Chapter 19
Chloe
The dusty silence bends around us, thick with the smell of damp concrete and mildew.
I freeze, my eyes shooting up to the ceiling.
Voices murmur and distant laughter echoes like a broadcast from another planet. Brenda. Has to be. She’s got a cackle on her. And at least two, maybe three others.
Kolya pulls his gun out.
I hold my breath.
Above us, someone mentions character development.
Another person references a title I recognize, that NYT bestseller everyone’s been gushing about that’s currently gathering dust on my nightstand.
I exhale. “They’re having a book club meeting. Though it’s going a little late, so they’re probably mostly drinking by now.” On a holiday weekend, no less. I guess book club stops for nothing.
Kolya doesn’t respond, but tension leaves his body. He remains vigilant, prowling the edges of the basement like a caged predator. His eyes reflect tiny pinpricks of light from somewhere, giving him an almost supernatural appearance in the gloom.
“Sit.” He gestures to a discarded weight bench.
My limbs obey of their own accord. The metal is cold even through my jeans. Overhead, Brenda laughs again and suggests more wine.
Kolya crouches in front of me. “Are you hurt?”
The words are so ingrained, they come out before I can think. “I’m fine.”
“No. You’re not.” His hands inspect me, clinically and thoroughly. He squeezes my arms gently while examining my face in the semidarkness. His fingers trail down my legs to my bare feet.
The basement is cramped and forgotten. Old furniture draped in sheets. Cardboard boxes labeled in neat handwriting. CHRISTMAS. HALLOWEEN. FAMILY PHOTOS.
An iron fist crushes my ribs. “We’re trapped down here.”
“We’re hidden. There’s a difference.”
“What if they find us?” I hate how small and weak I sound. “What if—”
Kolya cups my face. “They won’t.” His thumbs caress my cheekbones, smudging away tears. “I won’t let them.”
His confidence soothes the ragged edges inside me, filling the spaces torn open by bullets and fear.
I shiver. “I don’t understand any of this. I don’t understand what’s happening.”
“You don’t need to.” His warm breath ghosts my lips. “Just trust me.”
Trust him. The man who lied and hurt others to protect me. The man whose hands are the only real thing left in a world gone mad.
“I—”
I swallow the rest when footsteps thump overhead. Voices filter down through the ceiling. Brenda’s friends and probably family move around the home, completely unaware of the fugitives hiding beneath their feet.
Kolya’s body tenses. His head tilts upward as he listens. One hand slides from my face to my waist and tugs me closer to him. A protective—or maybe possessive—gesture.
We remain frozen in the dim light. His heart pumps strong and steady beneath my palm resting on his chest. Mine races like a frightened rabbit’s.
His hand strokes my back, the soothing rhythm at odds with the danger surrounding us. “Breathe. Slowly. Like me.”
The gentle tone startles me.
This isn’t the man who broke bones at the farmers market and Hobby Hut.
I focus on the rise and fall of his chest, striving to match my breathing to his. The panic recedes a tiny bit. Just enough. I lift my face to his, seeking…what? Reassurance? Understanding?
His glittering eyes meet mine. “I’ll keep you safe.”
And then he’s kissing me.
Not with the desperate hunger he harbored while sitting on my couch or when claiming possession in my kitchen, but with a more tender desire.
His lips brush over mine with careful restraint, as if I might shatter under his touch.
And I do shatter. But not from fear.
From need.
My arms encircle his neck, drawing him closer. My body arches, angling for more contact. The fear transforms into liquid fire that floods my veins.
“Kolya.” I breathe against his mouth, his name a plea I can’t fully articulate.
His kiss becomes harder, hungrier, his hands traveling my back to my hips and gripping roughly enough to bruise. I welcome the pressure. The slight edge of pain grounds me. Makes the moment in this night-long fever dream real.
I need this.
Need to surrender control to someone who holds nothing but control. The realization should embarrass me.
This isn’t who I am, this desperate woman clinging to a dangerous man in Brenda Fucking Smith’s basement.
But if I want to survive, maybe she’s exactly who I need to be.
I stretch back an infinitesimal amount. “Tell me what to do. Please.”
He stills. Then he tangles his fingers in my hair, pulling my head back to expose my throat.
His eyes bore into mine. “Are you sure?”
I nod, unable to speak around the knot of need.
His grip in my hair tightens. “Turn around.”
As I obey, I’m aware of every inch of my body. I’m drowning in his presence, in the vulnerability of my position.
His hands slide up my sides and beneath my hastily donned shirt, leaving trails of heat in their wake. Like a switch flipping, my body remembers the intimate moments before the shots rang out.
He presses against me from behind, his hard length evident even through our clothes. His breath scalds my neck as he nips at the sensitive skin below my ear.
“Is this what you want?” One hand cups my breast over my shirt, thumb leisurely circling my nipple. “Someone to take over?”
“Yes.” I arch back against him. “Yes.”
He readjusts me slightly, guiding me toward the stack of boxes labeled FAMILY PHOTOS with deliberate, measured movements, each touch calculated to wind me tighter.
He positions me in front of the boxes, then slowly pushes me forward until I’m bent over them, my palms flat against the dusty cardboard.
His hands move to my jeans, unfastening them with swift efficiency before tugging them down. The cool basement air kisses my bare skin, raising goosebumps that have nothing to do with chill and everything to do with anticipation.
Kolya’s hand at the small of my back holds me down. “Stay.”
I shiver at his authoritative command, at my own eager compliance.
