Maksim sits up, running a hand through his hair. It’s disheveled from where I grabbed it, red strands sticking up at odd angles. His eyes trail my body in a different way now. In a way I hate because that feral smirk isn’t terrifying anymore it’s hot.
No.
Maksim Korsakov is not hot.
He licks his lips and his eyes flash.
“You taste good.”
My stomach drops. “Don’t—”
“Don’t what? Don’t say that?” he arches a brow. “Why not? It’s true. And I’m gonna do it again.”
I scoff. “No, that is never happening again.”
“Yes is it and next time I’m sliding my cock deep inside that tight cunt and you’re going to love it, you’re going to make those soft sweet whimpers that I never expected to come out of that filth ridden mouth.”
His eyes track mine. My breaths can’t catch up with the heat coiling through me.
“I’m showering,” I mutter walking away.
“Take a cold one, Beda!” he teases after me, a dark chuckle escaping those devilish lips.
The water runs long enough to sting.
I stand under it until my skin goes pink and my pulse stops racing in my ears. I scrub like I’m erasing evidence. Like if I press hard enough, the memory of his mouth will dissolve and run down the drain.
It doesn’t.
My body is still warm. Still buzzing. Still traitorous.
I shut the water off. By the time I step out, I feel steady again. I pull on jeans, lace my boots and hate how much I like the clothes. I braid my hair, an annoying task. I should cut it. It’s too long.
Too easy to grab.
I find makeup, all new, in the bathroom drawer. I grab the concealer and press it over the fading bruise along my cheek. I tuck the gun Maksim gave me in the waistband under my top.
I adjust it. I feel steadier. I look at myself in the mirror.
Finally.
I look ready. Ready to get back to my normal life. I walk into the kitchen.
He’s there.
Showered. Already changed. Black shirt clinging to broad shoulders. His hair is still damp, red strands combed back but refusing to behave.
He looks clean.
Controlled.
Like his mouth wasn’t between my legs half an hour ago.
His eyes lift. They drag down me slowly. Measuring. There’s a plate on the table. Eggs with toast and fruit. I walk over to the table.
He steps closer without a word. He reaches around me, fingers brushing my hip as he grabs the fork.
He takes a bite of the eggs. Chews. Swallows, sets the fork down.
Grabs my toast, take a bite and puts it back on the plate.
He rounds the table and sits across from me.
Like that gesture was casual.
It wasn’t.
“You showered?” I ask, because that’s easier than asking why he tastes my food for me.
“Upstairs.”
Upstairs.
There’s something in the way he says it. Like it’s a place he owns but doesn’t use.
“Should sleep up there then instead of with me,” I mumble.
His jaw tightens. Just once.
“Sit.”
I hesitate half a second too long.
His eyes flick to my lips.
Then back to my face.
“Sit, Beda.”
I pull out the chair and sit, once I do he starts to shovel food into his mouth.
“What’s your middle name?” he mumbles over his bites.
I almost laugh. I take a bite of toast.
I pause.
What if he figures out who I am if I tell him?
“Leyla,” I mutter.
His fork stops mid-air. “Ayla Leyla?” He smirks.
“Don’t make fun of me!”
“I’m—I’m not, just cute. It rhymes.”
Cute.
“So? What’s yours?”
He doesn’t answer.
The smirk fades first. His fork lowers to the plate with a soft clink. For a second, I think he didn’t hear me.
Then I see it.
Not true anger, but something like it in his eyes.
His shoulders go still. Too still. Like something locked into place under his skin.
He wipes his mouth with the napkin by his plate, buying himself a second.
“Why?” he asks.
The word isn’t sharp.
It’s flat.
“Because you asked mine.”
Silence stretches.
He looks at me like I’ve just asked him for something dangerous. Like names are weapons and I don’t know how to use one properly.
A muscle ticks in his jaw.
“Nikolai.”
It sounds dragged out of him.
Not offered.
Scraped.
“Nikolai,” I repeat.
I don’t mean to soften it. I don’t mean to test it in my mouth. But it slips out.
And something shifts.
His eyes snap up to mine. I can’t place the look on his face. It’s not fury. But it’s close to it. Like he hates the sound of it.
Or hates that I’m the one saying it.
There’s something else there too, though. Something almost… startled.
“You don’t like it,” I say quietly.
His lips press thin. “It’s my father’s name.”
That tells me nothing, but it also tells me everything.
He doesn’t look away. He doesn’t blink. He just stares at me like I’ve stepped somewhere I shouldn’t have.
“Okay, no Leyla and no Nikolai,” I mutter grabbing my fork and stabbing my eggs.
The kitchen goes silent again, his eyes don’t leave me. He doesn’t pick his fork back up.
“Who drugged you?”
I almost choke on my eggs. “What?”
“You won’t eat unless I taste your food, so who drugged you before?”
I scoff out a laugh. This asshole is annoyingly observant.
“It’s not smart to trust anyone,” I answer taking another bite of my food.
He grunts. “I agree.”
I don’t miss the way his eyes linger on me as I eat. Like he’s cataloging every bite. Every swallow. Making sure I actually finish.
It should irritate me.
It does irritate me.
I push the half empty plate away and stand. “I have things to check on.”
