24. Laila
24
LAILA
When the delivery truck pulls down the drive, I nearly crash into Dominik trying to get to the door.
“Where are you going in such a hurry?” he asks.
I lean around him, squealing when I see the trunk at the base of the steps. “I’m expecting a package.”
“That is yours?” He whistles long and low. “It’s huge. What is it?”
“It’s me finally doing what Arsen wants.” I smirk. “He told me to spend his money, so, like the dutiful, obedient wife I am, that’s exactly what I did.”
Dominik sighs miserably. “Peace. All I want in this house is a little peace. Is that so much to ask?”
“Probably.” I clap him on the back. “Mind grabbing that for me?”
“Carting your packages around seems like a husband’s job. Since yours is pulling in the drive now, maybe he can do it.”
I look past Dominik again, and sure enough, Arsen’s car is pulling up to the garage. “Shit. Hurry, Dom! Grab the trunk. Move, move!”
“What am I, your pack mule?” he grumbles even as he bends down and heaves the chest into his arms. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, this stupid thing is heavy. Where am I taking it?”
“My room. Our room,” I correct with an eyeroll. “And hurry. I don’t want Arsen to see it yet.”
He stops at the base of the stairs, eyebrow arched. “If there’s a bomb in here, I’m going to get fired. You do know that, right?”
“Nothing in that trunk will get you fired,” I assure him. Then I snap my fingers. “But I will if you don’t put some pep in that step.”
He mumbles something about “disrespect” under his breath, but I’m too focused on that chest being out of sight before Arsen gets inside to care. I’ll apologize to Dom later. One olive branch offering of a red velvet cupcake and he’ll be good as new. The man is easy in that regard.
Arsen? Not so much.
I wait at the base of the stairs, an ear cocked in the direction of the garage, until I hear the telltale signs of Arsen punching in his security code and his keys dropping into the bowl in the kitchen. Only then do I scurry upstairs.
I’m at the top landing when I hear Arsen’s voice calling up to me from below. “Where are you going?”
“Dom is bringing up a package for me.”
Arsen sighs, and, when I peer down around the banister, he looks exhausted. More tired than I’ve ever seen him. A small part of me wonders if I shouldn’t call this whole thing off.
“You didn’t tell me you were going to order anything.”
And just like that, that small part of me sheds its empathy and starts chanting with the rest: Do it! Make him pay!
“There’s plenty you don’t tell me.” I mount the rest of the stairs, but as I turn the corner, I see Arsen following after me.
I resist the urge to rub my hands together and cackle. I’ve got him exactly where I want him.
Dominik, however, is nowhere near where I want him. As soon as I walk through the door, I shriek. “What in the hell are you doing?”
He is kneeling down next to the trunk, slowly removing the wrappings keeping it closed. “You can’t bring a giant trunk into this house without security looking it over.” He huffs out a breath like I’m the dumbest woman alive.
Given what’s happening right now, he might not be wrong.
“Dom,” I breathe, “you do not want to open that. Believe me when I tell you, you do not want to see?—”
But it’s too late. Dom pops the lid of the trunk and literally falls back on his ass like there are live crocodiles inside. “What in the actual fuck, Laila?”
“It’s private! You weren’t supposed to see anything!”
I run across the room—or, walk briskly, since running is out of the question at this point in the pregnancy—and try to slam the lid closed.
But Dominik, stubborn ass that he is, holds it open. “What is going on? Are you hiding something under this… under all of… those ?”
He scans the contents of the trunk like he might have X-ray vision. Which he doesn’t. If he did, he’d know this package is exactly what it looks like. The only Trojan Horse here is a foot long and comes with a built-in vibrator.
“What are you doing with a trunk full of sex toys?” Dominik looks like he wants to melt into the floor. That makes two of us. “Or is it actually a bomb?” He takes a deep breath before he thrusts one hand into the trunk and stirs the contents like he’s making the world’s most awkward soup.
