Chapter 24 Claire
CLAIRE
Adeep, stabbing ache in my shoulder blade jarred me from sleep. Wincing as I came to, I tried to lift myself off the floor. I’d passed out after Mikhail came in me, his dick twitching as he filled me with his cum. That was twice now that he’d left me unconscious, fucking me until I passed out.
“Ow…” I whispered it in a low groan as I turned my head to see if he was gone.
The bedroom was empty, as I suspected it would be.
“Of course he isn’t here,” I muttered to myself before hissing again at the pain.
Falling asleep on the flat floor wasn’t the most comfortable position. Lying with my arms up, the way they’d fallen after I collapsed like a filthy, wanton whore on my hands and knees for that bossy criminal, wasn’t an ideal way to relax.
I hadn’t intended to pass out, though. I hadn’t intended to cave to him and this stupid desire he stoked in me, either.
“Of course, he’s not here,” I muttered again, pissed at myself at the fact that I had been betrayed again.
Not by him. Nope. Mikhail Orlov was nothing if not consistent. When he told me that he wouldn’t change, that he wouldn’t consider another way to rule as this leader he was, he meant it.
When he told me that I wanted him, calling me out on my lies, he meant it.
Blushing in shame and standing stiffly from how hard he’d taken me, I loathed myself for being so weak to want him at all.
I didn’t want to dissect and decipher what the hell was wrong with me anymore. I lusted for him alone. It was foolhardy to act like he didn’t turn me on like a forbidden fruit I shouldn’t crave.
I didn’t want to own up to how quickly my body would betray me sexually like that, compromising and submitting to his demands when I was well aware of how good he’d make me feel.
“Of course,” I muttered as I limped to the bathroom to shower. It wouldn’t improve the rug burn on my knees, but I wanted to wash away the evidence that I’d caved to him again.
“Of course I did.” Talking to myself didn’t help me to feel any better, but I couldn’t stand the silence as I turned on the water and showered. “Of course, I caved.”
He was too sexy, too tempting, too irresistible. He was too dangerously skilled, a master at making me explode in euphoria.
But it wouldn’t happen again. Weakening under his intense looks and sinister kisses like that would end now.
Because he doesn’t care. He doesn’t love me.
If he couldn’t even imagine changing for me, if he wasn’t at all open to adjusting how his life was for me, all for the sake of not setting me up to be a target for his enemies, then that was all the answer I needed.
He wanted me here as an asset. A resource. A tool. A thing.
A sex toy.
I sniffled at the ache in my heart.
He didn’t want to fight for me out of love. He wasn’t intent on keeping me here and possessing me because he imagined a future of cherishing me. Marrying me. Starting a family with me.
Those dreams had been lying dormant in me for so long while I focused on studying and my career. At twenty-eight, though, I wanted to find the conditions to shift that balance and go for the love and family I’d always imagined having.
With him?
Yeah, right.
Here, among all the violence?
No way.
No future would be happening between us when he couldn’t open up to even thinking about changing his lifestyle for me.
As I dried off then got dressed, my mind made up, I sighed and wished this didn’t have to end this way.
With me opening my heart to care about him and start this painful process of realizing I loved him while he wouldn’t do the same.
With me worrying if I would live or die if I chose to be near him or his family and soldiers.
I was in too deep. I was stuck in a cycle of heartache.
And I prided myself and cared about myself too much to settle for that.
A twinge of pain struck my head, and I cringed at the start of something like a hangover. I never drank. I never drank like that, fast and desperately, and I regretted it now. But I left the room and knew I couldn’t allow myself to regret leaving.
Before I could, I had to at least check on Anya.
That teenager was tugging at my heartstrings too, a fellow “prisoner” here in the building.
We weren’t close, not intentionally when I wanted to avoid getting involved with this family and her rebellious nature to be snarky and aloof with everyone.
Yet, we had gotten nearer to each other.
She leaned on me when she was scared and wounded.
I came to her with concern and worry about the trauma she’d endured.
Anya was only a girl. A child. At heart, she acted like a mature pain in the ass at times, but I doubted there was a teenager on this planet who didn’t succumb to attitudes like that.
She was tested more than any other, I bet, with her mother dead, her relatives bitter, and a complicated and murderous crime boss as a father.
Even Andre was distant from her, a brother she’d never known.
Shaking my head at all the thoughts about the teen, I continued toward her room. She would be sleeping, but I had to at least see her one last time and tell her goodbye.
At the crux of it, she was my patient, and I never, ever wanted to ditch a person who’d been under my care. Anya was also not my patient, though, just someone else who was stuck in this cycle of being captive yet not. Of being protected and smothered.
