Chapter 10
ANNA
Everything hurt.
My thighs were sore, my core screamed at me, even my breasts ached from the scratches from his goatee.
My head pounded when I opened my eyes in the dimly lit room. I looked at the window with the still-drawn blackout curtain, bright morning sunlight glowing at the top.
I knew Darius was in the room, I could feel him. But the bed behind me was empty. Cold. I didn't even know if he had slept in this room with me.
Carefully, I rolled over, every single muscle I had protesting the movement. And there he was. Staring at his phone, reading something, with a fresh shirt already on, his tie loose around his neck as he sipped from a cup of coffee.
Did he have room service drop it off with me in the room? Or did one of his men get it for him? Somehow, I just knew he didn't leave to get it himself.
I opened my mouth a few times, ready to say something, but what was there to say?
Thank you for the most incredible night of my life — it's never going to happen again? Please take off the killer noose around my neck, it's really just not my style.
I sat up.
He looked at me for a moment, his expression completely blank except for a flash of annoyance in his eyes. He said nothing, just set down his coffee cup and went back into the walk-in closet, coming out a moment later with a suit jacket on and his tie neatly tied.
The room felt different. He felt different.
When we were at the shop, he was professional and polite. Last night he was domineering and passionate, even fiery.
This was different. This was a different side of the same man.
He wasn't pretending to be a normal person to get my guard down, and the fire that was in him before had been completely extinguished. Now he was cold, and for some reason, that made me feel worse than when he fucked me like he owned me.
He had gotten what he wanted from me. He had bedded me, used me, and now I was just a means to an end, a way to get to my mother.
Something twisted in my gut, and a white-hot fury surged through my veins as I watched him get ready for the day without another single glance my way.
He picked up his coffee again, drained it, and set the white ceramic cup back down on the bedside table then tucked his phone into his breast pocket.
"Get dressed. My men will take you home." He turned to the mirror to straighten his already perfectly straight tie.
His men would take me home...that was it? After last night, that was all he could say to me?
It was one thing to play me, to use me against my mother.
It was another to fuck me into oblivion, turn my body against me and make me feel things I thought only existed in fairy tales for adults.
But to do all that and then just discard me, toss me aside like he did the coffee cup now that it was empty. .. That was going too far.
Nausea rolled through my stomach, my cheeks and my eyes burned, and my skin felt like it was too tight. What little control I had snapped.
On the bedside table, next to his discarded coffee cup, sat a small crystal clock. Without thinking, I picked it up and hurled it at his head.
He ducked out of the way just in time, and the clock slammed into the full-length mirror, shattering it.
I clasped my hands over my mouth, my eyes wide as I stared at what I had just done.
Large fragments of glass covered the floor, but several pieces still hung in the frame, jagged and threatening.
Darius stared at me, fury burning in his eyes, his hands in tight fists. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Then all the tension left his body.
When he opened his eyes again, he was calm and in complete control.
The shift was so instantaneous that I moved back on the bed, trying to put more space between us. I had no idea what he was capable of, what he was thinking.
"Something you would like to say, maya soloveyka?" he said, calmly picking up the crystal clock and putting it back in its place on the bedside table.
I shook my head and he just waited, watching me expectantly.
"I have nothing to say, sir." My voice was hoarse, my throat dry, and the words scratched their way past the fear.
He nodded and lashed out, grabbing me with one hand around my waist and the other in my hair. A man of that size shouldn't be able to move so fast, but he did. He pulled me to stand in front of the mirror just outside the area with all the shards of glass.
"Look in the mirror," he growled. "Tell me what you see."
I saw my reflection, broken and fragmented. My pussy lips still looked swollen and tender. There were rough red marks over my breasts and around my throat. I looked used.
Then, of course, there was the necklace.
The massive, stunning white teardrop that sat perfectly just below my collarbones, surrounded by clusters of smaller diamonds, and then the platinum infinity band. Beautiful. Deadly.
I didn't recognize the girl in the mirror, and if it weren't for the faint red light that reflected in one of the diamonds, I would say I looked like I had a night that was worth every bruise and moment of self-doubt.
