Chapter Thirty-six
Inna Grace
I frowned and checked the phone screen to make sure I had called the right person. Caitlin’s name was right there, so what the hell was that noise in the background?
As I stepped onto the last stair, I called her again just as I spotted Akim walking toward me. He carried some papers and that particular expression he reserved exclusively for me.
Caitlin answered, and I spoke quickly before Akim reached me. “Hi, Cate, I’m about to leave—” The words cut off when another noise came through the phone.
Something shattered in the background, and a male voice sliced through the noise. “Clean that mess, and I will forgive you. Don’t pretend you’re bleeding to death.”
A quiet sob followed, and the call ended. I stopped moving entirely, staring at my phone as the words replayed in my head. What the fuck was that?
“Good evening.” Akim’s voice pulled me out of it, and I looked up. “We need your signature on these.”
He extended the papers, and I took them, my mind still trying to make sense of what I had just heard. Caitlin was crying, and whoever that man was just said she was bleeding.
I looked down at the documents and forced myself to focus. My name sat across the front page while phrases like transfer of ownership drifted past my eyes without fully settling into comprehension.
I looked back up at Akim. “I’m sorry, what are these?”
“Hotel ownership,” he said plainly. “It is written there. I will leave you with your copies.”
My gaze dropped back to the pages. My name kept reappearing. Transfer of ownership of a property that now somehow belonged to me.
“What hotel?” I asked. “I’m sorry, but I don’t understand what’s happening here.”
Akim sighed as if he were carrying a burden he didn’t choose. “The boss bought the hotel your father is staying in under your name. All we need is your signature. I already reviewed every document before bringing them to you, so you can sign and keep your copy to go through afterward.”
I stood with that for a second. Dmitri bought a hotel and put it under my name. What on earth? “Meaning I own the hotel,” I said.
“That is exactly what hotel ownership means.” He delivered it flatly, and I took a breath because this man had gotten on my nerves.
“Okay, listen, Akim.” I kept my voice even because I was a reasonable person. “I don’t know what I did to you or why you find me so unbearable, but your rudeness is unnecessary. You just walked up and told me I own a hotel. Do you expect me to smile and sign without asking a single question?”
“Yes,” he said without blinking.
I looked at him for a moment and accepted that I was arguing with a wall. He was executing what he was instructed to do. The only person with actual answers was Dmitri. That was where this conversation ended.
I looked at the papers. “Can I sign these later?”
“No. I need—”
“I will sign them once I’ve reviewed them.” I was the boss’s wife, and if that meant anything in this house, then it needed to mean something right now.
Akim stepped back. “I will let the boss know.”
“Thank you.”
He turned and left. I stayed standing in the hallway, letting the silence settle around me for a moment before my thoughts circled right back to Caitlin. I looked down at my phone and thought of calling her again, but stopped myself.
I had seen bruises on her, and she brushed them off with explanations that never sounded convincing. She mentioned hitting a fridge. I also remembered the way Ivan pressed his hand into her shoulder the other day. My stomach twisted painfully. Was he beating her?
I looked in the direction Akim had disappeared.
He knew Ivan, and I didn’t really understand why my first instinct was to run after him, but that was exactly what I did.
I rushed through the front door just as Akim’s car started pulling away from the building.
I waved my hand as I ran after him. By some miracle, he actually stopped.
When I reached the driver’s side, he rolled the window down and looked at me. “Can I help you?”
He was the wrong person to talk to, but it was good trying. “I was wondering if you know Ivan well.”
“Sorry?”
“I just called Caitlin and heard some noises. She was crying, and a man was yelling at her.” Akim stayed quiet, actually listening while I spoke. “I probably shouldn’t be getting involved, but it sounded like they were fighting. The man told her to stop pretending she was bleeding to death.”
Akim pulled out his phone immediately and started tapping across the screen. I caught Caitlin’s name before he pressed call and held the phone to his ear. His fingers drummed once against the steering wheel before he muttered a curse under his breath and looked back at me. “Call her.”
“Oh. Okay.” I called her again and held the phone between us on speakerphone. The call went through and kept ringing long enough for my stomach to sink.