His fork stops mid-air. “No.”
“Maksim—”
“You’re not going anywhere alone.” He sets his fork down. “If you need to see those little friends of yours, I’ll take you.”
My hands curl into fists. “I don’t need a babysitter.”
His chair scrapes back.
The sound is small, but it feels loud.
“And yet,” he says, standing, “you can’t eat breakfast unless I poison-test your plate.”
My jaw tightens. “That’s not the same thing.”
“It’s exactly the same thing.” He rounds the table like a slow-moving storm, eyes fixed on me. “You don’t trust anyone, Beda. Smart. So tell me why you suddenly trust the streets to be kind to you.”
“I never said that.” Heat crawls up my neck. I hate that he’s tall enough that I have to tip my head back to glare at him. “I trust myself.”
“Do you?” His gaze drops, flicks briefly to my ribs, then to the waistband of my jeans where the weight of the gun sits warm against my spine. “Because last time I checked, you disappear for days and I find you barely able to walk.”
I flinch. Just a little.
His eyes catch it like a spotlight.
“Fuck you,” I spit.
He smiles, sharp. Predatory.
“There she is.”
Anger spikes hard enough that my fingers tingle. “You broke into my car, into my apartment and into my life! I didn’t ask for you and you know nothing about me.”
“I know enough.” His voice sharpens. “I know someone drugged you. I know you wake up ready to bolt. I know you don’t eat until I do. I know you walk like you’re bracing for the next hit.”
Each sentence lands like a shove.
My heart knocks against my ribs.
“You think that makes you special?” I snap. “News flash, Maksim—most people in our world have scars. That doesn’t mean I need you escorting me around, I’ve handled my life long before you and I’ll continue to long after you’re gone.”
His brows lift. “In our world? Finally admitting something, Beda?”
I still.
“Yeah. That the world is where women are pawns to men who think they’re powerful, when in reality if you had a fraction of my brain—you wouldn’t have half your empire falling apart.”
His eyes go flat. Cold.
“You don’t know shit about my empire,” he says. “You think you and your little half baked friends could ever run what I do?”
My pulse stutters.
He takes one more step, crowding my space. I smell soap and leather and the faint ghost of my own marshmallow body wash on his skin.
“You’re a broken girl with a shit life,” he goes on. “I’m offering you a place to stay, protection—”
“I don’t need your protection!” I fire back.
We’re too close now. My chest is brushing his with every breath.
“Don’t need it or don’t want it?” he asks softly.
It’s worse than if he’d shouted.
“Move,” I say. “I’m going.”
“No.” His hand comes down on the back of the chair I was just sitting in, fingers digging into the wood. Trapping me. “You want to see your people, I take you. That’s the deal.”
“There is no deal.”
“There is now.” His mouth curves, humorless. “You don’t like it, shoot me.”
My hand twitches toward my back on instinct.
His gaze drops, laser-fast, to the motion.
We both freeze.
I feel the weight of the gun against my spine. The kitchen feels too small. Too bright.
“Careful, Beda,” he murmurs. “You point that at me again, you better be ready to pull the trigger this time.”
“Maybe I am.”
“Then do it.”
His voice is low, goading. He steps in that last inch, chest pressed so tight to mine now, daring me.
My fingers brush the grip.
The tension snaps tight, a wire ready to break. My heart is pounding so hard I hear it in my ears.
A floorboard creaks in the hall.
Both our heads whip toward the sound.
My hand closes fully around the gun, sliding it from my waistband as I pivot, muscle memory taking over.
Maksim moves just as fast, hand going to the holster at his side.
The moment Vaska steps into the kitchen, he’s met with two barrels pointed straight at him.
Mine.
And Maksim’s.
Vaska stops dead.
His brows lift. A slow grin pulls at his mouth as he raises both hands, palms out.
“Oh,” he says lightly, eyes flicking between us, “this is interesting.”
I lower my gun first.
Slowly.
My eyes stay on Vaska, but I feel Maksim beside me—rigid, coiled tight. His gun doesn’t drop as fast as mine.
When it finally does, the movement is sharp. Irritated.
“Vaska,” Maksim says, and there’s a flatness to it that makes my skin prickle.
A warning.
Vaska’s grin doesn’t falter. If anything, it widens.
“Didn’t mean to interrupt,” he says, dropping his hands. His eyes slide to me, then back to Maksim. “Looked... intense.”
I tuck the gun back into my waistband.
Maksim doesn’t move. Doesn’t blink.
The silence stretches just long enough to feel like a blade.
“Wait in the bedroom,” Maksim says.
It takes me a second to realize he’s talking to me.
My head snaps toward him. “Excuse me?”
His eyes cut to mine. “Bedroom. Now.”
Heat floods my face, half anger, half humiliation. “I’m not a fucking dog—”
“Beda.” His voice drops lower. Quieter. Somehow that makes it worse. “Go.”
Vaska shifts his weight, clearly enjoying this.
I want to fight it. Want to stand my ground and tell Maksim exactly where he can shove his orders.
But something in his expression stops me.
Control.
The kind that’s barely holding.
I glare at him for one more beat, then turn on my heel and stalk toward the bedroom.
Behind me, I hear Vaska let out a low whistle.
I slam the door.