Chapter 10 #2
“You get one lesson. Free of charge.” I hold one finger up in front of her face. “I was eleven. A rival family targeted my father. They ended it in our kitchen. With my mother.”
The memories come, undiluted and merciless.
My mother’s face as her lips formed my name one last time. The smile hiding her fear. The improbable gentleness. Then my own screams echoing down the hallway as those men dragged me out of my home and tossed me into the cold.
“It was winter. They left me outside. In the snow.” As I continue to reveal my darkest memory, my control falters for a second. “I called for her for hours. I was weak. I let it happen.”
No softening. No apology. No drama. Just the brutal truth, offered up to horrify Jordan, to make her see what kind of man she’s really dealing with.
And as I speak, I’m in that place again.
The wind cut through pajamas meant for warmth inside, not for survival.
Snow seeped through socks, then skin, until the fabric surrendered and left me barefoot on ice.
The hours stretched and contracted, held together only by the rhythm of me pounding helplessly on the locked door of my home, my skin cracking, bleeding.
Logic and thinking gave way to shrieks. Until the cold stole even my voice.
Then the slow, grinding realization that no rescue would happen. That I was truly, fully, alone.
The cold wasn’t just cold.
It was extinction, starting as a sharp, bone-deep pain and mutating into a heavy, dragging numbness. A longing to just give in, to sink into the darkness.
The overwhelming freeze transformed into unbearable heat so intense, I had to strip to cool down.
That’s how the Kozlov men found me. A little boy, half-naked in the snow, crying for his stiff, dead mother.
Jordan remains silent.
Perfectly still.
She doesn’t glance away. And in her gaze, I find none of the revulsion I expect. Not even fear.
But I do find compassion.
Don’t look at me like that.
She doesn’t blink. Simply stares straight through me like she can see the frigid iron welded into my bones.
Again, she brushes my hair back from my forehead.
“Don’t.” I knock her hand away with mine. “Never look at me like that again.”
As expected, she flinches. Though I don’t understand why her eyes soften, or why her muscles relax against my body.
She should want to run. Instead, she settles, reading me more accurately than I thought possible.
I can’t let that stand. Her gazing at me like I’m fragile and worth mending is a detriment. I’ve never been that.
Rather than shrink, she grows bolder. “You don’t have to—”
I crush my mouth against hers, swallowing whatever mercy she thinks she should offer. This isn’t the first time, and it’s not an accident. No loss of control here.
This is a deliberate a lesson.
I will take anything I want from her. Her empathy is wasted on me.
I expect her to freeze. To push back. To fight the claim.
Fight or flight are her only options, but somehow, Jordan chooses neither.
She groans and presses closer. The hand that brushed my hair now tangles in the strands.
And that, somehow, is the worst of all.
I don’t expect her body to melt against mine, tension pooling to nothing and slipping away like water from cupped hands.
I don’t anticipate my own reaction either. A jagged, hungry need that implodes inside me. An urge to eat Jordan alive, to consume every last bit of her.
My palms, which just a breath ago pinned her face in place to demand she learn her lesson, drop to her waist, her hips.
A desire to control her, to dominate, to show her I’m not weak… That would be reasonable.
What’s unreasonable is my need to mark her. To stake my raw and reckless claim on the only person who’s ever tried to thaw the ice inside me.
My fingers skim up her sides, the fabric of her clothes bunching under my fingers. I have to—need to—touch skin. I shove the shirt up, chasing heat, anchoring myself in the reality of her. My thumbs glide along the angles of her ribs.
She’s already gained a little weight from the decent meals I’ve given her the past few days, just enough to round out her cheeks and smooth the sharpness of her bones.
She’s fucking gorgeous.
My hands climb higher, cupping the soft weight of her breasts. I brush the pads of my thumbs over her nipples.
She moans into my mouth, the vibration punching between us like a live wire.
I want to swallow the noise down, drink her up, then draw it out again.
Her head falls back, baring her throat. She shouldn’t offer, but I can’t refuse.
I haul her up, force her feet off the ground, and slam her against the wall. My body pins hers, chest to chest, our hips grinding fast and rough in my primitive, wordless claim.
