Chapter Thirty-three
Dmitri Konstantinov
I stood by the window, holding my glass and staring out at the ocean. The drink didn’t distract my mind from replaying Inna’s voice and laughter.
Every time I decided to control myself, Inna did something the next day that made my decision seem useless.
She was comfortable around Roman in a way I didn’t anticipate and probably should have.
I watched her forget I was sitting beside her at that dining table.
Their conversation pulled her forward, her whole body turning toward Roman.
The stupid nickname slipped from her lips twice, with a familiarity that told me their history ran deeper.
Her face held that particular brightness she didn’t produce for rooms, occasions, or me. Roman knew things about her family that she didn’t know he knew, yet she smiled so warmly at him.
She didn’t notice when I stood up and left. That was an hour ago.
I cleared the glass and refilled it as I turned the thought over one more time.
If fucking her would stop me from wanting to put a bullet in my own brother’s skull, then the argument against it was losing ground.
I already had Iker moving in the direction I needed.
She could leave after and go back to whatever her life looked like before I walked into it.
This marriage would end like everything else.
The door opened, and my hand stilled as I lifted the glass. If it were Roman, I would kill him. But he wasn’t stupid enough to come to the third floor.
“Hey.” Inna’s voice still carried the warmth from downstairs. I didn’t turn. Her footsteps moved further into the room. “I still can’t believe it. Romeo, I mean, Roman, is your actual brother?”
I turned specifically to see how bright her face was when she said his name like that. It was exactly as bright as I expected.
I took a slow sip and let her talk because she was already somewhere else entirely.
Her fingers trailed along the spines of books as she laughed and talked about Roman the way people talk about memories they keep in good condition.
She mentioned her mother’s café, how Roman became a regular, the cap he always wore, and a few small, stupid details.
She has never looked that happy while with me in a normal conversation.
“When you look closely, you two actually look alike.” She looked at me. “He’s your younger brother, right? What about your other brother? Does he look more like Romeo or more like—”
The glass left my hand before she finished the sentence. It hit the wall, and the shattering sound echoed across the room. I stood with my fist clenched at my side and my jaw set as I looked at her.
She looked between the mess and me. “Dmitri?”
“Did you two fuck?” I moved toward her and began rolling up my sleeves because my hands needed something to do, or I would hit the wall.
Her mouth opened. “What?”
“You heard me.”
“He was just a friend,” she said, the words coming out carefully. “I won’t do this. I’m leaving.” She turned, but I crossed the distance and pressed her against the shelf, my hand flat against the wood beside her. “Just let me go.”
“Do you like him?”
“Dmitri—”
“Do you fucking like him?” The words came out more sharply. “Because you can walk back downstairs and tell him exactly that, since apparently that’s where your face works properly.”
She stared at me with disgust in her eyes. “I think you’re just angry.”
I pulled her off the shelf and turned her, pressing her forward against it. I gripped both her wrists behind her back at the base of her spine. A book came off the shelf above and hit the floor, and neither of us moved.
“What are you doing?” Her voice was tight. “You want to hurt me because I talked to your brother?”
“Should I hurt you?” My lips pressed against her ear. “Did you do this so I would hurt you?”
“Do what? I only talked to him. That’s all I did.” She pulled against my grip. “Let go of my hands. Let go.”
“Are you scared of me?” The words came from somewhere I wasn’t managing carefully. “Because I can hurt you? Because he makes you comfortable in ways I don’t, is that it?”
“He is just a friend,” she gritted, her jaw tight.
“And I’m your fucking husband!” The grip on her wrists tightened, and she hissed through her teeth. “I’m the one you smile at. You are mine, Inna. You’re fucking mine.”
Her body shifted closer to the shelf, and I followed, pressing my chest against her back, caging her there.
“You’re hurting me,” she said with no performance in it.
I closed my eyes and let reality take control.
Inna was nobody. She was a fake wife I pulled off the street because she owed me money, a temporary inconvenience I dressed well and housed in my mansion.
She wasn’t anything I needed to account for.
I could walk out of this room, make one phone call, and have a woman in my bed within the hour.
I could get someone who wouldn’t smile at my brother while I stood in the same room, invisible.
I opened my eyes and released her wrists.
She eased slowly and turned to face me, flexing her hands at her sides. I kept my arm braced on the shelf above her head and didn’t move. She was between me and the wood, and she wasn’t leaving.
She needed to leave.
“Get out,” I said, jaw locked. She lifted her eyes to mine. “Get the fuck out.” The words came out with enough force. She nodded once and slid out of me.
My grip on the shelf tightened. The voices in my head ran in two directions simultaneously. One side recited the list of reasons she was nothing; the other side dismantled it as quickly as it had been built.
“I don’t like him.” Inna’s voice came quietly from behind me. “I’ve never slept with him, and I don’t see him as anything except someone I used to know. So—”
My hand found her wrist before she finished the sentence, and I pulled her back against the shelf. She should have left when I told her to. She was too late now, and whatever this marriage was, it would officially end here.
My mouth took hers with such force that sent back against the shelf, and books came crashing down around us.
I kissed her the way you kiss after arguing for weeks, with every frustration and unresolved thoughts.
