12. Adriana
12
ADRIANA
I've been kissed before.
Hungry kisses. Drunken kisses. Sloppy kisses, and careful ones. I've experienced kisses that have turned me on. Kisses that have turned me off. I've been kissed by a boy who claimed he was falling in love with me.
I've never been kissed like this.
I tumble and fall, heading straight down the steep rabbit hole that is this energy between me and Dimitri. One hand grips his hair, and the other opens reflexively, letting the papers fall to the floor. Like confetti at a wedding, they fan out around us.
I'm on Dimitri’s lap, my legs straddling him, his arms around me. He's sitting with his legs together on the stool, and I'm all too aware that in this position we could make love.
His fingers in my hair tighten, and with a gentle exertion of pressure, he angles my head. It gives him better access to my mouth, and he deepens the kiss. His stubble scratches my skin, and the tiny prick of rough pain is a beautiful juxtaposition to the softness of our mouths meeting.
We melt together, our mouths twisting and turning in that intricate dance as old as time.
His tongue licks at the seam of my mouth, and I part for him, compliant and eager. His tongue slides inside, and I taste him. I barely know this man but feel as if I know him better than anyone else on earth in this moment. Each lick of his tongue against mine is a new learning experience.
A small sound escapes me, unbidden. It tears a whimper from my throat, and I press myself closer to him. I need more, but I don't know what of.
He makes his own sound in answer. A deep masculine groan that vibrates through me. I'm aching and needy. My skin is alive, as if I've just stepped out of an ice bath. I tingle all over, from the tip of my scalp to the bottom of my toes. I've never felt so vital. And through it all I continue kissing him.
My breasts are pressed against his chest, and I’m aware that I don't have a bra on. When I came to the gym, I didn't think anyone would be here. Certainly not him or Jinx. I had nothing to workout in, so I took one of his T-shirts and tied it underneath my bust. It bagged around my breasts, hiding their shape. It revealed some of my stomach but not a lot. And I had a pair of his shorts pulled high on my waist.
Now, though, as I melt into this man, I regret not having a bra while at the same time rejoicing in it. My nipples are hard and peaked against the wall of muscle.
He slows the kiss and bites gently at my lip, sending delicious tremors right through my body, before he gives me one last gentle press of his lips before pulling away.
He looks at me, his chest rising and falling fast. I stare right back. I'm falling into his eyes the same way I fell into his kiss.
If he asked me to right now, I'd lie back on that desk, pull these shorts off, and spread myself wide open for him. I don't even know what it is that I’d be getting, but I want to take it all.
I've been turned on before, I'm not an innocent, naive woman who hasn't done anything. Nothing's ever felt like this, though. So raw and urgent and yet so right.
“Christ,” he says as he licks his lips.
He looks at me as if seeing me for the first time. But there's something guarded in his gaze. I don't know what it is, and I don't understand it. He just blew me wide open and exposed every vulnerable, essential part of me. So why is he putting up shutters?
“What's wrong?” I ask.
“Nothing,” he lies.
He clears his throat and lifts me from his lap.
“We should take a look at these papers.” He bends and begins to pick them up.
My heart seizes in my chest, and I stare at him in dismay. Maybe the kiss didn't mean anything to him. Or worse… Perhaps it was bad for him. Just because it was a seismic moment for me, tearing new fault lines in my soul, doesn't mean it was the same for him.
After all, I don't know what I'm doing. I might be the world's worst kisser. I haven’t had that much practice. Not with a man at any rate. My kisses have always been with boys of my own age.
“I'm sorry,” I say softly.
He turns to look at me, his dark brows raised in surprise. “What are you sorry for?”
“That maybe, I'm a bad kisser?”
He looks at me, and the moment stretches into something agonizing. There's a battle raging in his eyes that I don't understand. He scratches at his heavy stubble and seems to make a decision.
“You're not a bad kisser, Adriana,” he says. “It was the best fucking kiss of my entire life.”
An adrenaline rush of sugar-filled joy races through me. It wasn't just me. He felt it too.
