13. Sierra
THIRTEEN
Sierra
“You know, I have an apartment near campus,” I say to Nikolai as I get out of the car. “No need for us to commute thirty to forty minutes every day.”
He shuts the door behind me, rolling his eyes. “You think Kotya is going to let you live away from us?” He shakes his head. “No. We’ll use the time to bond.” He flashes me a wolfish grin. “Maybe with your face in my lap.”
I make a face at him. “Okay, for one, no. And for two, also no.” I sigh, glancing at my new class schedule. It’s my final semester here, so I know where all the buildings are, but I haven’t memorized where I’m supposed to be at when yet. “You can’t sit in on my classes,” I warn.
“I’ll stand outside,” Nikolai says.
“You really, really don’t have to do that. You can sit in the caf or the library and enrich yourself or something,” I tell him. The last thing I want is him looming everywhere I go.
“It’ll be fun,” he says. “I can watch people and glare at them when they get too close.”
He sounds entirely too cheerful at the prospect, but I have to assume he’ll get bored and tired of standing there for over three hours a day. I hope so, anyway, because I want the freedom to come and go.
I lead us to the comp-sci building. I thought for sure Nikolai would stand out, but nobody even gives him a second glance. He’s young enough to be a student, maybe.
When I get to the classroom, I glare at him again. “No bothering me while I’m in class,” I say.
He gives me an innocent look as other people pass by — one I don’t buy for a second. “I would never.” I notice that his accent is a little thicker when he speaks, but I don’t comment on it.
“Go away now,” I tell him, then disappear into the classroom. I breathe a sigh of relief as I go sit at one of the computers near the front of the lab. I’m not alone entirely, but I can at least pretend to have some semblance of my normal life.
I pause for a moment, then pull up a messaging app.
“I’m fine,” I text Silvano. I don’t know why I don’t text Kyran. It would make sense for me to approach my brother, but he’s too hotheaded, and maybe I want to hurt him a little like he’s hurt me.
It only takes a few minutes to get a response.
“ We’re glad. How are classes?”
We . I suppose I knew he would immediately share the information with Kyran. Funny that he didn’t ask whether I was in class or not.
“Fine.” Anyone should know that when someone says everything is “fine,” they don’t mean it, but whatever. “First day and all. I have a shadow. Assuming I always will. But I need that phone.”
Having Sean’s little codebook helped, but there are still a lot of gaps, and it didn’t get me into Pa’s laptop. I’ll have to figure out how to keep the phone hidden once I do get it. I don’t particularly want the Voronkovs to know all of my family’s secrets.
“ Working on it . Just bide your time .”
I roll my eyes, but the professor enters the room. I quickly exit out of the app, not wanting to draw attention to myself by starting to type before she even begins to talk.
Ms. Maples goes into a speech about her expectations for the course, which are reasonable enough. It’s going to be a difficult course, but I’m looking forward to the challenge. This will help me; it’s one of the last courses I have to take before I graduate.
She only keeps us for half the class period before dismissing us, and I sigh. I was hoping for a little more of a break from Nikolai, but I guess I can’t get that lucky.
Of course, as I head to the back of the room, someone even worse than Nikolai steps directly into my path.
I nearly bounce right into James, who smiles at me. “Hey, Sierra,” he greets me. “I’ve been trying to text you.”
I sigh, searching his features for something that explains why I was ever into him, but there’s nothing that draws me in, nothing unique. He’s taller than I am by a little, he’s got brown hair that’s soft to the touch, and his chocolate brown eyes used to make me melt.
Not anymore.
I don’t tell him I’ve been too busy fucking three men when I’d barely even put out for him. It hadn’t helped that he’d been absolutely rotten in bed with his baby carrot dick.
Maybe I’ve gotten… spoiled? Ugh.
“Lost my phone and haven’t replaced it,” I tell him.
“You?” He barks out a laugh. “You could just say you don’t want to talk to me.”
