Chapter 20
CHAPTER TWENTY
I RINA
"Looking for something?"
I nearly drop the guide to the constellation as I spin around, the book clutched to my chest like a shield.
Mikhail is leaning against the doorframe, his suit jacket gone, his white shirt unbuttoned halfway down his chest. He doesn't look like the man who just threatened to burn an estate down.
He looks… smaller. Still massive, still dangerous, but somehow smaller.
Great. I’m caught snooping in his childhood lair.
"This was your room," I clear my throat, trying to act nonchalant like I didn’t just lose my cool.
Mikhail walks in, and the floorboards groan under his weight. He looks at the telescope, then at the maps of the moon tacked to the wall with yellowing tape. He looks genuinely uncomfortable, shifting his shoulders as if the air in here is too thin.
"A long time ago," he breathes, shoving his hands in his pocket.
"Astronomy?" I gesture to the shelves. "I figured you’d have been reading about how to break bones or run empires. Not the Apollo missions."
Mikhail lets out a short, dry laugh. He walks up to me, takes the book from my hand. For a second, he looks at the page, a diagram of a lunar module, and I see an emotion flash through his eyes.
I don't think it lasts more than a second and he is back to his unreadable self.
"I wanted to be an astronaut," he says. He says it like he’s admitting to a crime. "When I was ten, I thought if I went high enough, I wouldn't…" He pauses for a while and I fight the urge to tell him to tell me.
He then tosses the book back onto the shelf with a dismissive flick of his wrist. "But then I turned twelve, and my father reminded me that people like us don't reach for the stars. We just own the ground they fall on. It was a fantasy, Irina. A childhood mistake."
An astronaut? The man who kills people for fun wanted to wear a spacesuit? My head is spinning.
"It’s not a mistake to want something else, Mikhail," I say.
"In our world, it is." He steps into my space. The vulnerability from a second ago has vanished and is now being crowded out by the heavy, familiar tension that always follows him. "I didn't expect to find you here."
"I was looking for a bathroom and I got lost," I lie, though my voice is softer than I intended.
"And I didn't expect you to defend me downstairs. Vladimir was right about one thing—I’ve spent six months trying to get away from you.
I didn't think you’d take a bullet to your reputation just to shut him up. "
Mikhail reaches out, his hand cupping the back of my neck. His skin is hot. "I didn't do it for him. And I didn't do it to be a hero. I told you—I hate Vladimir far more than I could ever hate you. And no one insults what belongs to me. Especially not while I’m standing there."
"So it’s just about property," I mutter, even though my pulse is starting to pick up a frantic rhythm.
This man is dangerous. I literally can’t breathe well when he is close to me, and that's a very, very bad thing.
"Is it?" He leans in, his forehead resting against mine. The smell of him is everywhere, it clouds my mind and that’s all I can focus on.
"I spent my youth in this room, Irina. Dreaming about leaving.
And when I realized I couldn't, I spent it in chaos.
Women, drugs, recklessness… I did everything I could to make my father regret the son he had.
I was wild because being anything else felt like dying in slow motion. "
My eyes follow his lips as he talks, I want to lean in and just brush my lips against his, they looks so soft, it won’t hurt to find out how th?—
IRINA! Snap out of it! For God’s sake, am I going crazy?
"S—so how did he get you to be the good loyal son you’ve been?"
"He couldn’t. That’s one of the reasons he sent me away all those years ago. He sent me to Italy because he couldn't control me, so he exported me." He lets out a rough breath, a dry chuckle escaping him. " Coward.”
I tilt my head slightly to the side, my eyes not leaving Mikhail, I’m trying to comprehend all this.
He is actually talking to me like a normal person and even crazier, he is talking to me about his past and I genuinely don’t know what to do with any of this information.
His eyes move to mine and I take in a sharp deep breath.
“You know…” he starts, staring into my soul and I can’t resist not looking back.
“I never brought women to this room. Not once.
Vladimir would never have allowed it. He was afraid they might break something.
Or steal something or turn out to be spies.
He wanted this room to be a cell. And I always wanted to be the one to finally break the rules in it. "
He looks around the small, cramped space, then back at me. His eyes are dark, swirling with decades-old rebellion.
"You always like to break rules, don’t you dorogaya ?" he whispers. "I still haven't forgotten the wedding. Part of me still wants to punish you for it. For making me wait to have you."
