Chapter 22 Sofia
SOFIA
Ishowered to kill time until Andre came home. Two nights of helping with the new baby took a toll on how clean I felt. But it wasn’t a superficial discomfort that I tried to get rid of.
I felt dirty and icky deep into the marrow of my bones. That was what a call with my uncle did to me.
I wanted to wash away the stain of ever having known him. I wanted to rinse the gross filth of his horrible treatment so I could feel whole and good again.
Andre could. He made me feel complete and cared for. Wanted and valued. Respected and cherished.
Just… not loved.
Maybe a man as hard and cunning as him couldn’t love a woman. Or perhaps the things he did to me and for me were the results of what could be considered his “love language”.
Or maybe the sex is just that good and I’d wanna worship him and his cock no matter what.
I rolled my eyes and got out of the shower. On instinct, I checked my phone for if he’d called or texted. The burner phone was back in the old maid’s room, because I sure as hell didn’t want that device by me again. I wanted no proximity to the only way my uncle could get ahold of me.
No text. No missed call. No voicemail.
It was shaping up to be another long, late night for Andre, but I’d never hold it against him. Unlike Uncle Roberto, everything Andre did was for his family. For his father, specifically, but it wasn’t anything for a selfish purpose.
After I dressed, my phone pinged with a text and I got my hopes up that it would be Andre.
It wasn’t. Anya was asking for help with homework.
Since I’d taken a similar course to what she was currently signed up for in her nursing program, as well as Daria, I had become a surrogate study partner or tutor.
I told her I’d be over to help her, and I left Andre’s building.
Going through the underground tunnel connection between the buildings had seemed so weird at first. Since I’d used it so often now, it just made sense.
Within minutes, I was in Mikhail’s home.
Claire had her feet up with a sleeping Owen on her chest. Mikhail lifted his finger to his lips for me to be quiet.
He was in the kitchen, preparing dinner.
The irony almost made me laugh.
My uncle was a boss and he couldn’t be bothered to do anything for himself.
And here was the fearsome Orlov leader, making a pasta dish for his tired wife.
I came closer and whispered that Anya had asked for me.
“She’s in the ballroom,” he replied quietly.
I went to find the teenager in the big room where she often played the piano.
“I just don’t understand it!” she wailed when she saw me.
“Organic chem again?” I asked.
She groaned as an affirmative reply. “I don’t even know why this is mandatory.”
I laughed. “I said the same thing.” Sitting with her at the table off to the side, I began to tell her how I’d mastered this part of the coursework.
It was simple, actually—mechanical memorization.
I quizzed her a bit on the material she had to master for her upcoming exam, and then we moved onto something she wanted me to check in a paper for another class, this one about medical philosophy.
After I read what she had, I gave her tips on what to improve or change.
“You must have been an A student,” Claire said, coming into the room behind us. She looked radiant, proving a power nap could restore someone’s soul.
“I was,” I admitted with a smidgen of pride, hoping they didn’t think I was bragging.
“How come you haven’t gone back to finish your degree?” Claire said. “If you don’t mind my asking.”
Oh, you know, the usual. My cousin’s dying. I’m a slave for my uncle to keep up his house. And then there’s this bullshit about coming here and being a spy…
“I want to,” I said, since that was the truth, avoiding a real answer.
“You’re only a couple of classes away from finishing your degree, right?” she asked as she took the chair next to me, seeming to want to talk.
“Oh, shit.” Anya frantically shot to her feet and looked at her phone. “I lost track of time. I told Sergei I’d help him with Maisie’s bathtime.” She backed up, leaving her messy school papers out. “Thanks, Sof!”
She took off, and I absentmindedly tidied her papers. Claire’s presence prompted me to say something to avoid the silence with Anya gone. “I will go back to finish my program.” I lowered my gaze. “Someday. After…”
She set her hand on top of mine and gave me a sympathetic squeeze. With what I’d shared about Esmeralda already, Claire was respectfully aware of how I’d come to terms with the inevitability of losing my cousin soon.
About that, though…
I couldn’t shake off the questions that had plagued me since my uncle called. He was probably lying about that drug, making stuff up to torment me and let me get my hopes up, but Claire was a doctor. She might know.