“Okay. I don’t want to talk to you. Now fuck off.” I try to move around him, but he blocks my path with his arm.
“You were upset,” James says in that tone of voice I used to think was charming. “But look, it was just the one time. She came onto me, and I was kind of drunk. There’s no need for us to throw away something good because of a one-time mistake.”
I highly, highly doubt it had been one time, especially since I’d disappeared for a few long weeks after our breakup. He’s probably been running from bed to bed since the night I’d been taken.
God, I wish it had just been ice cream and movie night, not utter terror and being kidnapped.
“Something good?” I scoff.
The classroom has begun to empty out, though a few people linger like they want to see a show. I glare at them, and they continue walking, but it’s frustrating.
“Yeah. C’mon, baby,” he tries to coax. “I’ll make reservations at La Maison. You love that place. We can talk, and work things out, and maybe you can come over after.”
Un-fucking-believable.
Before I can answer, though, a very, very thick accented voice says, “I do not think so.”
I blink at Nikolai, arching a brow at him. His voice is never accented like that, and he speaks English fluently. “Oh, great,” I bemoan. “Now I’m stuck between two assholes.”
James glances at Nikolai and frowns. “Who the fuck do you think you are? This is a private conversation.”
Nikolai is about the same size as James, for all that James isn’t as muscular. James is attractive, I guess, though I’d fallen out of the trap of thinking him utterly handsome when he’d fucking cheated on me and I’d stopped seeing everything through rose-colored glasses.
Next to each other, Nikolai looks even more menacing. James’s attempt to intimidate Nikolai fails miserably.
“You can consider me her… guardian, I think you’d say?” Nikolai says in that same ridiculous voice.
For some reason, I have to fight the urge to laugh even though I’m a little surprised he hadn’t introduced himself as my boyfriend .
Even the professor is gone now, and it’s only the three of us in the otherwise empty computer lab.
“Guardian?” James scoffs and looks at me. “You hired protection just to walk around campus? Your brothers weren’t enough anymore?”
My gaze flicks to Nikolai for a second, then I look back at James. “One of them is in jail,” I say flatly, and as soon as I say the words, I regret them. He’s always had a way of coaxing words out of me, though; he’d been so easy to talk to at first that we’d spent hours on the phone.
He’s one of the few people who suspects what kind of life my family leads even though I’d been quick to dissuade him from that line of thinking more than once.
“Jail?” James has the courtesy to look a little chagrined, but his indignation returns quickly enough. “So you hired some Russian thug to chaperone you?”
I let out a frustrated sound. “I’m not going to stand here and talk to you about this,” I tell him. “You made damn sure to burn bridges, James. So fuck off.”
“Don’t be like that, babe.” James reaches out and grabs my wrist.
Nikolai is quick to respond, and he steps in closer. “She told you to leave her alone,” he snarls.
It’s so funny that he’s the one to defend me like that that I start laughing. Both of them look at me, confused, and I shake my head. “No, it’s nothing. It’s… nothing. Oh, god.” I try to pull my wrist back from James, though, and when he doesn’t let go, it’s not funny anymore. “Let go.”
“Or I’ll snap your wrist,” Nikolai says in a low rumble. “Or perhaps break all of your little fingers.”
James glares back at Nikolai, and for a few seconds I think they’re actually going to get into a fist fight. I don’t even know which of them I want to win.
Well, only one of these guys cheated on me and made me feel like it was my own fault.
The tension breaks when somebody knocks on the wall next to us. “Hey, I’ve got class here. Stop blocking the doorway.”
James releases me, and I take a deep breath.
“Okay. For fuck’s sake, guys, chill out,” I tell them.
Nikolai looks pissed, though, and I know he’s not going to just “chill out.”
“Go on.” I make a shooing motion at James, wishing I could do the same to Nikolai — who’s probably going to be even clingier now that he realizes someone else wants to pay attention to me.
Good thing my social life dwindled down to practically nothing when I started dating James, I guess.
