Chapter 8
T wo weeks since she’d been kidnapped and she hadn’t seen Yuri.
She’d told Yuri goodbye forever when they parted, but she realized she hadn’t expected him to comply.
Or maybe she wished he wouldn’t. Every day that went by amped up the underlying anxiety she’d been carrying since she’d been kidnapped.
And it wasn’t PTSD. It was over Yuri. She was starting to realize she’d made a mistake.
What would have happened if she’d taken him up on his offer?
Quit everything to travel the world with Yuri, or moved in with him and opened a yoga studio?
Or applied for grad school? It was all so ludicrous, so impossible to imagine, and yet she’d returned to her old life completely changed.
What had been fulfilling before now seemed empty.
The Blue Turtle had been forever tainted. She resented Jake and his addiction, and no longer felt safe. Her old joy in playing music had evaporated. She had no desire to lift the crowd or create a wave for them to ride together.
She’d demanded Jake check into rehab and while he hadn’t refused, he hadn’t done it, either.
But he had also remained stone cold sober, so that was a good thing.
When she’d asked him where in the hell he’d been while she’d been tied up in a hotel room, he’d said he’d been trying to get the money together, begging every associate he had for a loan.
It made sense, but she still hadn’t forgiven him.
Couldn’t he have called first and told them he was getting the money together?
If Yuri hadn’t been there, bad things could have happened to her.
Things that kept her from sleeping at night.
All those thoughts put a cloud over her old life—the one she told Yuri had no place for him.
When she tried to figure out how to fix it, all she came back to was Yuri.
Those intense blue eyes that showed her everything.
The way he never held back—laid his passion and desire right out for her.
It seemed an unusual trait for such an alpha male—to carry such a depth of emotion.
And yet she’d made all that disappear. He’d been a robot when she’d left him.
The first week after the kidnapping, she tried to tell herself she’d done the right thing.
She’d been honest. What Yuri had asked of her was completely out of line.
Way too much. Which, with Yuri, was the norm.
She’d pictured how he might fit into her life, and she just couldn’t make it work.
He wasn’t exactly the kind of guy she could bring to a party or to hang out with her friends.
Or home to meet her parents. He had heaps of baggage and was quite possibly dangerous.
Except she didn’t believe that. Lethal, yes, but not dangerous. Not to her, anyway.
Last week, she’d stopped defending her decision and started to think outside the box. So Yuri wouldn’t fit in her existing life. There wasn’t anything so special about that life anymore, anyway. Especially not without him. So where would he fit?
What if she just allowed herself to dream? What else could she do with her life? How could Yuri and his ridiculous offer of money change things for her? And she’d come up with a wild, crazy, ridiculous idea.
Ibiza.
She’d wanted to go to Ibiza since the first day she put on headphones and learned how to spin. A DJ’s Mecca. A raver’s paradise. Beaches, ocean. Music.
So she vowed, if she got the chance to see Yuri again, which wasn’t looking good—she would pitch him on the idea.
Why not? Life was short. Great things couldn’t happen without risk, right?
Yuri was crazy and dark and insanely intense and her life felt empty without his presence. They’d spent one night together, but it seemed like a year, or at least a month. He’d become as necessary to her as breath.
She put a song on. It was too early to beckon the club goers out to the dance floor.
They didn’t have enough drinks in them yet, and the club capacity hadn’t reached critical mass.
So she picked a beat that would make them feel alive, sense the excitement of the night to come, but not encourage them to shoot their wads yet.
She glanced up to see how full the club was and froze.
In his usual chair, at the table facing the DJ booth, sat her Russian. He wore the familiar, tortured expression as he burned her with the intensity of his regard.
She yanked the headphones off and shoved open the booth door, which still hung on its hinges from when he’d busted it down. She clomped over to Yuri’s table, her white patent leather Doc Martins giving her extra badass points, which was good, because she was already losing her nerve.
She stood in front of him with her hands on her hips. “Two weeks. You don’t fuck a girl and disappear for two weeks.”
His hands launched and grasped her hips, turning her around and pulling her onto his lap.
“Two seconds and you’re talking about fucking,” he growled against her neck.
“You think I wanted to stay away from you? Fuck , Lucya. I tried.” He held her with one arm around her waist, her ass pulled snug against the bulge in his trousers.
His right palm stroked down her bare leg, around the curve of her knee and up her inner thigh.
Every nerve ending stood at attention, awareness of his heat branding her skin.
He didn’t hesitate, didn’t go slow. Like every other time with Yuri, he went from zero to ninety in the time it took her to remember to breathe. His fingers traced under her skirt to her core, slid under the gusset of her panties.
She jerked and tried to close her thighs.
“I won’t let anyone see you, solnishko .” His lips brushed her ear. “But I remember how you like an audience.”
God, did she? She must, because despite her heart pounding out of her chest, when he touched her pussy, it gushed for him. He teased her outer lips while she squirmed, her breath quickening into pants.
“You should have called,” she attempted to chastise him again, but her words lost their bite with the breathy quality of her voice.
“No. I should have stayed away forever. But I’m here now. And you’re on my lap. And nothing in this world would stop me from touching you.” He screwed one finger inside her and she mewled. She’d gone braless and her nipples beaded and scraped against her halter top.