“Hey. Have you heard about any new treatments that might help a patient like my cousin?”
She frowned. “A treatment? Well, there are constantly evolving techniques and countless research grants in the pharmaceutical field. For a leukemia patient like your cousin, though…” She frowned, seeming uneasy.
“Have there been any breakthroughs?”
“Yes. And no.” She furrowed her brow at me.
“Not a cure, but something that’s shown to indicate a longer remission.
It could buy time, but…” She winced, clearly uneasy about the topic.
“It’s not on the market. It’s not even approved by any medical board.
The little of what I’ve heard about it, it’s um… ”
“Risky? Any medicine can come with side effects, I know that.”
“Yes. That, of course. But it’s also something that’s really only available illegally.”
“On the black market?”
She nodded. “Has one of the representatives from the facilities I told you about mentioned it to you? Because, really, it’s experimental at best yet.
And not approved. And, uh, it’s um, it’s sponsored by a known terrorist group.
Something of an offshoot that some suspect came from a biowarfare research effort. ”
Of course. Of course it would. If my uncle could “learn” about a new treatment that could help my cousin he didn’t care about, it’d be from a shady source like that.
“It does exist, though?”
She shrugged, seeming uncomfortable to even discuss it. “Where did you hear about it?”
“Just, you know, Googling about it and it popped up in a thread somewhere.”
“If you need help getting her into the hospice, I’m more than happy to help you move her and start her under a new care plan.”
“No!” I regretted the outburst. Imagining Claire meeting Esmeralda or knowing she was being transported out of a Giovanni property would be bad.
I felt like my worlds were colliding. “Thank you,” I said at her wide-eyed expression from my shout. “But I’m figuring it out. I’ve found some friends and I’ve got an idea on how to make the move easy for her…”
“Okay.” She didn’t seem convinced. It looked like she was debating asking me more about how I’d heard of that black-market drug.
Glancing at the time, I realized that I had been over for a while. “I should get back. Andre might be home soon. He’s been so busy and I haven’t really seen him today. At all, actually.” I added a light laugh as I stood.
“Oh, I know the feeling. Those Orlov men are too prone to being workaholics.”
I thanked her for her advice and left.
As soon as I entered Andre’s floor in his building, I called out for him.
“Andre?”
No one replied.
Hmm. He’s got to be home by now.
I went to his room, and per the steam billowing out from the open bathroom door, I’d found him.
Or rather, he found me. We encountered each other at the same second. He exited the bathroom, a towel slung so low on his waist, and I entered the bedroom.
“There you are.” I smiled, lowering my gaze to the tattoos and scars that littered his chiseled body. Water dripped over the dips and rises of his muscles. Just like that, the sight of this powerful, sexy man had me nearly drooling.
“And there you are.”
I frowned, looking up at his face. He’d said it not playfully like I had, but expectantly.
“I was helping Anya with her homework and talking to Claire for a few minutes.” I hated to rush to give him an explanation. That was a habit I had with my uncle when he ordered me to explain myself.
Andre is not like him.
He’s not interrogating me. Or anything like that.
But he didn’t seem happy.
Stalking toward me, he unhooked the knot of his towel and let it fall.
“Whoa.” I blinked, laughing incredulously. “That’s um—” I reached for my shirt to tug it off. “So that’s how it’s going to be?”
“I’m going to tell you how it’s going to be,” he said, still sounding so different. So mad? Impatient? I couldn’t decide. He didn’t give me a chance to figure out his attitude, though.
He was on me, kissing me, holding me close, and drugging me with the persistent pressure of his dick prodding at my stomach.
We took it slow and lazy sometimes. Other nights, we were in the mood for a quick, hard fuck.
The latter applied now. Within seconds, he’d shoved me to the bed. My clothes were gone. Slick arousal slipped from my pussy and his cock was an angry, hard shaft.
Foreplay wasn’t happening, but that didn’t mean he was going to let this be simple between us.
As I tried to keep up with his ravenous kisses, he took a butt plug from the nightstand—a toy he’d gotten just last week to explore with me—and lubed it with my cream.