That damn red light, though, was a constant reminder that this was not my choice. Last night did not happen because I seduced this sexy man into bringing me into his bed.
It happened because I was a target.
I was nothing more than a pawn in his fucked-up little game against my mother.
"Tell me what you see," Darius demanded, his hand tightening in my hair.
I lifted my chin, meeting his eyes in the broken glass.
"I see a woman who's getting very tired of being used to further other people's agendas, sir," I answered, the honesty surprising even me.
Fear coursed through me, but I held my head up high anyway.
A low sound rumbled in the back of his throat, and I couldn't tell if it was approval or just amusement at my little act of defiance.
"Let me tell you what I see," he whispered in my ear as he yanked my body back so I was pressed against him. "I see a woman who learned a vital lesson last night."
His eyes swept down my body, and the fragmented mirror reflected how the blush hit my cheeks, starting on my chest. Even the tops of my breasts flushed pink.
His one hand stayed tangled in my hair, but the other wrapped around me, his palm flat on my stomach, before it moved up to pinch my nipple, making it taut. "I see a woman who learned what her body can do when in the hands of the right man."
I watched in the shards of glass, fascinated, as his hand moved from my breast down my stomach to my swollen, aching pussy.
"I see a woman who learned how good it can feel to be taken apart and put back together," he whispered in my ear as his fingers delved between my pussy lips and stroked my clit.
My body relaxed against him instinctively. His body heat seeped through his suit into me as his fingers drew lazy circles over my clit. "Do you see that too?"
"Yes, sir," I gasped, too weak to deny him.
His fingers moved slowly, and although I ached, it still felt good, too good. It wasn't fair. How could this man, a man I should loathe, make me burn so completely?
"Are you going to be my good girl? If I give you rules today, will you follow them?"
"What rules?" I gasped. My brain was fuzzy, and I could barely understand his words. Trying to think through a dense fog of lust and need. The logic was there, but it was fleeting.
"Here is what's going to happen today, maya soloveyka. You are going to get dressed, and my men are going to take you home." His fingers kept their slow, steady pace, driving me crazy.
The pressure built in my core, but the motion was just enough to make it build, never enough to give me satisfaction. And the sadistic son of a bitch who was doing it knew precisely what he was doing.
"You will not go to the local police. If you do, you die." His words turned cold, but his fingers kept moving.
"If you try to contact the Capitol Police or any other government agency, you die." His fingers sped up just a little, just enough to make sure that his words couldn't break the spell that I was under.
"If you contact anyone else to help you, they die, and then you die."
"Sir, please," I begged, my knees going weak.
"The only person you will talk to about any of this is your mother, and it is only to remind her that if she disobeys the Ivanovs, she dies, and then you die."
"Darius, please," I said, using his name for the first time. It felt foreign on my tongue, but I liked it.
Lust and fear swirled together in my mind, and I couldn't think. I didn't know what to do. He let go of my hair to slide his hand around my throat and under the necklace. The metal pressed against the back of my neck, warm from my body heat, cold from the threat it carried.
"This necklace doesn't just have high-powered explosives in it, maya soloveyka. It has a GPS tracker, and I have the only key that will take it off of your pretty little neck. Do not try anything. If you do, I will know. And if you disobey me in any way, you die."
"Please," I begged again, tears streaming down my face, and I didn't even know what I was asking for.
Was I asking him to let me come, to give me the pleasure that his fingers were building inside of me? Was I asking him to stop so I could think clearly, or was I asking him to take that damn necklace off my neck?
I didn't know, but I did know he was the only one who could give me what I needed.
"Everything is monitored," he whispered in my ear. "Everything is a test. Now go be a good girl and do as you're told, and maybe I'll reward you."
Then he ripped his hand away from me and moved toward the bedroom door, leaving me cold and throbbing with need.
"Go home, pretend everything is normal, and wait for instructions. Be a good girl,” he reiterated, “and hope your mother doesn't get you both killed."
Then he walked out the door, closing it behind him, and I collapsed onto the carpeted floor.
It wasn't until I lifted my hand that I saw the glass that had embedded itself in my palm, and I watched the crimson red mix with the fragments of the mirror.
My reflection stared back—broken, bleeding, collared.
Still his.