I took the mouth she’d been using to smile at Roman during that breakfast, the mouth that laughed for someone else in a room I was in.
She was at my mercy, and I intended to make the point clearly.
Her hands came to my chest, and I took her wrists, pinning them above her head against the shelf. She gasped and opened her mouth to say something, but I kissed her harder. My other hand caught the fabric of her dress and dragged it up her thighs.
I slid my fingers beneath the fabric, moving between her legs.
The quiet moan that left her dissolved the last of whatever argument I was still running.
I traced my fingers along her pussy through the thin barrier of her underwear.
Her body responded the way it always did, the fabric dampening under my fingers.
I spent weeks behaving myself inside a fake marriage like a man with principles, running my hands through her hair and kissing her neck and stopping there like some patient idiot. I was done being patient.
She soaked her panties, and her hips shifted toward my hand.
My fingers slipped inside her underwear and moved directly to her clit.
I circled her roughly until she broke the kiss.
I caught her lower lip between my teeth while I rubbed her faster.
Her legs opened by degrees, her body needing more and showing it without apology.
I pulled my hand free and undid my belt. I needed to move before the part of my brain that had been running the principled husband routine found its voice again. She kissed me while I pulled my cock out. I stroked myself for a few seconds before moving my hips toward her.
The kiss broke. We looked at each other, her back against the shelf, and her chest rising and falling with a roughness that matched mine.
I reached down and lifted her dress again.
I drew it up to her mouth and pressed it there.
She took it between her teeth without being told twice, her eyes staying on mine above the gathered fabric.
I moved my cock along the wet underwear, tracing up and down, and she controlled the sounds she made by biting harder into the dress. Her eyes begged for more, and I intend to give that. I gripped the underwear and slid it down enough to give me access, leaving it positioned to catch her release.
She made a low sound in her throat when I slid the tip between her, tracing along her entrance.
Feeling how warm she was spread a wave of pleasure all over my body.
I pressed against her hole and drove in slowly, inch by inch, watching her eyes go heavy, and her jaw tighten.
Her walls opened around me, taking me in with the specific, undeniable rightness.
I pulled back just enough to feel the drag and drove forward again.
Her whole body shook with the impact, and another book came off the shelf above.
It hit my shoulder, but I didn’t stop. I couldn’t.
I held her eyes while I thrust in, her walls adjusting around me. She tightened when I pulled out, only to yield by degrees when I drove in again. My blood ran hot with the specific insanity. Weeks of restraint recharged my body in ways that made me fuck her with clarity.
My hand moved to her hip and held her exactly where I needed her while I took what I’d been arguing myself out of for weeks.
The dress began slipping, and I caught it without breaking rhythm, fixing it back between her teeth and sliding three fingers in alongside the fabric. She tried to say something around it, her tongue moving against my fingers, and I drove in deeper, letting that be my answer.
The strokes grew heavier, and the grip on her hands above her head tightened.
She stumbled once. I pulled my other hand from her mouth, held her up, and kept fucking her.
More books fell, but I stopped noticing them.
Her walls clenched around me, and the orgasm moved through her in a long, visible shudder.
I pulled out and let her finish on the underwear.
We were just getting started.
This wasn’t the version I imagined, but whatever version I had, it never included a shelf and books scattered across the floor. I was to take her enough to pay off for weeks. I held myself back because I knew I wasn’t coming back to this. One complete, thorough, and it would be the end.
I moved her to the desk.
My arm swept across the surface and cleared it, papers and whatever else hitting the floor.
I pressed her down with my hand between her shoulder blades and her cheek against the wood.
She spread her hands across the desk. I lifted her dress just enough, repositioned myself at her entrance, and slid back where I wanted.
I slammed in freely from this angle. The position opened her differently, giving me the depth I wanted.
My thrust became hard and found a pace that left no room for thought.
The grip I kept on her dress tightened with each stroke.
She felt like something I should have stopped denying myself a long time ago.
She was warm and tight. Every stroke she took made the desk creak beneath us.
Then she said my name.
It came out broken at the edges, and it moved through me differently than I was prepared for.
Women in clubs didn’t say my name. They didn’t know it.
They called out sounds and words and nothing that meant anything specific, nothing that landed anywhere particular.
Inna said my name as if it were the only word available to her, and it lodged somewhere in my chest.
Whatever this cost me on the other side, it would be worth it. I would have fucked her well enough to pay off.
That was the thing about decisions made in rooms like this.
She finished again with a sound that echoed in the room, her hands pressed flat against the desk, and her whole body stilled. I stayed inside her for the last few strokes, filling her with every last drop before I pulled out. My breath came rough and uneven.
Neither of us moved for a moment.
The room held a specific, weighty silence. Books on the floor, papers scattered, and the shelf slightly displaced where we started. The desk told its own story.
She shifted, and I stepped back, fixing myself. She stood while pulling up her underwear. “I will,” she cleared her throat, “I was leaving.” She moved, and I stood in one place.
I let her leave without us sharing a look, because if she dared look at me, she would see someone different. I knew what would happen now. I would look at her differently. That was already done.
I ran a hand through my hair and looked around the room. It was time to leave, not the room or the floor, but the mansion.