James casts a glance at me. “We’ll talk later,” he says .
“You will not,” Nikolai counters.
They give each other another look, and the person at the doorway clears their throat.
James finally relents. “Answer your damn phone, all right?” He turns, stalking away with the air of a cat who just got dunked under water.
I breathe out slowly, stepping out of the way of the person trying to enter the room. They barely register, though, because Nikolai is giving me a hard look.
“Your boyfriend?” Nikolai asks with a hard edge.
“Ex-boyfriend,” I correct him. I wave a hand. “But he’s not important. Look, I have a break between this and my next class. Let’s go to the library so I can look over this syllabus and get an idea of my course load. You can drop the fake Russian thing and everything now.”
It’s Nikolai’s turn to grab my wrist, and he yanks me out of the room even as I hiss out in pain.
“What the fuck, Nikolai?” I hiss at him. “You’re hurting me.”
“Fake Russian?” he growls. “I am as Russian as Kotya and Yura.”
Oh, for fuck’s sake. “I didn’t mean it like that. I just meant the accent?—”
“Come,” he interrupts me, starting to drag me down the hallway. It’s bustling again with students going to their classes, but I don’t dare do anything to draw attention to us.
I don’t know what Nikolai would do if someone tried to get in between us.
I go along passively, but no one’s paying attention to us anyway. Even if I was in real danger — and I’m not sure I’m not — no one would even notice.
He pulls me into a bathroom, and the woman washing her hands at the sink squeaks as she sees the murderous look on Nikolai’s face. She scurries out of the room with a quick, apologetic glance at me, then we’re left alone.
Nikolai flips the lock on the door then boxes me in against the wall. “You have a smart mouth, zaya,” he says in a low, measured tone. The Russian accent is all but gone.
I don’t point that out.
“I thought you had a smart mind, too, but maybe I was wrong. Maybe you’re too stupid to go out in public, too, to these classes. Maybe I should tell Kotya it made you forget yourself,” he continues.
I shake my head quickly. “No. No, I’ll behave. I’m sorry, all right? I was… I was stupid.”
“Yeah,” he says steadily. “You were.” He reaches out, starting to unfasten my jeans, and I freeze.
“Nikolai, we’re in public,” I plead with him.
“We are,” Nikolai agrees, and his tone of voice makes it clear that this is not a deterrent for him.
It’s a feature, not a bug, one might even say.
I brace myself against the sink and shake my head. “I have class?—”
“Your next class is in an hour,” Nikolai interrupts. His hand traces the curve of my ass. “Your schedule is nice and spaced out. Because you want an excuse to stay away from the house?”
“Because that’s how my classes fell,” I retort. “They’re advanced classes. I don’t set the times, and they’re not offered every hour on the hour like freshman courses are.”
He squeezes my ass cheek then goes back to my jeans, unzipping them and yanking them down past my ass. “You’re lucky Kotya agreed to this. He shouldn’t have. It means me and Yura have to take time out of our days to come out here with you. If you’re going to be a little brat, maybe that’ll change.”
I swallow hard, shaking my head again. “Please, Nikolai, I’m sorry.”
Nikolai scoffs and turns me around to face the mirror. He reaches around to squeeze my breast. His jeans rub against my exposed ass. “Lean over the sink,” he orders me, and I brace myself for what I’m sure is going to be a brutal fuck. I’m not even slightly aroused, and this promises to be painful.
Someone knocks on the bathroom door, and I startle, but Nikolai shoves me toward the long counter with three sinks. It’s clean, somehow, for being a relatively public space. Of course, this building was only constructed a few years before I’d started, and the university still prides itself on looking brand new.
The things I notice when I don’t want to think of the inevitable…
The knock happens again, and Nikolai shouts, “Ocupado, asshole!” He places his hand between my legs and pushes, forcing me to spread wider.
The person at the door seems to finally take the hint, and everything goes silent again — silent but for Nikolai’s breathing, which is growing faster.
