CHAPTER 9
ANDREI P.O.V.
I shoved her chest-first against the freezing glass.
It was pitch black in this VIP room, a dead zone away from the techno bassline vibrating up through the soles of my shoes from Hemlock’s twisted party downstairs.
I leaned my full weight into her spine, letting my hands roam over the curve of her hips through the pathetic, thin fabric she wore.
My touch wasn't gentle. It was a clinical, detached hunger meant to bruise, meant to leave marks in the dark.
I dug my fingers hard into the soft flesh of her waist. She didn't flinch.
Not a fucking muscle twitched. It was like pressing my body against a slab of ice.
I didn't care who she was. She was just an offering, a piece of meat bought to burn off the irritations of the night.
But this stillness? This absolute rigor mortis act?
It was insulting. I expected the usual clown behavior.
Shaking limbs, the hitch of a sob, the frantic pulse of a victim realizing how wrecked they were about to get.
Instead, I got a fucking statue. I clicked my tongue against the roof of my mouth, the sharp sound bouncing off the heavy glass.
"Don't bother holding your breath," I told the back of her head. "Stay still. They all break eventually, suka."
She was a ghost. Her skin was burning up, radiating heat against my chest, but her brain was deadass miles away from this room.
My annoyance spiked into genuine, aggressive frustration.
My intimidation tactics were failing against a nameless girl in the dark and that pissed me off.
I hooked my fingers into the collar of her thin slip and yanked downward.
The harsh, ripping sound of silk shredding down to her waist was the first violent noise we made.
The cool air hit her bare back. I shifted my grip, my heavy watch sliding down my wrist, the metal links clinking sharply against the floor-to-ceiling glass as I pinned her arm higher.
I ran my tongue up the line of her spine, a pure predatory move just to force a shudder out of her, then bit down hard on the back of her shoulder.
Hard enough to leave my teeth printed on her for days. Nothing. Not a gasp.
"You’re making this very boring for me," I growled. "Are you even alive in there? Give me a sound, suka. Anything."
I shoved my knee between her legs, spreading them, forcing her to take the brunt of my weight.
I wanted her knees to buckle. I reached around to cup her face, trying to drag her head back, but she violently twisted away, keeping her forehead glued to the cold glass.
Her muscles were tight, disciplined. Not drugged.
She was doing this on purpose. I leaned in, shoving my face inches from her hair, dragging in a harsh breath.
No expensive perfume. Just the cheap, sterile scent of basic soap and the distinct, bitter reek of old espresso grounds clinging to her strands.
It was a weirdly familiar smell that scrambled my brain for a half-second before I shoved the thought away.
I rubbed my thumb hard over the pulse point in her neck.
It was hammering, rapid and frantic, betraying the stone-cold act she was pulling.
"Your heart is a liar," I muttered against her ear. "It says you're terrified, even if your mouth stays shut. You think you're stronger than me?"
I ran a hand aggressively through my shaved hair, frustrated out of my fucking mind, before I unbuckled my belt.
The metal clinked loudly against the glass.
I shoved her legs wider and entered her with one rough, punishing thrust. No finesse.
No prep. Just sheer, brute-force power meant to wreck her composure.
I gripped her hips tight enough to leave ten deep bruises, anchoring her so she wouldn't slide down the glass under the impact.
The heavy window actually creaked under our combined weight.
I was waiting for the scream, the cry, the breakdown.
Instead, I got a sharp intake of breath she aggressively swallowed before it could turn into a moan.
I felt the physical friction of my trousers against the back of her legs, the raw heat building up.
"Enough of this," I bit out. "I want to see what you're hiding behind that silence. There. Now you feel me."
I slammed into her faster, the pace turning frantic and utterly uncontrolled.
Every thrust was supposed to be breaking her, snapping her in half, but it felt like I was the one failing the vibe check.
I was trying to use this nameless, faceless body to purge my own unhinged obsession—chasing away the memory of that unimpressed girl from the cafe who looked me dead in the eye like I was a joke.
I buried my face into the crook of her neck, my own frustrated growls completely muffled by her dark hair.
The smell of my own sweat mixed with the coffee scent of her.
I reached around in the pitch black, my large hand clamping down onto her jaw with bone-bruising force.
"Look at me," I demanded, squeezing her jaw. "I said look at me, damn you. Suka... why won't you break?"
My thumb dug brutally into the soft skin beneath her ear. I wrapped my fist tight in her hair and yanked her head back, forcing her to look up at the black ceiling. I wanted to feel the physical strain in her throat. The pull on her scalp had to hurt like a motherfucker.
"Tell me your name. Tell me so I can forget it."
She didn't make a sound. She was a brick wall.
I dragged her backward by her hair and her jaw, her bare feet scuffing against the plush carpet.
She dug her heels in. A pathetic, tiny resistance, but finally, some actual physical fight.
