Chapter 8
ELLE
Three days in, and I've officially been demoted from "forced bride" to "house plant." At least plants get watered occasionally.
I get nothing. Not a word, not a glance, not even the barest acknowledgment that I exist from the man who's supposedly going to be my husband.
Oh, yeah. I'm lucky, alright.
Nikolai moves through this massive house like a ghost, materializing only to grunt a few syllables at his staff before disappearing again.
The few times I've managed to corner him in a hallway or intercept him in the kitchen, he looks at me like I'm a tax form he's been avoiding.
His responses come in single-serving packages: "Fine. " "Later." "Ask Pavel."
I'm starting to think that one night in the hotel was some kind of personality transplant. The man who touched me like I was made of live wires has been replaced by a cardboard cutout with a permanent scowl.
On the fourth night, unable to sleep, I kick off the sheets and decide I have to do something about my situation.
Nikolai hasn't raised his voice once. He hasn't even been cruel. That might have been easier. Instead, he's simply absent. In the same room, but not with me. He reads documents. Drinks black coffee. And never, ever looks too long in my direction.
I think I'd rather be screamed at.
Sir Isaac stretches beside me, utterly unconcerned with my existential crisis.
Must be nice.
"At least Pasha likes me," I tell the cat, who blinks slowly. Unimpressed.
That's the one bright spot in this bizarre situation. Nikolai's son has appointed himself my unofficial tour guide. He showed me the lake, the frog ponds, the hidden path to the boathouse. He's the only human in this house who talks to me like I'm a real person.
That's it. I'm done.
I walk into the great room, where I know Nikolai likes to read into the night. The one with the massive hearth and the kind of furniture that should come with royal titles.
I find him slouched in a large, winged leather chair. Collar open. Sleeves rolled to the elbows, the ink on his forearms catching firelight. Wrist loose against the armrest. He looks like sin hand-tailored itself into a man and decided to read about tax law.
And he doesn't look at me.
Not even a flicker.
That's when the rage hardens into something cold and lethal in my chest.
"I'm leaving," I say.
He glances up. His face shifts immediately from neutral to wary, like I'm a bomb that just appeared in his living room.
"I'm not asking."
That gets him. He closes the book with a slam. "You're not a prisoner," he says. Calm.
I let out a laugh so sarcastic it sounds cruel even to my own ears. "Fantastic. Then open the main gates."
He doesn't blink. "I didn't say I'd do that."
My jaw clenches. "You haven't spoken a full sentence to me in four days. You've made it abundantly clear you don't want me here. So I'm solving that problem for both of us."
His jaw tightens. "I've been busy."
I cross my arms. "Look, I get it. This whole situation is a nightmare. You don't want me here. I don't want to be here drowning in your silence. We both win if you let me go."
He exhales. "It's not my choice to keep you, Elle."
"Great. Even better. Then release me."
"I said it's not my choice. Or did you forget the part where your mother and my uncle arranged this?"
"So make it your choice."
There's a slow pause. One of those lethal Nikolai pauses that feel loaded. A bomb with no beeping.
I double down.
"You can buy yourself out of this. I swear I won't say a word. You tell them I disappeared and you have no idea where I went."
That gets his attention.
His eyes lift, finally locking onto mine. And oh, they are not friendly.
"How much?" he says flatly.
"Ten million." I don't flinch. "Cash."
Pin-drop silence. Then he laughs.
"You think I'm sitting on ten million to throw after you? Despite what this place looks like, I am not a bank."
"You literally have a private fortress. And armed staff."
"That doesn't make me liquid."
I narrow my eyes. "That sounds like a you problem."
"Careful," he hisses.
"Why? You going to ignore me harder?"
That lands.
It's subtle, but I see it. A temperature drop. His expression shifts like a flame catching oil. He rises. Slow. Controlled. Terrifying. He steps toward me and the room shrinks around us. His jaw flexes.
Good. I want the crack. I want him to stop pretending I don't exist.
"You want money," he says, closer now. "Fine. Tell me. Where would you go?"
"Away from here."
He huffs. "Profound."
"You don't own me." I tilt my head up, daring him.
"I never said I did." His breath is a whisper against my skin.
"You act like it," I gulp.
"Because you signed that right away when you decided to play games with people more dangerous than you." His voice falls to gravel.
"I didn't say I'd marry them. I said I'd marry you. And you clearly want nothing to do with me. So let me go."
That's when he snaps.
It happens faster than breath.
My back hits the stone wall and his hand braces beside my head, body inches from mine. Not touching, but burning with restraint. I can feel the heat pouring off him, smell the whiskey on his breath, and every nerve in my body lights up like a circuit board.
"Do not think," he says, voice low, deadly calm, "that I haven't imagined throwing you out."
"Then why the hell won't you?"
"And do not think," he goes on, closer now, his breath brushing my mouth, "that ignoring you is the same as not wanting you."
My voice dies. Everything inside me turns to hot, volcanic blood.
His eyes drop to my mouth. "If I touch you," he says softly, "I won't stop where I should."
"That," my breath hitches, "sounds like a threat."
"It is."
"You don't scare me," I lie.
He laughs. Dark. Almost pitying. "You should be terrified."
"Try me." I stand on my toes until my lips are one wrong move away from his. The space between us is a livewire of tension and heat, and my body is already soaring.
"You don't know what you're asking for," he says.
"You have two options." I let my voice drop to a husk of a whisper, egging him on, putting him on edge, seeing if I can break through that wall of his. "Let me go. Or prove that you see me."
A single beat where his expression goes flat.
Then he grabs my jaw and kisses me like he wants to erase my pulse.