“So what's the problem?” I ask.
He’s gathered all the papers now and sets them on the table. “The problem, Adriana, is that I want things from you I'm not sure you're ready to give. The problem is, that I'm feeling things I don't normally feel.”
“Love?” I ask. I immediately regret the question. What a stupid thing to ask. My cheeks flush hot, and I wish I could take it back.
“No, not love. Darker things.”
“Like?” I suck in a breath, and his gaze drops to my heaving chest, my hard nipples rubbing against the cotton of his T-shirt. The one I stole to cover my body in.
“Like lust,” he says. “Desire. Possessiveness.”
“That's okay.”
He gives a dark laugh. “Oh, really, you think that's all okay, do you?”
“Yes, I do. I feel them too.”
He pulls me into him once more, slotting me between his legs this time. He's half leaning and half sitting on the desk now, and I'm trapped by his thick, muscular thighs. “You feel the same as me?”
There's something almost disdainful to his tone, and it makes my skin prick with anger.
“You think I can't feel those things because I'm some innocent idiot that you picked up off the street?”
“I didn't pick you up off the street.”
That’s what he chooses to go with.
“Turn of phrase. A bad one, granted. What I mean is you seem to think that I can't feel the same things you do. You don't seem to believe that I can desire you.”
“Oh, I think you desire me. I felt it in your kiss. I can see it in the way your neck is all flushed and your nipples are hard.”
“Well, then, I don't understand the problem.”
He stares at me, his eyes glittering. “I want to take you, I want to strip you of all your clothes, and I want to tie you to my bed for a fucking month . I want to feed you morsels of food and not let you go. I want to bring you water and champagne. I want you to bathe in that fucking champagne, and then I’ll lick it from every inch of your body.”
I’m onboard so far, if a little nervous.
“I want to fuck your mouth, your pussy, your ass. I want to take you over and over again until you're sobbing with exhaustion, and you can't come anymore. Then I’ll force another orgasm out of you. I want to paint you with my cum. I want to cover you in bite marks and fingerprints so that everybody who sees you knows that you’re mine. I want to devour you. Utterly and completely fucking devour you.”
Holy hell! Okay, now I’m way more than a little nervous. I’m also incredibly turned on.
He cocks his head and watches me.
“Is that how you feel?” he asks sarcastically.
I stare at him, and I know that this is a moment that I can't fail. This is a test of sorts. If I say to him that no, I don't feel those things, that I want him to gently kiss me and make love to me, lay me down in a bed of flowers and make this all romantic, he's going to withdraw into that steely shell of his.
I'll be left kicking my legs, on my back, with my soft hermit-crab belly in the air once more. This man who could be my shell will walk away.
The thing is, Dimitri thinks he can read people so well, but he's absolutely wrong. I want those things too, eventually. I just need him to take it slow.
“The first time you take me, I'd like you to make love to me.”
His mouth twists into a sneer as if to say he’s right. I ignore it.
“It will be my first time, and I want it to be gentle. After that, everything you have just described sounds like exactly what I want.”
One brow punches up in disbelief.
He thinks because I haven’t had sex, I'm innocent? He doesn't know that I sometimes guiltily watch porn and that my favorite is either guys jacking off, or, and this is my dark secret, I like to watch more than one man with a woman as she's tied up, helpless, a little bit scared, and very much turned-on.
I wonder what he’d think if he knew I read the entire works of the Marquis de Sade. Not that it's erotic, it's banal in its boring; endless descriptions of depraved sexual acts described the same way that someone describes a bad day at the office. I read it, though. Every disgusting bit of it. It was part of my course.
“Shall I make myself clearer?” I ask him. “I want you to fuck me. I've never wanted anyone in my entire life as much as I want you. I want you to cage me in with that big, gorgeous body of yours and hold me down while you take what you want.”
His eyes widen, and I can't help the small smile breaking free. “Shocked you, didn't I?”
He merely nods.