Caitlin answered just before it disconnected. Screaming hit the speaker, and a door slammed hard enough that the sound cracked through the phone.
“Caitlin,” I called. “Cate—” The words died in my throat when a loud banging noise echoed through the line, and Caitlin screamed again.
“Shit.” Akim started the car instantly, and I jumped back from the window as he sped out of the driveway.
I stood there frozen with the phone still clutched in my hand long after Caitlin ended the call.
My legs refused to move. Ivan was hurting her.
He was actually hurting her. And all I could do was stand there, replaying every moment.
She had bruises she explained away, apologized for things that were never her fault, and smiled nervously.
All of it suddenly had a face behind it.
I just hoped Akim was going there.
The waves rolled in and pulled back with the same rhythm, the water catching the last bruised colors of the sunset before darkness slowly swallowed the sky. I sat on the beach with my knees pulled against my chest, the wind pushing strands of hair across my face.
I came here because I couldn’t stay in that house and sit with my thoughts any longer. Not when Caitlin might be hurt somewhere, and not when there was suddenly a hotel sitting under my name.
I twisted the ring on my finger, wondering why Dmitri would buy me a five-star hotel.
When I agreed to this fake marriage, nobody explained that the terms would keep shifting beneath my feet like this.
Nobody mentioned that every new day would arrive carrying another reason for me to feel things I could not afford to feel.
First, Dmitri rescued my father and treated it as nothing more than another task on his schedule.
Then he showed me exactly how jealous he could get.
Now he was out here buying an entire expensive hotel and stowing it under my name like that was a normal gesture between two people pretending to be married.
The arrangement was temporary, which meant falling for him was not an option. So why was I slowly feeling things anyway? The feelings didn’t even have the decency to consult me before arriving and settling in my chest.
“What are you doing here?” Dmitri asked suddenly, and I turned so quickly, my heart racing. He stood behind me in the dark,
“Hey,” I said, because somehow that was the only thing my brain produced.
He walked toward me and stood beside me for a moment before lowering himself onto the sand. He sat close, knees bent, close enough that his body brushed mine.
“So?”
I turned to look at him. “I came to watch the sunset?”
“You have been here for hours.”
“How did you know that?” I asked, and he just remained quiet. “Okay, I was worried.”
“Worried?” he asked.
“Yes. I called Caitlin earlier, and I think she was fighting with Ivan. When I told Akim about it, he drove off without a word.” I paused. “Can you get me his number? I just want to know if she’s okay because her phone is off.”
Dmitri was quiet for a beat. “Akim will handle it.”
“How are you so certain? Dmitri, please, she’s my friend and…”
He hooked his arm around my waist and lifted me before I finished the sentence, pulling me onto him. His legs straightened beneath me until I was straddling his lap with my hands landing on his shoulders. “What are you doing? I’m in the middle of being worried here.”
“Akim will handle it.” He sounded so sure about it.
“Can you just call him to be sure?”
He exhaled and pulled his phone out of his pocket. I watched him tap the screen, and it lit up with Akim’s name on it. He handed me the phone, and I took it so fast. It was going through.
Dmitri pulled me closer, and I pressed a hand to his chest, maintaining the distance.
Akim answered. “Boss.” He said.
“Hi, Akim. It’s Inna. I wanted to know about Caitlin. Is she okay? Did you get her?”
He hesitated before answering. “Yes. She is with me.”
My shoulders relaxed. That was a relief. “Thank you.” I hung up and gave Dmitri the phone. “See, it wasn’t that hard.”
“Why were you with Akim, anyway? Did you go to my office?”
“He came here to bring documents for me to sign. You bought a hotel and put it in my name.”
“Hm. He did.”
I sighed. “Why? Do I own it? Is it because my father is there?”
His hand moved slowly around the curve of my hip, and I registered it. “You’re my wife,” he said. “You should own several properties.”
I laughed despite myself. “About that, wasn’t I supposed to be just a fake—” The rest of the sentence evaporated when his hand curved around my neck and drew me in. His mouth found mine, and he moved his lips slowly at first before he deepened the kiss.