“Get out of there!” I grab his elbow and pull, but it’s like the sword in the stone. Only the one who can retrieve Dominik’s arm from the trunk can save him from death by embarrassment. “Arsen is in the hallway. He’ll be here in?—”
“Arsen is coming?!” Finally, Dominik rips his arm back.
The problem is, I’m still holding onto his wrist, and his hand is clamped around an obsidian black dildo with silver veining details. It was from some special edition, monster romance line. Great reviews. Great price.
The rest happens in slow motion.
Dominik and I turn towards the door together.
Arsen steps into the threshold.
His tired green eyes take in the whole sordid scene.
“A-Arsen! I just carried up—” Dominik points at me with the hand still holding the dildo.
The silicone penis flops accusingly in my direction.
He turns deathly pale. “All I did was carry up the trunk. I thought it might be a bomb.”
The look on Arsen’s face could scare the thunder from the skies. “Dominik,” he spits. “Out.”
Dominik instantly drops the dildo on the floor and flees for the door. “Nothing could make me happier.” He lunges into the hallway like the walls are closing in around him.
Unfortunately, he doesn’t take me with him.
Nothing about this has gone right. The plan was for Arsen to find me examining my purchases. I’d say something coy about how I’m in need of some company for my lonely nights on the couch, and Arsen would get pissed that I spent his money on a box of sex toys.
It was childish and petty and, now that I think about it, beyond stupid, but that was kinda the whole point.
But there’s nothing teasing or playful in the air between us now.
He.
Looks.
Pissed.
Arsen is a roiling storm cloud looming over me, and I’m waiting for the lightning to come. For him to unleash on me so that I have an excuse to unleash right back. But he just stares at me. Not at the dildo, not at the trunk—just me.
“Why was Dominik in here with you… and that ?” His eyes shift to the trunk.
I swore to Dominik that nothing in the trunk would get him killed, but that’s because even I couldn’t have dreamed up what’s happening. Even I, in my pettiest of moments, couldn’t have imagined the violent jealousy currently coursing through Arsen.
I wanted Arsen annoyed, but this… this might be even better.
Still, I can’t let Dom take the fall. “It was a misunderstanding. Dominik thought I might have smuggled in a bomb to try to assassinate you.”
Arsen eyes the box with renewed curiosity. “Did you?”
“Not unless it’s shaped like a penis or comes with five different licking speeds.”
His jaw tightens. Something indecipherable flickers across his face. Then, just when I think the storm in him is finally about to break, he turns away and shrugs out of his shirt. “Whatever makes you happy.”
Seriously? That’s it?
I gaze down at the dildo lying limp on the floor. I did not spend two thousand dollars on high end sex toys for that lame response.
More than annoying Arsen, I just wanted him to react. I wanted to crack through his stony, aloof exterior and get a peek at his ooey-gooey center.
For once, I wanted Arsen Adamov to feel real.
“If you really want my happiness—” I slide the strap of my dress down my shoulder until the material shimmies down my body to the floor. “—then you won’t mind if I test out my new purchases, will you?”
Arsen doesn’t turn around. He just hangs his shirt in the closet and gives me a tight nod. “If you must.”
My heart is racing as I climb back onto the bed. This was a terrible idea. He was supposed to stop me. We are supposed to be fighting right now. If I was lucky, we’d fight enough that he’d get sick of my nonsense and send me back to my own room.
But Arsen won’t even look at me.
He doesn’t care.
He’s going to let me masturbate on his bed without even looking at me.
As much as I want to laugh this off and call it a joke, excitement is building low in my stomach. Beyond that, I refuse to let him see me flinch.
So I lie back on the bed and kick my panties to the floor. I’m aware that I probably look more like a beached whale than anything else, but when Arsen finally turns around, his eyes are dark and hooded.
He unbuckles his belt. “That was a waste of money. It’s not going to satisfy you.”
I buck my hips, letting the very tip of the dildo tease over my skin. “What would you know about satisfying me?”