The honesty in his voice is what does it.
I take a step towards him, my chest heaving up and down with hard breaths, my lips part involuntarily and Mikhail’s eyes follow them.
He grits his teeth hard like he is trying to control himself.
I don’t want him to control himself, I want him to lose control like I have lost control. I want him to touch, to pull me close and kiss him hard.
The thoughts sends a jolt of sensation through me to my core and I pull my bottom lips in between my teeth stifling the moan that threatens to escape my lips.
“Fuck, Irina. Fuck!”
Before I can blink, I feel Mikhail’s mouth crashing onto mine, my body responds immediately melting into him as the moan releases itself from my lips.
“Hmm” He grunts, his tongue sweeping in, tasting of whiskey and that specific, maddening scent that is just him.
My leather jacket is a nuisance he deals with in one rough shove, the heavy material pooling around my elbows, trapping my arms. He backs me up until the hard edge of the old wooden desk digs into the backs of my thighs.
A slight thud echoes as my hips connect with it.
I don’t register the discomfort, all I think of is this man in front of me and his treacherous tongue messing with my head.
His hands, large and impossibly warm, grip my waist and he lifts me, setting me on the edge.
The cool wood is a shock against my ass through the thin black fabric of my leggings.
His body slots between my thighs, a heavy, intoxicating weight that pushes them wider.
I can feel the hard ridge of his cock straining against his trousers, a persistent, thrilling pressure against me.
“M-Mikhail,” I gasp, the name tearing from me as my fingers claw into the dense muscle of his shoulders, pulling him closer.
A low, approving sound rumbles from his chest. “Shh.”
One hand pins my hip to the desk. The other slides down, over the curve of my ass, and grips the fabric of my leggings.
He just pushes it down, the elastic waistband digging into my skin, baring me to the cool air and his hot gaze.
The vulnerability is instant, a flush of heat that has nothing to do with shame.
The first slap isn’t a tease.
It’s a sharp, stinging crack against the outer swell of my thigh. A jolt of pure sensation—pain that melts instantly into a throbbing, aching heat. A yelp escapes me, my back arching off the desk, my head falling back.
“You’re so fucking stubborn,” he murmurs, his voice a gravelly vibration against the skin of my neck. His mouth finds the frantic pulse there, sucking, his teeth scraping just enough to make my toes curl. His free hand, the one not holding me in place, slides between my thighs.
I’m drenched. Slick heat coats my inner lips, an undeniable wetness he finds immediately. His fingers, calloused and sure, slide through my folds, gathering the moisture. The sound is obscenely loud in the quiet room. He traces my entrance, a slow, maddening circle that makes my hips jerk.
“Already?” he asks, his tone a mix of mockery and dark pleasure. “All it took was a little correction?”
He doesn’t let me answer. One thick finger pushes inside me, not slowly, but with a firm, delicious stretch that steals the air from my lungs. He works it in and out, a ruthless, efficient rhythm. My walls clutch at him. A second finger joins stretching me wider. A broken moan spills from my lips.
O-oh god…
“You like that,” he states, watching my face. “You like my fingers fucking this tight little cunt while I mark your neck.”
I can only nod, as pleasure coils deep in my belly, a spring winding tighter and tighter. He curls his fingers, finding a spot inside me that makes stars burst behind my eyelids. Close. I’m so close.
Oh god, please, please…
“Please don’t… don’t…”
And then he stops.
He pulls his fingers out completely, leaving me empty and aching. The wet, slick sound of their withdrawal kills me. He brings them to his mouth, his eyes locked on mine as he slowly licks my taste from his skin. The visual is so fucking filthy, so possessive, that a fresh wave of wetness soaks me.
I forget the frustration that washed over me when his fingers pulled out.
“Not yet,” he rasps and I almost beg him to continue but he starts again.
His hand slides over my stomach, his touch possessive, mapping my body.
His thumb finds the small, silvered scar just above my left hip bone—a pale, neat line against my skin.
His movement stills. His eyes, which had been clouded with lust, sharpen.
They meet mine, that stormy blue now clear and piercing.
" Dorogaya , tell me the truth. Where did you get this?"
My throat goes bone-dry, and I try to pull together the scattered pieces of my composure.