The hem of her ruined, shredded slip caught on the sharp edge of a low glass table, ripping the rest of the way up her thigh as I dragged her past it toward the heavy velvet curtains blocking the city out.
"Stop fighting. You're only making me want to hurt you more," I warned, my breathing ragged. "Let's see who you are, little mouse."
The sex felt completely hollow now. The physical intensity meant jack shit without her verbal surrender. I felt deadass pathetic fucking a statue. I slowed down, my movements heavy, grudging, totally pissed off.
"This is pathetic. You're a statue."
I pulled out of her abruptly. The sudden rip of physical contact left empty air between us. I stood right behind her for a second, my chest heaving, wiping the back of my hand aggressively across my mouth.
"We're done with the games."
I grabbed her bare arm, violently spun her around, and shoved her hard back against the glass.
My hands pinned her shoulders. Her shredded slip hung around her waist, but I didn't give a fuck about her body anymore.
I loomed right over her, letting my shadow swallow her whole in the dark.
Her chest heaved frantically against mine. Her eyes were wide and unseeing.
"Who are you? Give me a reason not to kill you right now."
She kept her jaw locked shut. I shoved her shoulder into the metal frame of the window and reached out, tearing the edge of the blackout blind back exactly one inch.
A harsh, neon-red glow from the giant HEMLOCK CORP sign across the street sliced into the pitch-black room, cutting right across her face like a bloody scar.
The red light flickered against my knuckles pressing her to the glass.
She squeezed her eyes shut so hard her face trembled.
The sharp, metallic ozone smell of the city leaked through the window seals.
I used my free hand to catch a stray lock of her hair, twisting it tightly around my fingers to yank her head back further into the beam of light.
"Open your eyes," I ordered. "Open them, or I’ll find a much more painful way to get your attention."
Her eyelids fluttered and finally snapped open. Hazel eyes. Exhausted, dead on their feet, but burning with that exact same, infuriating, unimpressed defiance that shouldn't exist in a slaughterhouse like this. The red light turned her irises into molten copper.
My chest seized. The blood in my veins turned to absolute ice. My hand on her jaw went totally slack, my fingers literally twitching against her skin as my brain short-circuited. I dropped my hands from her shoulders like she was made of literal fire.
"Blyad... it's you."
I couldn't breathe right. The entire context of this dark room, the transaction, Hemlock's bullshit party—it all collapsed into garbage.
"You... The cafe. The girl with the coffee."
I stumbled a step back. My hands hovered in the air between us like I had just grabbed a live electrical wire.
The memory hit me like a freight train—her spilling scalding Americano all over my six-thousand-dollar suit, sighing, and telling me to take it out of her tips.
I had been hunting the ghost of this fucking girl for weeks, losing my mind over the one person in this godforsaken city who didn't look at my scarred face and piss themselves.
And here she was. In a ripped slip. Covered in my own violent bruises.
The apathy died instantly. A violent, nauseating surge of possessive fury ripped through my chest.
"How did you get here?" I demanded, the words tearing out of my throat. "Who did this to you?"
Her fear-sweat mingled with the stale coffee smell.
The flickering neon threw shadows across the walls.
My heart was pounding like a jackhammer.
I touched her like she was a cheap piece of meat.
I was the monster in the dark. I was going to slaughter Arthur Hemlock.
I was going to kill every single bastard in this skyscraper.
I turned away violently, my combat boots crunching on the carpet as I snatched my discarded suit jacket off the floor.
I shook it out with a brutal snap. When I turned back to her, my movements were jagged, locked-down, pure control.
The arousal was completely dead, replaced by a cold, homicidal clarity.
I didn't look at her half-naked body. I refused to look at the bruises I just put on her waist. I stared dead into those hazel eyes.
I was meticulously buttoning my shirt, my fingers actually shaking. I never shook.
"The game is over."
I snapped my belt buckle into place. She wasn't a captive anymore. She was mine. I would burn this entire corporate tower to the foundation before another man breathed the same air as her.
"You’re coming with me. You’re mine now. Do you understand?"
I stepped directly into her space. I didn't want to hurt her anymore. I needed to swallow her up, hide her from the entire fucking world. I draped the heavy, custom wool-and-silk jacket over her bare shoulders. The massive garment swallowed her tiny frame completely.
She flinched. Hard. She braced herself like I was about to hit her.
Seeing that terror—now that I knew exactly who she was—slid a knife right between my ribs.
I had to re-teach this girl that I was the only wall between her and a bullet.
I grabbed the lapels of the jacket and pulled them tightly together right under her chin.
My rough knuckles brushed against the soft skin of her throat.
It was a gentle touch, completely alien to me, and probably way more terrifying to her than my rage.
I smelled the woodsmoke and power radiating off my own coat wrapping around her.
"Don't move," I told her, my voice dropping to a gravelly deadpan. "Stay behind me. If anyone looks at you, I'll take their eyes."
She was trembling now. Fine. Let her shake. That fear belonged to me now. Nobody else.