Mine.
The word comes unbidden. I should run as far from the thought as I can.
Instead, the idea pours gasoline on the fire in my veins.
Her leg swings up, wrapping around my thigh and pulling me closer. She swivels her hips, writhing against me.
I break the kiss to trail my voracious mouth down her neck, marking her pulse with my teeth.
“Kirill.”
Her breathy gasp breaks through the haze. “Don’t say my name like you know me.”
My teeth scrape along the delicate stretch of her throat, then my mouth opens and I latch on, sucking hard enough to plant a mark. A bruise that will deepen to purple by morning.
Evidence. Proof.
A reminder, for both of us, when the cold clarity of daytime eats away at what we are in the night.
Her sharp nails rake my scalp, and she arches into me with another gasp. The sting grounds me, pinning me in place when I’d otherwise spin out into the dark with nothing to hold on to.
This is more than a kiss. I’m devouring her. Consuming her heat, her breath, her pulse, trying to replace every memory of the freezing, broken boy I used to be.
With her body against mine, I feel as though she could thaw the ice locked in my chest.
I’m torn. I can’t tell if I want to melt or burn up with her.
My hand slides down, trailing over her hip, between her legs. Even through the fabric, I can feel her wetness. I press with light fingers, and she releases another gasp.
That dissolves into a whimper as I shove the cloth aside and slip my fingers inside her.
She’s hot, slick, and trembling.
I stroke, learning her with every pass, greedy for the little catches of breath, for the way her hips jerk into my hand.
I could kiss her again, cut off those desperate noises, but I don’t. I need to hear her fall apart. Need proof that she’s losing control.
That this hunger isn’t only mine.
She meets every movement, every pressure, as if our bodies remember each other from somewhere far back. Like her shape was always meant for my hands. I work Jordan harder, faster, driven by a raw desire I can’t hide behind my apathy.
I want to ruin her. I need to be the cause of her pleasure, as much as I’ve been the source of her pain.
She’s right on the edge now.
I feel her tighten. Her breath hitches and frantic, helpless sounds escape her as she climbs higher. My name spills from her lips. A prayer, a plea, a curse.
This time, I don’t stop her.
She shatters around my fingers, her body spasming in sharp, desperate waves that clutch to my hand. Then she slackens, trembling against my chest. She buries her face in my shoulder, muffling her cries. Her muscles ripple and release, each convulsion weaker than the last, until finally she’s limp.
A rag doll softened by pleasure, slumping into my grip and the wall holding her up.
Her heavy head rests against my shoulder. Eyes green, glassy, and half-lidded. Her messy hair hangs loose around her shoulders.
All the defenses have crumbled.
Leaving her open. Exposed. Trusting.
That trust nearly undoes me.
The truth of what just happened blazes through the haze, hitting me like a slap.
This wasn’t punishment.
Not really.
Not even close.
This was connection. I wanted to give Jordan pleasure, cause her to want more, need me so badly she’d let me see her like this.
No.
I yank back. Let her boneless body slide down the wall.
She stumbles, shaky on her feet. With a flushed face, she reaches for me.
I withdraw and step out of range, refusing her touch. “You think you know me. You don’t. I can read your every thought, every desire,” I say as if I planned this rather than surrendered to an undeniable need.
A guttural curse rips out of me as I lunge for the door, slamming it so forcefully, the frame rattles.
In the hall, I press my forehead into the cool plaster and brace against the emptiness. Try to anchor myself. But I can only think of her rosy face. The imprint of her body yielding beneath my hands. The memory of her cries. Her warm pleasure pouring down my fingers.
For the first time in forever, I have no plan. No control. The variables have shifted. The rules changed.
Nothing makes sense in the face of the relentless pull drawing me back to that room.
To her.
To the place where I lost myself completely and the cold didn’t matter anymore.
I force myself upright. Take a breath. Walk away.
This stops.
Here and now.
Because if it doesn’t, there’s no telling what I’ll become when her trust blazes through all my defenses. No telling if I’ll ever find the man who existed before she touched me, before she inspired me to want.
Before she compelled me to feel anything at all.