My ass ends up in the air, and he pushes me onto the counter. I yelp, but he ignores it.
“You’re lucky I’m not doing this on a bench out there for everyone to see,” he growls. “You’d deserve it.”
“I didn’t do anything!” I protest.
“You were rude and ungrateful,” he informs me, which surprises a bark of laughter from me. He obviously doesn’t like that because his hand comes down hard on my ass.
I squeak, the laughter forgotten, and he spanks me again like I’m a naughty child. “Ow!” I complain by the fifth swat. “Nikolai, come on. I’m sorry.”
It’s his turn to laugh, an ugly, almost hateful sound. I remind myself to never make fun of his accent — or lack thereof — again. His Russian or not so Russian heritage is clearly a sore spot for him. Of course. I should’ve known that.
“Your ass is going to look great all in red,” Nikolai says with a rough growl. “It’ll match your hooker heels.”
Those ugly fucking heels. I don’t want to think of them, and I don’t want to think of another photo session like the one before. I’d look much better in the leather Yuri had gotten for me, but I’m not going to tell Nikolai that right now.
I want nothing to do with his photo shoots.
I want nothing to do with him.
Nikolai’s hand comes down onto my ass over and over, until tears fill my eyes and I fight not to let them fall. I don’t want him to know that I’m in pain.
I’m keenly aware of the brand on my chest, which is hidden beneath my shirt, thank fuck. But it reminds me that I belong to him, to them , and I can’t do a damn thing about this except take it.
I’d promised to behave, though what that means… I’m not even sure anymore.
It’s like a game, where they let me have just enough rope to hang myself with.
He grabs me by the hair, fisting it as he pushes my head down and my ass higher in the air. He pulls my jeans down more, and I’m bare down to my ankles as he spreads my legs even wider.
The first spank to my pussy comes as a shock, and I jolt. The cry that escapes me is more out of surprise than anything else, but when he manages to land another strike there, it’s because it hurts. He can’t do much from this angle, but as I stare down into the sink with my nose only an inch or so away from the bottom, he still continues to take out his aggression on me.
This is painful and humiliating. I half-wonder if James was the lesser of two evils.
Not that it matters. I don’t have a choice anymore.
The next time his hand lands on my pussy, it stays there, rubbing against my heated folds.
“Fuck, you’re so hot,” Nikolai murmurs. His fingers get between my folds and thrust back and forth. After a few seconds of that, he teases my hole, sticking two fingers in and rubbing more forcefully. “Getting wet, too. You liked being spanked, zaya?”
“No,” I whimper. My ass is on fire. At the same time, my body is reacting to his touch.
I don’t know how I can get hot from his touch seconds after he punished me for an offense that I hadn’t even realized I was committing.
“I think you’re lying,” he says. He stops touching me abruptly, and I hear his zipper go down.
Fuck. I’m not wet enough for this. Not that he cares, because in seconds, his jeans are around his ankles, and he’s ignoring yet another knock on the door as he starts to force his way into me. It’s not easy; I’m not ready. But he’s insistent, even reaching around to squeeze my nipples through my shirt and surprising a gasp out of me as he twists them.
Just a little.
Just enough.
My own breathing picks up as he starts to fuck into me, and I find myself trying to spread my legs more to allow him easier access. He grunts in approval, his hand still on my breast for a moment until he slides it under my shirt. He fingers the brand, and it brings tears to my eyes again at the reminder.
It doesn’t stop my body from starting to get wetter as he stimulates me.
I’m not sure if I’m grateful or disappointed that he comes before I can, spilling into me and making me all too aware of the fact that I’m going to have to go through the rest of the day with his cum seeping into my panties.
He nuzzles my ear, his anger seemingly forgotten with that brief gesture of something like tenderness, staying inside of me until the knocks get more insistent.
“This door isn’t supposed to be locked,” someone says from the other side. There’s the sound of fucking keys jingling, then Nikolai pulls out of me just in time for the door to open.
Fuck.
Fuck my life.