“I want your fingerprints on my skin, on my ass, on my hips. I want your bite mark on my neck.”
He swallows hard.
“Did you think because I haven't had sex that my fantasies are all romance and flowers?”
“Yes.”
I laugh. “You don't understand women at all. Just because I didn't want to give myself away to someone who I felt didn't deserve it, doesn't mean that I don't have desire. Doesn't mean that at night I haven't laid in my bed frustrated as hell watching porn, touching myself and wishing that there was somebody there.”
“You watch porn?” He seems utterly scandalized.
“Are you serious right now? Do you even know the texts we have to study when we do literature at the level I did?”
“No,” he admits.
“I swear to God, Dimitri, that if you read the Marquis de Sade, your hair would turn white. I haven’t had sex before, so I need you to take it easy with me at first, but if you think that my desires are limited to soft kisses and gentle words and soft touches, you're mistaken.”
I lean in and kiss the side of his cheek where the bruises are starting to appear. I kiss a little further up until I reach his ear, and then I gently bite the lobe. I've never been so bold, but something about this energy between us has set free the deep, dark part of myself I've always hidden away.
“Maybe you don't know me as well as you think you do,” I whisper.
I look down at the papers on the desk, breaking the spell. “Do you think we should take a look at these? Maybe it will help us find Ari, and then we can kill him.”
He shakes his head, but there's a smile playing about his lips. “Look at you, going all Bonnie and Clyde on my ass.”
“That man took me, and he was going to sell me.” I swallow hard, not wanting the tears to come again. He already sees me as weak, naive, stupid. I don't want to seem that way. Now that I know that he wants me, I want to be worthy of that desire.
I've spent my entire life being trodden on. I spent my entire life either being ignored, laughed at, or treated like an object of desire. Object being the operative word. Even Dimitri did it. He looked at me and projected his own ideas and fantasies onto the canvas that he saw.
He's dealing with a real person, however, and this girl is fed up with being a victim.
“You still look worried,” I say.
“This thing between us is intense,” he says. “I don't want it to lead to anyone getting hurt. Emotionally, I mean.”
“I promise I'll let you down gently when it comes time to end it,” I say with a wink.
He bursts out laughing. “Who the hell are you, and what have you done with Littleblue?”
“This is the real me. I've just always had her hidden in the corner. Too scared to let her out.”
“What changed?”
“You,” I say.
We turn away from each other at the same moment and look at the desk. It's as if the truth between us is too much for either of us to hold right now. Much easier instead to focus on Dorian and the paperwork he left so carelessly in the drawer here.
We sift through the documents, but none of it means much to me. I feel the rigidity in him before I glance over and see him focused intently, his jaw clenched. He gives me a sharp look without any of the passion that was evident moments ago.
“Can you do me a favor?” he asks. “Would you please go and find Alexis and ask him to come meet me here?”
“Yes, of course. I'll be back in a moment.”
“Just Alexis, Adriana.”
“What have you found? I have a right to know.”
“Jesus, can’t you do as you’re asked for one moment? Go fetch Alexis.”
His words hurt and though I know there must be a reason for him not wanting me here, it stings because it’s my damn life. I'm not about to become the clingy, desperate girl who makes every interaction a nightmare, though.
This is a dangerous game for me. Of course I'm not in love with him, I don't know him, but I lead with my heart. I'm the sort of person who spent my life wanting to feel like I belong. Looking for a home. Basically, I've spent my life wanting someone to love me. Ever since I lost my mother, I've been a heat-seeking missile trying to find someone who cares as much about me as she did.
Not that anyone can replace a mother. A mother gives unconditional love, and that's a magical gift you can't get from anyone else. I would still like to be first in someone's life, though. Hana is first for my father now. She is his wife, and I suppose that's right. It doesn't stop the hurt. Everyone is somebody’s first. Except me.
My thoughts bring me full circle back around to my feelings of loneliness. I throw one last glance back at Dimitri, but his dark head is already bent down to the papers, studying them intently.
I turn and leave the room and go to search for Alexis.