My hands moved over his shoulders and drew him in.
He responded to it, his mouth moving against mine with focused intensity and urgency.
I was starving, and I knew it. My body broadcasted that information without shame.
Somewhere beneath the hunger was exactly the direction I had been trying to talk myself out of.
He broke the kiss, and his mouth moved to my neck, tracing down with the same energy. His hand caught the hem of my dress, drawing it upward, but I reached down and stopped him.
“We should talk first.” I tried to catch my breath. “Otherwise, I’ll start thinking things I’m not supposed to think.” I moved off his lap, not because I didn’t want him, but because wanting him was precisely the problem.
He moved. One moment I was above him and the next he was above me, his hand sliding back under my dress.
“Dmitri.” His lips returned to mine, deeper this time, but I pulled back enough to speak. He waited, his lips resting against mine. “Can we just talk? An actual conversation.”
“I’m listening,” he said, the words brushing directly across my lower lip.
“A talk means you stop what your hands are doing.” I closed my eyes when his mouth moved to my jaw, and his fingers found their way between my legs.
“We never agreed to this being a regular thing, and if it becomes one, I’ll stop being able to tell myself it means nothing.
” My voice frayed at the edge, and I steadied it.
“If we keep having sex, Dmitri, I won’t be able to control what I feel for you. ”
His hand went still, and then he pulled back enough for me to notice the shift. I exhaled and closed my eyes. Feelings were not part of the arrangement. I was a temporary wife, and I agreed to those terms fully aware of them. Whatever was currently living in my chest needed to understand that.
I pushed up onto my elbows to sit, and my eyes caught him as he undid his belt. My heart raced as he pulled his cock free. He was already hard.
“Didn’t you hear what I said?” I asked.
“You threatened me,” he said, lowering me back against the sand with one hand, the other pushing my dress up my thighs.
“This isn’t a joke, I mean it, I—” The words dissolved when he ran himself along the fabric of my panties. The pleasure moved through me in a wave. “Why are you doing this?”
He kissed the side of my neck, moved upward along my jaw, and settled at my ear. His fingers pushed my panties aside, and he pressed his cock against the entrance as he whispered to me, “the same thing you’re doing to me.” His lips brushed the shell of my ear. “I’m threatening you back.”
He pushed inside, and my back arched off the sand, his name leaving my mouth before I finished deciding to say it. He crushed his mouth back to me, kissing me the way he moved his hips, like he intended to be thorough about it. My hands moved into his hair as he pulled back and thrust in again.
The speed increased. He slammed faster and harder than I could have imagined, scattering every coherent thought I was still holding onto. What replaced them was how he filled me, my walls opening around his cock.
He paused the kiss as he sank deep and stayed there without moving. My hips chased the friction he wasn’t giving. His hands pushed my dress up past my stomach, and his fingers slid under my bra. It went up, leaving me exposed to the night air for approximately one second before he touched me.
He massaged my breasts slowly without moving his hips, which was a specific cruelty. Every second of him inside me without fucking me made me roll my hips on my own, searching, needing. When that wasn’t enough, my hand moved between us, and I touched myself, circling while my hips chased it.
The wave built faster than I expected, and I pressed harder, my walls tightening around him. My thighs shook against his hips, the release moving through me in long pulses while he stayed buried inside and pressed my nipples.
He chuckled like he was satisfied. “You are in trouble, Inna.”
He wrapped an arm around me and lifted, repositioning us in one fluid motion until I was straddling him again. He guided my hips down once, and the sound that left me was loud. The angle drove him into me at a depth that made every previous version of this feel like a rough draft.
I pressed my hands flat against his chest to anchor myself and moved.
I went slowly at first, learning the rhythm, and then faster when my hips found what they were looking for.
He took both hands to my breasts and held them while I rode him, his thumbs moving over my nipples.
When he drew one into his mouth and sucked, I tipped my head back and closed my eyes.
The only sound was the repeated impact of his cock meeting me every time I came down. My body received every stroke as if it were designed for this purpose.
My body stopped being subtle about it, and right now, wanting was the only honest thing I had left.