"It’s nothing," I whisper, the word sounding thin and frail against the wall of his chest. "I had an operation when I was much younger. It’s just... old tissue." Lie. Keep lying.
I expect more prodding but he just looks at me, and in that look, I feel more naked than I ever have. Then he bends. He lowers his head, and his mouth—that demanding, punishing mouth—presses a slow, searingly hot kiss directly onto the scar tissue.
The gesture is so tender it fucking unravels me.
It’s a kiss for a wound, for a secret. My eyes burn, a sudden, shocking sting.
All my defenses, the walls I’ve built brick by brick, crumble into dust right here on his childhood desk.
He’s kissing the part of me I’ve tried to bury, and the vulnerability of it is a sharper, deeper ache than any physical pleasure.
A ragged sob threatens to escape but I bite it back.
No, I can't let myself go. I can’t.
“I’ve got you,” he whispers against my skin, his breath hot on the sensitive mark.
His mouth moves lower. His tongue replaces his fingers, a broad, wet stroke through my soaked folds.
I cry out, my hands flying to tangle in his dark hair.
He eats me with a focused, devastating intensity, his tongue fucking into me, lapping at my clit with firm, rhythmic passes.
The coil inside me snaps back into place, winding impossibly tight.
He brings me to the edge again with his mouth, his tongue a wicked, clever instrument. He lets me hover there, trembling, my thighs shaking around his head. Then his fingers return, two of them plunging back inside me, crooking just right, while his thumb presses firm circles on my clit.
It’s too much. The orgasm tears through me, a violent, shattering wave that has me sobbing his name, my body bowing off the desk, my shoes digging into the wood for leverage.
It feels endless, wracking, a total collapse of every thought except the pulsing, clenching pleasure he’s ripping from my core.
When the last tremor subsides, I’m boneless, panting, slick with sweat and my own release. He pulls back, his own breathing uneven. His lips and chin are glistening. His eyes are dark, the hunger in them not sated, but stoked into a deeper, more dangerous fire.
He stands, looking down at me, a fallen, wrecked thing on his desk. He adjusts his trousers with a grimace, the prominent bulge barely contained. He runs a thumb over his wet lower lip, tasting me again.
“When I finally fuck you properly, Irina,” he rasps, his voice raw, “it won’t be on a desk.” He leans in, his mouth brushing my ear. “And I am going to fuck you until you can’t remember your name.”
A sharp, rhythmic knock at the door makes us both freeze.
"Mikhail? Irina?" It’s Milana’s voice, muffled and hesitant. "Dessert is being served. Papa is asking for you both. "
Mikhail looks at the door, then back at me.
A slow, wicked grin spreads across his face—the Madman is back, and he’s found a new way to play.
He reaches down and picks up the lace panties he’d discarded on the floor––when?
I don’t know. He doesn't hand them back.
He folds them and stuffs them into the pocket of his trousers.
"Mikhail, give them back," I hiss, scrambling to pull my leggings back on. My face is a deep, bruised red. "I can't go back out there like this."
"You can, and you will," he says, opening the door. He doesn't even look at the rumpled bed or the books we nearly knocked over. "Think of it as part of your training. A Morozova knows how to keep a secret under her skirt."
"I hate you," I whisper.
"Liar," he murmurs.
I follow him back to the dining room, my skin burning, my legs feeling like they’re made of jelly. I have to walk past the guards, past the portraits of dead Morozovs, all while feeling my skin where my underwear should be.
We sit back down at that long mahogany table. Vladimir is staring at us, his eyes narrow and suspicious. My father is nursing another vodka, looking bored.
I shift in my seat. Every movement is a provocation, a reminder of what happened in that room. I can feel Mikhail watching me out of the corner of his eye, enjoying the way I’m gripping the edge of the table to keep from squirming.
He’s insane. He’s actually making me sit through lemon tart while he has my underwear in his pocket.
I lean toward him, my voice a barely audible thread. "This changes nothing, Mikhail."
Mikhail doesn't look at me. He just takes a bite of his dessert, his expression bored and regal. But under the table, his hand finds my knee, his thumb tracing a slow, possessive circle on my skin.
"I know," he murmurs.
But as we sit there in the heavy silence of the dining hall, the "Madman" and the "Princess" playing their parts for a room full of monsters, I realize that neither of us fully believes the lie anymore.