He could write the book on the subject, but there’s no way in hell I’m going to tell him that.
“Because I know you’re used to bigger.”
“Such a man,” I sigh. “You always think it’s about who’s bigger. It’s not. It’s about— mmm— it’s about what you do with what you’ve got.”
My eyes are still closed, but I hear Arsen move closer. My skin prickles with the awareness of his gaze. And the awareness that I want his hands on me.
I push the dildo deeper inside me and let out a very intentional moan. Porn stars, eat your heart out. Laila Barnes is here to steal the show.
When I crack an eye open, Arsen is breathing heavily.
“Are you just gonna stand there and watch?” I pant.
He nods. “I want to see what you spent my money on. Give me a show, wife.”
I narrow my eyes, caught between the desire to plunge the dildo back inside me or fling it at his stupid head.
I sink down the shaft and try to lose myself in the sensation—try to forget Arsen is standing two feet away watching every second. But it’s impossible. Because even with my eyes closed, it’s his face I see in my mind.
I spread my legs wider, and thrust in deeper. I imagine him sliding between my legs, his tongue on my skin. Right now, if he ripped this dildo out of me and fucked me himself, I’d let him burn the entire trunk.
The closer I get to an orgasm, the more I want to see him.
When I can’t resist it another second, I open my eyes—only to find Arsen standing next to me, his cock clenched in his fist.
“Keep going,” he growls. “Don’t stop.”
“Or what?”
“What do you want from me, roza ?” He says it like I’m a plague sent to destroy his house. Like he would do anything to make me disappear.
But when I look back at his face, his gaze is hungry. Fucking ravenous, actually. His hand moves faster and faster, pumping himself to the sight of me.
He takes a step closer to the bed. “Do you want me to touch you?”
Yes. More than anything. Please for the love of all that is good and right and just, touch me.
But I shake my head weakly. “That’s what the toy is for.”
His jaw clenches, and my petty little jab hit its mark, but I realize too late that my target has shifted. I don’t want to push Arsen away anymore.
I want to drag him closer.
“That’s the way you want to play it, little roza ?” His lips curl into a dark smile.
He pulls off his boxer briefs, and I kind of hate that he wasn’t kidding. I am used to bigger.
My monster dildo has nothing on the beast between his legs. But instead of touching me, Arsen only touches himself.
It’s not all bad, though, right? I mean, he could’ve left the room. He could’ve walked away and abandoned me to finish—or not finish—on my own.
But he didn’t.
He stayed.
Maybe I can even convince myself that it’s because he couldn’t bear to leave.
I’m taking the dildo in deep, long strokes now, working it in and out at the speed of Arsen’s pumping. We’re defiantly far apart, but fully in sync, our eyes locked on each other as we move towards a mutual climax.
“So close,” I gasp, arching my back. “I’m s-so damn close.”
At the moment of truth, my gaze slides up to his face—his intense green eyes, the square of his jaw, the sharp cheekbones.
That’s all well and good. But it’s what I see deep in his eyes that pushes me over the edge. Just for a moment, the faintest hint of it, the tiniest perceptible glint…
Of a man who’s about to lose control.
That’s what I wanted. That’s the humanity I was so desperate for.
When I see it, I orgasm hard. Full-body spasming, sparks ricocheting down every nerve ending. I feel like I’m going to set the bedsheets on fire. This whole damn building could go up in flames around me and I’m honestly not sure I’d notice.
But when I do finally open my eyes, I find that my surroundings remain largely unchanged. The room is intact. Arsen is standing over me. He’s fully clothed, perfectly groomed.
And any sign that he might’ve been about to crack is long since gone.
“You can try my patience all you want, wife. Toy with me, test me—it doesn’t matter,” he says coldly. “I will always remind you exactly who you belong to.”
He leaves, and I collapse back on the mattress, confused and spent.
When I do wake up a few hours later, Arsen is not there.
Neither is the trunk.