“Yuri,” she whined. “Don’t do this to me.” But she really meant get on with it. She was dying, there, her need raw and exposed.
He stilled and she cursed inwardly.
“I mean, go on. Or take me out of here and give it to me properly.”
Yuri’s dark chuckle fell against her neck and he hitched her up to plunge his finger deeper. “How long do I have?”
With a start, she realized the song was almost over. “None.” She shoved his hand away and jumped to her feet, jogging to the booth just in time to adjust the speed and blend a new song over the first one and make the seamless transition.
She looked to Yuri’s table and her heart stopped. He was gone.
“No, I didn’t leave, Lucya.” His dark rumble sounded behind her, making her start and turn around. He stood in the stairwell, where he couldn’t be seen. Picking up an empty record crate, he slid it under the turntable by her feet and sat down. “Panties off.”
Her mouth formed a surprised “O”.
He slapped her inner thigh. “Thighs apart, panties down. Now.”
His dominant directive turned her insides liquid.
She had no idea why being ordered around would get her so excited, but it did.
For the same reason she’d liked sucking his dick with her hands taped behind her back, she supposed.
She hooked her fingers under her skirt and pulled off her panties, giving them to Yuri when he held his hand out.
“Now you’re going to ride my face until you come, little girl, and if you miss a beat on that music, there will be serious consequences.”
She sucked in her breath, closing her eyes as he gripped her thighs and speared her with his tongue. He licked along the seam of her outer lips, sucked one into his mouth. She wobbled when he lapped at her clit, sucked it hard, made his tongue stiff and penetrated her.
She moaned, leaning one hand against the glass enclosure that kept her separate from the people on the dance floor. The fact that others could see her face, that they might be caught at any moment, nearly drove her out of her mind with bare, raw lust.
How did Yuri know this would drive her so wild? She hadn’t even known it herself. Had never fantasized about being eaten out while she spun. And yet she knew that moment would go down in her book of things she’d remember until the day she died.
She changed records, following a playlist she had thankfully created before. Yuri picked up one of her legs and put it over his shoulder to change the angle. Her moans echoed off the tiny walls, but she knew they couldn’t be heard beyond the blaring speakers outside the booth.
Yuri shoved two fingers inside her and stroked her inner wall, nailing her G-spot. She closed her lips around a scream as her legs gave out completely. “Who makes you come, Lucya?”
She couldn’t find words as she teetered on the brink.
He slapped her ass with his free hand. “Who?” The moment he finished speaking, he suctioned his mouth over her clit and sucked.
“Yuri!”
He spanked her again and again as she came all over his face, pussy clamping down on his fingers.
She tilted her head back, eyes rolling to heaven as her hips bucked against his mouth. She would have fallen if he hadn’t been holding her up, her legs no longer capable of standing. Tears of pure release pooled in her eyes.
Yuri eased his fingers out and lapped at her juices, sucking and nipping her labia before finally pulling off. He gently replaced her dangling leg on the floor.
She squatted down in front of him and settled on her knees. “Yuri. I made a mistake. Is that offer still available? To leave town together? Go someplace?”
His features sharpened and he reached for her, gripped her upper arms. “Don’t fuck with me,” he said hoarsely.
She shook her head. “Not fucking with you. Would you like to go to Ibiza? I mean—” That was stupid, of course he didn’t want to go to Ibiza, why would he? “I mean, I would like to go to Ibiza. It’s been a dream of mine. But I’m not using you to go there—that’s not what this is—”
“Use me. Fuck, yes. Use me. Let’s go. Of course I’ll take you to Ibiza.”
She smiled, joy choking her about so much more than a trip to a Spanish island. It was about Yuri’s unequivocal enthusiasm—his unmasked pleasure that she’d asked him.
“Yeah? Really? You want to?”
“I’d go anywhere with you. Do anything. Yes, Lucya. I want to be with you—in whatever way works for you.”
She reached for his face and he stilled when she touched him, watching her with glittering eyes.
“I made a mistake letting you go. When I said there wasn’t a place for you in my life—wait, let me finish,” she said when he made a dismissive motion with his hand.
“It’s true, I couldn’t see how you’d fit.
But then I found out my life doesn’t fit me anymore. Not without you.”
A muscle twitched in Yuri’s face, as if he was struggling to contain his emotions.
A stream of Russian came out of him, guttural.
It sounded frustrated, full of curses. He gripped her head and pulled it forward, leaning his forehead against hers.
“ Moye solnishko . I need to be alone with you. I will never make it through the night.”
She laughed, his loss of control giving her a heady sense of power. She checked her watch. “Forty minutes. I’ll get my last set covered by another DJ and you can take me home.”
“Forty minutes,” he repeated, standing and disappearing down the steps where he couldn’t be seen from the dance floor. He adjusted the bulge in his pants. “If you’re even five minutes late, I’ll take it out on your ass.”
Her bottom squeezed at that threat and she marveled how he could manage to both make her feel like a queen and a slave at once. And always the center of his universe.
She winked at him and his scowl softened into something that made her insides turn to goo.
They were going to Ibiza. It was wild and impulsive. Crazy, like her Russian.
She’d never felt so free, so fortunate. So adored.