No hesitation. Just teeth, heat, and rage.
My back hits the wall again, harder this time, and his mouth ruins me. I don't just let him. I grab his shirt and pull. Welcoming it. Fueling it. Devouring him back.
A hand fists into my hair, dragging, not guiding. His other palm flattens against the wall beside my head like he's keeping himself from destroying something.
I bite his lip.
He growls into my mouth.
Actually growls.
"You provoke me on purpose," he rasps against my lips, his breath shaking for the first time I've ever heard.
"So do something about it."
He catches my wrist and pins it above my head. His thigh shoves between my legs so fast I gasp, my knees screaming collapse. He notices. Smiles. All feral, all sin.
He drags my body into full contact, mouth opening over mine in a deeper, darker kiss. One hand locked in my hair, controlling the angle. The other gripping my hip hard enough to bruise.
He kisses like he's been starving for years.
And God, I kiss him back like I want to ruin us both.
Heat collides. I'm pressed so tight against him I can't inhale without breathing him in.
His mouth leaves mine and drags down my throat, teeth and tongue and the scrape of his beard against sensitive skin, and I tilt my head back, giving him everything.
Then, in one brutal motion, my nightgown is shoved up over my ribs, and his mouth is on the curve of my shoulder. Hot. Unforgiving. Teeth scraping where he somehow already knows I'm sensitive.
Before I can gasp, my bra is gone.
Not unhooked.
Torn. The sound is obscene, fabric surrendering to force.
"Fuck," I whisper. Why do I like that so much?
The second his mouth closes over my nipple, my head hits the wall and I let out a sound that should embarrass me for the rest of my life. Filthy. Uncontrolled. He grins against my skin like that sound is a trophy he plans to mount on his wall.
His tongue drags slow, then harsh. His beard scrapes against the swell of my breast in a rough, maddening contrast to the wet heat of his mouth, and I arch into him, my fist still locked in his shirt because I might genuinely die if I let go.
His other hand moves.
Lower. Between my thighs. Fingers trailing fire through the thin cotton of my underwear. He doesn't ask. He traces the line of me through the fabric, finds the wet patch, and presses his thumb flat against it.
I jerk like I've been shocked.
"Soaked," he says against my breast, voice like gravel wrapped in velvet. "All four days of this. You were soaked?"
I can't answer. Can't think. My hips roll against his hand on their own, chasing pressure I didn't give them permission to want.
He slides the fabric aside. No preamble. No warning. Just his fingers, two of them, pushing into bare, slick heat so deep and sudden that a choked moan claws out of me loud enough to echo off the stone.
His mouth clamps harder on my breast like he wants to swallow the sound whole.
"You walk into my room in this flimsy excuse of a nightdress," another slow, devastating curl of his fingers, "and expect me to let you go?"
I'm shaking. Clinging. Forgetting why I came down here, forgetting my own name, forgetting everything except the way his fingers drive slow and deep inside me, curling exactly how I remember from that night. That goddamn night that led us down this path.
His rhythm is cruel with control. The kind that keeps me right at the edge but won't let me fall. I could cry from the ache. I could beg. I'm dangerously close to both.
"Nikolai..."
"It took you four days," he says, voice like soft sin against my throat, "to come begging."
His lips find my breast again. Hungry. Claiming. His tongue circling my nipple while his fingers work me open, and the dual assault is too much, too good, too everything.
"And you think," he adds, thrusting deeper, thumb pressing against my clit in a slow, merciless circle, "that I haven't been losing my fucking mind since night one?"
I can't breathe.
I can't think.
I can only fall apart.
The orgasm tears through me like something feral, clenching around his fingers, my spine arching off the wall as the pleasure crests and crashes and keeps crashing. He doesn't stop. Doesn't slow. Works me through every pulse until I'm boneless, trembling, barely holding myself upright.
His mouth curves against my skin in quiet, devastating victory.
I'm a shaking mess, collapsed against his chest, but already reaching for his belt because I'm not done. Can you blame me? I've felt this man's cock before. I'm ready for second helpings.
But he stills. Catches my wrist. Pulls it away from his belt.
"We're done."
"You're kidding." My voice comes out furious, squeaky, incredulous.
His jaw ticks. "I said we're done."
"And why," I say flatly, "would we stop now?"
"Because the first time I fuck you in this house won't be against a wall where anyone could walk in." He steps back, and the loss of his body feels like gravity dropping out. "And because we're both pissed," he adds, breathing ragged. "And this doesn't fix shit."
"So that's it?" Ice in my tone.
His eyes flare. "I'm not a good man, Elle. But I'm trying to do the right thing."
"The right thing would be finishing what you started." I tug my nightgown back down.
Something like a dangerous smile ghosts his mouth. "Maybe next time."
I take a step back. Clean. Controlled. "I'm going to my room."
He doesn't stop me.
Doesn't say a word.
I walk away with my spine straight, even though my legs are wrecked and every inch of me is still trembling for him. I don't look back. By the time I reach my room, I'm buzzing with rage, desire, humiliation, and confusion, all fighting for first place.
I slam the door shut behind me. "Well," I say to the empty air. "That was productive."
Except it's not empty.
Sir Isaac Mewton trots out from under the bed, stretching like he's returning from a private spa retreat.
"Don't look at me like that," I tell him as he hops onto my lap. "He started it."
The cat blinks. Zero sympathy.
I run a hand over his ridiculous, silky fur, grounding myself until my pulse finally slows.
"It was nothing, Isaac," I lie out loud. "Leftover chemistry. A one-time slip."
But even as I sit there pretending I believe it, I already know it's a lie.