CHAPTER 16
Zinovy
Glaring at the door separating me from my little bird accomplishes nothing, but what else can I do when she demanded I leave?
I will obey her demand to leave the bathroom, for now, but I will not leave her home and risk her being unprotected.
My restless feet force me into motion, and I pace back and forth, the thick pile of the carpet making my steps silent.
Then through the door, I hear when the water shuts off, far sooner than I would expect.
“I am not leaving your home, my Petal, but I will give you privacy and space for now. That will have to be enough.” I will compromise as much as I am able to while she acclimates to belonging to me, but on some things I will not budge. It is best she learn to accept that now.
“You make it sound like this situation is permanent.” The echo off the tile walls in the shower is gone now, and I heard the click of the towel warmer’s lid opening and closing. “Hot towels and variable water pressure, maybe I wish it was.”
The last part is mumbled, but with my ear pressed to the door, I hear it.
I’m tempted to allow her to believe the illusion she has the freedom to decide for herself if she stays or goes.
But that’s all it is. An illusion. My timeline may have been advanced by the robbery and destroyed my intention to gradually insert myself into her life, but the end result was always going to be this.
My Petal under my roof, belonging to me.
“You needn’t wish it, little bird. It is.” There’s promise and obsession in my vow, and she’d be unwise to ignore it.
“So much for space,” she grumbles. It’s adorable.
“I should give less?” My threat is a lie. Mostly. My guts churn at the notion of upsetting her, and I am certain I will spend the rest of my life endeavoring to make her happy. But she will have to accept that I will be the only one to make her happy from this night forward.
In my childhood, I learned it is best not to want things. Communism fell in my homeland before I was born. Still, the principles of doing without clung. Grandmothers doled out hardships as kindnesses to those raised in the time of perestroika. So it’s novel to want Petal St. Clare the way I do.
She may not have chosen to plant this fixation within me, but with her every breath, she is responsible for the mounting intensity and desperation I suffer.
Never have I craved anything or anyone. Yet I crave her the way a cosmonaut covets gravity after years in space.
She is a drug, and she must shoulder the consequences of my addiction.
“More, Zinovy. More space. Go, I dunno, do something. Somewhere that isn’t on the other side of this door.
I’m not leaving the bathroom until I can trust you’re allowing me some time and space to process.
You can’t just decide I belong to you and that’s that!
” Her words rise and rise in pitch until she’s nearly shrieking.
Instead of rebuffing me, her escalated fury hardens my aching cock even further.
I want a soft woman, one who obeys me, but this life I live is not for the weak.
Taming Petal will be my crowning accomplishment in life, but a backbone will be necessary beyond the walls of our bedroom.
She will learn her place in due time, but for now, I am well pleased with her fiery independence.
Her life has demanded strength and adaptability, and she has both in spades.
I palm myself over my slacks, using the heel of my hand to press against the base of my unruly erection.
Soon, I will not be in need of my own hand ever again.
Petal will warm my cock with her mouth, her pussy, the tiny rosebud of her asshole, any time I require.
Precum soaks a wet spot on the thigh of my pants, cooling quickly into an uncomfortable sticky mess.
Just the thought of Petal on her knees for me has lust clouding my vision.
That’s the only excuse I have for being frozen just outside the bathroom door when she flings it open and fixes me with her ruffled kitten glare.
Hands on her hips and chin jutting upward, the intimidation she’s aiming for is completely negated by the way she almost disappears in the oversized robe draping her from throat to toes.
“Ahhh! You’re still here!” she screeches.
“I’m going, I’m going. I will go and get you some warm milk to help you sleep after the scary night you have had.”
My offer is met with a scathing look of irritation.
“Warm milk? Zinovy, I’m not a child or an octogenarian. I don’t need warm milk. I need space! Please. Just, go away tonight and leave me alone. We can discuss all the ways you are wrong to think you can just own me like a puppy you’ve adopted at the humane society.”
“You are right that you are no child, little bird. Only a woman, you, causes this monstrous need within me.” My hand grips the painfully hard erection running down my pantleg and my hips thrust toward her involuntarily.
“I will own you in all your fierce glory, my Petal, in exactly the way you have owned me since I discovered you using the cell phone of a traitor and squatting in a storage garage like a pauper instead of the queen you were born to be.”
“I can’t even with you right now. Fine. Warm milk.
Go. Go on. Shoo. Go get it. Please.” Even furious with me, her sweetness demands she be polite.
My heart swells with pride, the certainty that this woman is worth every bit of the discomfort she causes my cock, and the disruption this obsession causes my life, overtaking me.
I am a very, very bad man. I know this about myself. But somewhere, in some alternate universe or forgotten timeline, I must have been very, very good. Because Petal St. Clare? She is spectacular. And mine.