I opened the door as quietly as I could and entered. A maid was still seated there in a chair, watching over her. Smirking at the maid dozing, her head hanging to the side as she, too, couldn’t manage to be awake in the middle of the night, I approached Anya.
Her bruises would fade. The cuts on her skin would heal without much scarring. But the damage was inside. She was traumatized by her capture. She was heartbroken and lost without a family to support her.
But it’s not my fight.
I was taxed enough with fighting to survive in the aftermath of ever crossing paths with her father.
Prioritizing her care couldn’t be my mission. I cared. I wanted to be here to see her smile and reconcile with Mikhail and Andre and everyone in this building. I just couldn’t do so without sacrificing my life and my happiness.
It’s not my place.
Reaching over to tuck her loose hair back off her face, I sighed and tried to wall off the emotions that watching her gave me. Already, I was compromised. Playing doctor to her wasn’t the hardest part of it. That came naturally to me. The other parts challenged me.
How was I supposed to befriend her with small talk and learn how to play the piano from her when we passed time without getting too close and caring that she was happy?
How could I be expected to hold her when she cried and lamented that she had no one and no family to love her without wondering if I could fill those roles?
I didn’t know how to keep close and let myself get more attached to this troubled teenager while keeping my distance. It was becoming impossible, just like it was now absolutely impractical for me to stay here under Mikhail’s wishes, to sacrifice my moral compass because he wouldn’t budge on his.
“Behave, Anya,” I whispered, so quietly that I wouldn’t wake her or the maid who was mildly failing at being her nurse. “Behave and be happy.”
Leaning over to press a soft kiss on her forehead, I moved as slowly and gingerly as I could.
If I were to wake her, I would need to stay and give her that illusion that I wasn’t leaving her, wasn’t abandoning her.
She needed someone, but it couldn’t be me.
Not when I was giving myself up for a man who wouldn’t and didn’t love me back.
I snuck out of her room as quietly as I’d come.
Going back down the hallway, I reassured myself that I’d jotted down all the notes and information that someone else could pick up where I’d left off with her care.
She had no broken bones, no infections, no internal injuries.
I seriously doubted she’d suffered a head injury.
I was sure she didn’t have concerns of a concussion either.
Regardless, earlier when she was napping in her room, I’d written down my notes and suggestions for follow-up labs. Just in case.
When I got back to my room, I walked to the desk for paper and pen again.
Noting anything else about Anya would be overkill. She truly would heal—physically, at least—with rest, hydration, and easing into movement with the expected aches and pains of strained joints and tender muscle from bruising hits.
This time, as I sat to put the pen to the paper, I hoped to leave a different kind of message.
A warning.
A rebuke.
But not an apology. I couldn’t apologize for wanting to leave and have a better future for myself than anything else that could come to me here.
Sex was not all that mattered in life.
Satisfying my curiosity about dark, dangerous men wasn’t all that I should desire.
I had to go. And for that to happen, Mikhail had to let me go.
Mikhail,
I can’t in good conscience accept your generosity a moment longer. We are too different, from different worlds, and I can’t fathom how we can ever meet in the middle and truly be compatible.
Please don’t come looking for me. Please do not send your men after me.
Furrowing my brow and pausing my goodbye note, I tapped the pen to my mouth.
He had found me again, but I had yet to know why and how.
When I was in that police station cell, someone in the Orlov organization must have been notified about where I was.
How else would their fancy lawyer have shown up and represented me, demanding my release when I hadn’t been held with any official arrest or charges?
Mikhail’s power wasn’t only through his physical strength and skillful mastery of weaponry and combat.
He was a fighter. I’d witnessed that when he saved me in the hospital hallway and in its parking garage too.
He knew how to use his body in all the ways that mattered in a violent match.
But he had so many resources, too. He had money and legal teams. He had an army.
If I ran, he’d find me again.
It wasn’t much, but I hoped that in writing this note, he would have to address my wishes that I didn’t want him to find me.
Please, let me go. Your secrets are safe with me and I will do all I can to avoid being captured by your enemies from now on.
I plan to return to my home, back in the UK, to better avoid the trouble I’ve incurred since you became my patient.
I am not your adversary with my departure from your life, but I cannot be the asset you want to mold me into.
Sincerely,
Dr. Claire Donovon
I reread the note three times, wondering what I could revise, add, or subtract. There was no simple way to say goodbye, no easy manner in which I could tell him both to fuck off and to love me. Those sentiments wouldn’t make a difference, anyway.
With tears stinging my eyes again, I drew in a deep breath and stood.
Tapping the pen on the note on the desk once more, I swallowed hard and turned to leave. A reset on my life was due, and I hoped I could be strong to pull it off and escape this man I wanted to love but feared to obey.