Chapter 9
“So, what do we do? Together, I mean…”
VALENTINA
He’s not touching me yet, but my legs still tremble.
Roman Makarova is strong. Much stronger and older than me. But it doesn’t mean I won’t give him hell.
Just…not right now.
Anytime I arch my back or roll my hips to get those tormenting fingers higher than my pubic bone, he just slides them back down my thigh. A few more unsuccessful attempts, and I moan in frustration.
He chuckles darkly and kisses the curve of my neck. “Ty prekrasna.”
Did he just call me ‘beautiful’ in Russian?
“Bystree!” The word spills out of me when I don’t even know what it means. I rake my memory, and nothing comes.
“Plohishka,” he growls. “Bad girl.”
He’s harder than a rock beneath me, his cock jutting and nudging my inner thigh.
But his control is dumbfounding. This time, when his fingers slide along my pubic bone, I soften my body, melting back into him, and those fingers roam up.
I hiss when they coast along my nether lips. I can’t focus on anything else.
After he licked me to oblivion earlier, how can I possibly want more? Especially when he fucked my throat until my voice was hoarse and my throat was swollen?
Then, he cups me in his huge palm. A whimper leaves my throat.
“Look at me,” Roman commands. “Posmotri na menya.”
My eyes collide with his. They lock around me like emerald prisons, forcing me to give him my pleasure. My eyes blur from unshed tears because he’s caressing me again, softly, slowly.
Until he injects two thick fingers inside me.
I buck, but Roman catches me, gripping my waist. One palm finds my breast.
“So fucking wet, Maya Valya,” he breathes, holding my gaze, burying another finger in me, stretching me until it’s painful.
“Beyond the water, you are soaked for me. Your body knows your king. Your body knows the only one powerful enough to bring you the pleasure you seek. Your mind may never remember. But your soul knows who it belongs to.”
He curls a thumb around my taut nipple. Molten pleasure courses through my blood, and my pulse sings as he plunges in and out. Somehow, I know I’ve never been with anyone more powerful or self-assured than Roman Makarova.
Everything in me responds. Not just because he commands me. But because he worships me.
Hot tingles erupt all over my skin as he works my pussy with long, slow, deep strokes and the slightest rubbing of my clit. It’s driving me mad.
“Valentina. Makarova. Koroleva.” The third word is the deepest. It rolls off his tongue in his thick Russian brogue like a term of power and empowerment, calling to something inside me—to stretch out my hand and seize what belongs to me.
He belongs to me.
All my nerve endings ignite. And the heavy depth of those fathomless green pools. He tweaks my nipple, and the pressure between my legs coils tighter. Heat grows, flaring, radiating.
He’s not just commanding. He’s seducing, mastering, owning.
He said my mind may never remember. But I know this dark truth: I will never forget this moment. Or what he can do.
He’s stealing me into a world of his own making. Everything about this place feels like a world detached, his own empire. He is an empire himself. An unbreakable realm in one man.
So, why does it feel like he wants to break me?
Caging a squeal, I writhe as he pistons his fingers in and out while training his thumb along my swollen clit, rubbing warm circles around my hardened nipples. My nails burrow deep into his legs, and I’m just relieved he doesn’t care.
One narrowing of his eyes. They seem to darken into green, ruthless storms. One tilt of his head.
He claims my mouth, crushing my lips, tasting me at first before growing in sinful, unflinching resolve.
He sucks, kisses, and bites, his tongue knifing through the inside of my mouth.
His hands, his breath, his heartbeat all conspire and force me to mirror them.
Deep gravelly sounds leave his throat, resonating into my chest and my lungs.
All my muscles shudder. His cock throbs, twitching against my thigh, betraying his hunger.
“Let go, Valentina,” he utters, his hot, masculine breath drifting across my face. “Come for me. With me.”
With his smoldering, dominating gaze and his fingers injecting deeper and harder, he breaks through every wall holding me back.
I crash into his eyes as wave after wave of burning liquid shatters through me, a riptide tearing me into an undertow of swirling bliss that seems to go on and on. He rubs my clit through the end.
It shocks me, stealing my breath.
“Ahh, fuck, there’s my girl!” he rasps. “My fucking plokhishka.”
He kisses me, his hips jerking, and his rock-hard cock jabs against my thigh, spewing his release. My vision goes blind as all my nerves electrify, and our orgasms sync. His hips finish a final roll while my body slackens, and I open my mouth more just to seek desperate breaths from him.
He’s still kissing me when he carries my worn body out of the water, wraps a towel around his waist, then another around me.
I’m gasping when he lays me on the bed before ripping the towel away and kissing every inch of me until I’m begging in every garbled Russian word I know.
He licks me again, driving me to a slow delirium of another orgasm.
And I nearly pass out, wondering how we’ve ever managed to leave the bed and get any work done…
“What do I like to do?” I ask as Roman eats lunch with me.
I swirl a bite of Stroganoff through the glossy cognac cream, the filet mignon so tender, it barely holds together on my fork. The truffled potato puree melts in my mouth.
This time, I let him choose the meal. But I approved.
After a fourth—or maybe fifth—orgasm, I passed out cold.
I woke hours later, still wrapped in him, his palm spread possessively across my belly like it had grown roots.
Now, I’m clean, dressed in a black silk nightgown, sitting across from him at the corner table while we eat lunch like a married couple with no unspeakable secrets between them.
As ridiculous as small talk seems, it’s what I want. I need something to hold onto.
Roman lifts his gaze slowly, fork paused midair. “Anything you want.”
I frown. “That’s not what I asked.”