I’ve never allowed this version of me to exist before. A me who wants to be claimed, controlled, consumed.
Behind me, unseen, he pulls down his zipper. Then his hands are on my hips again, positioning me the way he wants me. His touch leaves streaks of dust on my skin, claiming me.
“Look at you. Sweet kindergarten teacher bent over boxes of another family’s memories, ass in the air, waiting to be fucked.”
The crude words shoot a shock of heat straight to my core. I’ve never been talked to like this. Never wanted to be.
Until now. Until him.
“Please.” I grind my ass against him. Aching.
What on earth could this man do to me if he had all the time in the world?
He forces patience, one hand tracing the curve of my spine, the other sliding between my legs, where he finds me wet and ready. “So eager.” He slips one finger inside me without having to work at it. Then two, stretching me. “So damn perfect.”
Footsteps, muffled voices, and the distant sound of a television continue overhead.
Knowing that Brenda, a handful of her elitist friends, and her family are just above us, none the wiser to what’s happening in their basement, adds a forbidden thrill that causes me to clench around his fingers.
He hums in appreciation. “You like that, don’t you? The risk. The secret.”
Withdrawing his fingers, he positions himself at my entrance. One hand grips my hip while the other traps me against the boxes.
Then he slowly pushes inside.
That inexorable slide steals the breath from my lungs.
I lose myself in the exquisite pressure. That burning stretch that borders on too much and not enough. I bite my lip to stop myself from crying out, my fingers curling against the cardboard beneath me, nails digging into family memories preserved in glossy prints.
When he’s fully seated inside me, he pauses, allowing me to adjust to his size. His ragged breathing is the only evidence of his struggle to maintain control.
His soft but calloused hands burn where they touch my skin, gentle but unyielding.
I’ve never felt more alive than I do under his palms.
Then he begins to move in shallow thrusts that quickly deepen, each one driving me forward against the boxes.
My breasts drag across the dusty cardboard with every push, nipples tightening from the friction.
With each thrust, pleasure sparks up my spine.
I clutch the edges of the box, desperate to ground myself in the haze from Kolya’s touch.
Dust clouds rise around us, the tiny particles forming a halo of filth in the dim light.
I’m being marked.
Streaks of gray on my skin, in my hair, on my clothes.
Dirtied in the most literal sense.
A perverse thrill grips me.
My body clenches around him, and he groans. The low, throaty sound settles deep in my core.
Kolya’s pace increases. One hand finds the front of my throat. Not squeezing. Just touching. Resting.
A collar of flesh and bone that marks me as his.
Miss Chloe, covered in glitter yesterday, covered in dust tonight. The good girl getting screwed in the basement of a woman I despise, bent over family photos that bear silent witness to my fall from grace.
Kolya’s quickening pace drives me crazy.
My racing heart pounds to the beat of Kolya’s body in mine. He pulls me upright against his chest, his cock driving even deeper from this new angle.
Harder.
So hard, I rise up on my toes.
I gasp, struggling for breath as ecstasy whites out my vision.
Kolya uses his hold on my throat to yank me back down onto his cock. His teeth graze my lobe. “Do you hear them up there? What would they think if they knew sweet little Miss Chloe was getting railed in their basement?”
The images his words conjure—Brenda’s shocked face, the resulting scandal, the ruin of my reputation—should horrify me. Instead, I find myself closer to the edge of a forbidden fantasy I never knew I harbored.
“They’d never look at you the same way again.” His free hand grasps mine and slides it down between my legs.
With his fingers gloving mine, he makes me stroke myself.
Dirty fingers doing dirty things.
All the while, he’s pounding me from behind, his hand collaring a throat still sore from him ramming his dick down it earlier. Under his heated flesh, sensations I’d forgotten during our grand escape all rush back.
His hands in my hair. Him shoving my face down. Me choking on him. Struggling to breathe as he fucked my throat like he knew I could handle myself. Swallowing everything he gave me, everything I earned.
My climax builds, a tightening coil of fire and pressure.
“Their children’s teacher, taking cock like you were made for it. Whimpering like a bitch in heat.” His hand constricts on my throat, barely restricting my breathing. It’s still enough. “I should come on your chest. Paint you with my spill.”
A dam of propriety, of self-restraint, of the careful image I’ve maintained for years shatters. My fingers move faster without his urging, stroking my clit in time with his thrusts.
His hand at my throat, his words in my ear, his body moving inside mine… It’s too much.
I’m pulsing. Electric. Vibrating beneath my skin.
His breath tickles my hair. “That’s right. I love the way your body clenches around me. Lets me know you’re hungry for more. Come for me. Come on my cock while you finger that sweet little pussy.”
I come with a violence that shocks me. My body convulses around him as the orgasm crashes through me in fierce waves.
A cry rises from deep inside and escapes my lips.
Kolya covers my mouth with his palm. The loose gag only intensifies the sensations, dragging them out until I’m boneless putty in his arms.
He follows me over the edge, burying a low groan in my hair as he fills me.
We stay like this for endless moments, locked together, sweat-slick and dust-covered, breathing in unison as our heartbeats slow.
Then he withdraws and flips me around to face him. In the dim light, I can see the smudges of dust mixed on his damp face, in his short, dark hair, on his neck.
That same dirt covers me.
Visible evidence of what we shared.
I try to brush away the worst of the dust, but some remains on my clothes and skin.
Just like Kolya has left his invisible but indelible mark on me.
I bury my face in his shoulder, crying soundlessly as he cradles me.
And for the first time since I was nine years old, I feel completely safe.