“Andre. I don’t know that we’re ready for—”
I cut myself off with a gasp, then a needy moan as he circled it at my rear entrance, getting it in further.
He didn’t hurt me. I didn’t think he ever would. But this quicker introduction to more kinks thrilled me. Clearly, he was in a mood. Maybe he’d had a long, stressful day and wanted to vent with me.
If that was it, then fine. I was game. I wanted to give him whatever he wanted from me because he never used me. He valued me. Miraculously, he cherished me despite the reality of why I’d ever come to be here.
“Is it too much?” he growled, dragging hot kisses down my neck as he fingered me with the plug in place. Even like this, with his fingers spreading me open, he was quick. Rough. Not hurried—but something different.
“No.”
He glared at me. “Tell me the truth.”
I furrowed my brow, trying to think enough to have any kind of conversation with him playing with me like this. Every nerve ending was lit up. My heart was racing. My pussy throbbed and ached and my nipples peaked for his taste.
“About the—”
“Tell me the truth, Sofia.”
I almost flinched, really expecting him to call me sweetheart, like he usually did when we fucked.
“I am.” Is he talking about the plug and sex and whatever? Or something else?
“Do you want me to believe that you always tell the truth?”
Ice slithered through my veins. Still hot and aching for him, I struggled with the dousing effect of fear.
If he was doubting me.
If he was suspicious of me…
He’s on to me.
He’s doubting me.
And I didn’t have to wonder why.
“Do you swear that you are honest with me?” He replaced his fingers with his dick. The slide into my tight hole was so swift it literally robbed me of breath. Of speech. Of thought.
He was so deep. I was so full. Stretched and stuffed.
Splitting apart in the best of ways as he hammered his cock into me.
“Are you? Are you honest with me?” he growled, fucking me hard.
I closed my eyes at the pleasure. And pain. He was speeding me toward a potent orgasm, and the bliss that would follow could very well knock me straight to sleep. But the pain of him catching on to my lies stung and made me ache in another way.
Like my heart breaking.
“I… Andre… I can’t even think with you doing this…” A filthy groan left my lips as he sped up faster, fucking me like never before.
Oh, God.
Oh, my God.
I can’t take this.
It’s too much.
It’s so good.
It’s—
“Did you come here to spy on me?”
I tensed up, giving in to the burst of a climax. It washed over me, stopping me from being able to compute what he accused me of and what I could say back.
My legs tensed up and shook at the same time.
Waves of white-hot pleasure streaked through me, rendering me limp and speechless.
We’d fucked hard before. We’d blown each other away when we united like this.
But this was too much. The intense pressure.
The tingling euphoria. The blanketing bliss of relief.
It didn’t last.
I came back down from the high, still coming as he pounded into me yet, rubbing my inner walls raw with the plug in place and his cock a force of nature.
“Are you here to spy on me?” he demanded again.
Yeah, I’d heard him the first time. I hadn’t imagined that question I’d dreaded and feared.
His blunt question killed me. It shattered my heart and dashed my hopes of him loving me.
I didn’t deserve his love, not when I was here so duplicitously.
I didn’t deserve him, sent here to be a fraud and liar from his enemy.
He roared as he came. Thrusting in so hard, he strained to hold me in place as he filled me with his cum. His fingers dug into my sides. His thighs braced against mine. For long seconds, his dick twitched inside me as he emptied into my womb.
“Are you—”
I shook my head, grabbing for him to pull him down to me.
He sighed, relief on his face as he took my silent gesture as an answer.
I wasn’t telling him no. I wasn’t replying to his question. Shaking my head was all I could do in this situation, wishing it weren’t happening. A denial that he was questioning me and wishing I weren’t caught like this.
I couldn’t admit it to him, not like this. Not when he was still inside me, when I was caught between pleasure and pain.
There was only one way I could respond. One action I could do.
I have to go.
I was in too deep, mixing feelings and hopes of love with the impossibility of a future with my rival.
I’d already fallen for him, and I refused to break my heart in having to confess that I’d come here not to love him, not to let him dominate me with so much heat and passion, but to spy on him.