He chews, swallows, and sets the fork down, fingers tapping lightly against the rim of his crystal glass. The bastard has the gall to smile.
“You were always chasing something new,” he says, finally.
“You mastered calligraphy, sculpting, piano—then dropped them like matches in snow. You dabbled in perfumes, stole oils, blended fragrances on your skin like alchemy. If you could create it, you wanted to conquer it. And then move on to the next thing.”
I blink. The image is vague—but not impossible. Something about it echoes. Perfume. Music. Motion. A hunger for more. Yes. All of that seems very…me. I sip from the steaming cup of Zina’s sharp herbal tea, grounding me.
His gaze never leaves mine. “You’ll want for nothing here in your home, Valentina. My world is yours for the taking. Every damn piece of it.”
I glance at the marble walls, the lush windows, the forest and mountains outside—and then I glance back at him.
“Even you?” I ask before I can stop myself. The amethyst ring on my finger is the unspoken vow, a cold, metallic promise.
He grins, slow and deliberate. “Especially me.”
I stab at a medallion filet a little too forcefully. “And what do you do, exactly, that gives you all this?” I gesture to the estate, this impossible luxury of an island empire.
Roman lifts a piece of buttered bread to his mouth, bites, chews slowly, and swallows. Always taking his time.
“Politics?” I press.
He chuffs a soft laugh while wiping his mouth with a black linen napkin. “Adjacent,” he says with dry amusement.
I narrow my eyes. “Military?”
He leans back in his chair, his white collar open, forearms bulging with veins, relaxed against the arms of the chair like he owns the world.
Because he does.
He grins again—mocking this time, downright smug. “Adjacent.”
My cheeks flush. My appetite vanishes into heat and frustration. I cross my legs under the table, my silk nightgown sticking to my thigh, and try to remember that I wanted this conversation.
“You’re infuriating,” I mutter, spearing a roasted beet from the salad, pairing it with the rich goat cheese, toasted walnuts, and honeyed balsamic. Almost too beautiful to eat.
Roman chuckles low in his chest and lifts his glass lazily. Fine, faint scars riddle his forearms. “You’re free to ask me anything, Valentina. And I look forward to any challenge you give me.”
I want to scream and kiss him at the same time.
I glance around the room, searching. “Do I have a journal or something adjacent in here to help?”
He nods toward the dessert tray between us, where a Napoleon torte glistens like temptation. My mouth waters at the pastry with vanilla custard, served with whipped crème fra?che.
“That,” he says with a smirk, “is one thing you never had patience for.”
He taps the tip of his fork against the delicate outer crust. “Too many layers. You’d always try to eat it from the middle, like a barbarian.”
I lean over with a smile, inching my fork toward the pastry with effortless grace.
“Even barbarians can be queens,” I murmur, lifting a bite to my lips, custard catching at the corners of my mouth.
His eyes darken as he watches me. And I know I’ve just won that round.
“I want a journal,” I tell him, leaning back and crossing my arms over my chest. “I don’t care what it looks like. It can be sturdy and leather and smell like male and Vetiver.” I stare at him, keeping my eyes sultry and regal. “Or it can be fluffy and pink. I don’t give a damn. But I want one.”
“Care for a quill pen with that, Moya Koroleva?” he banters.
“A regular pen is fine. Unless you’d care to volunteer your blood for the ink.”
He smiles, eyes glinting with something between amusement and desire. “You’re lucky I like my women with claws,” he says, leaning in just enough to let the warmth of his breath skim my cheek. “And lucky I bleed only for you.”
He says it like he has bled for me. More than once. Maybe more than twice?
“So, what do we do? Together, I mean…” I trail off, my spine prickling when his eyes gleam. “Other than the obvious.”
Oh, now, he finally reaches for his tea. I swear I’ve never seen a man sip herbal infusions with such dominant masculinity.
“In the rare times I do not leave you unable to walk, maya Valya,” he murmurs, “we do as we please.”
He sets the teacup down, then crooks a smile.
“We race the custom Ferraris I had flown in from Italy—yours always edges past mine, and you never let me forget it. We take the ice yacht out onto the bay when it freezes, slicing through glaciers like kings and ghosts. We drink vintage vodka by the fire and argue whether Mahler or Tchaikovsky is better for making love…right after you’ve sent your temperamental falcon to snatch a rabbit for its dinner. ”
I blink. “Really? Alaska doesn’t seem like the ideal climate for Ferraris.”
“You insisted.” He smirks. “I had to build a heated hangar for the cars. And your royal bird has her own cedar wood aerie. Naturally, she’s as pampered and impossible as her mistress.”
My blood sizzles when his eyes stroll along my body before settling on my lips. “You also force me into weekly chess matches you never intend to win, bake when you’re furious, and once tried to seduce me mid-argument using nothing but red lipstick and a pair of opera gloves.”
I stare at him, heat crawling up my neck and into my cheeks. “Hmm…did I win?”
He levels me with a gaze so direct it punches the breath from my lungs. “Define win,” he says darkly. “Because I lost all my control.”
I remind myself to breathe as he leans closer, voice low and smooth. “We’ve gone to Vienna for the opera, to Prague for the Christmas markets, and you once insisted on visiting Paris purely for the pastries.”
“And what do you like to do?”
He tilts his head, eyes narrowed with a mysterious glint. “I like to watch you live in my world. To see you touched by beauty and then take it into your own hands.”
A pause.
“And sometimes…I work.”
I narrow my eyes at him. “Work. That’s vague.”
He smiles. “Vague keeps you safe.”
Safe.
Then why does it feel like he’s the most dangerous thing in the room?