CHAPTER 13 #2
The guards are retreating, their footsteps echoing down the hall, but Andrei doesn't back off.
He begins to move. It is a slow, agonizingly deliberate, arrogant grind of his hips directly against me.
There is no finesse, no romance, no sweet talking.
It is nothing but the raw, unfiltered application of friction, dominance, and unadulterated power.
Every single time he thrusts his hips forward, the metal of the shaft groans softly under our combined weight.
My eyes blow wide in the pitch-black darkness.
This is absolute clown behavior. He is going to get us killed because he literally cannot control his own violent impulses.
My fingers scrabble desperately for purchase on the dusty metal floor, my short nails screeching slightly against the aluminum trying to find a way to crawl away from him.
"You like the danger, Ruby?" he taunts softly, his voice a dark rasp right against my skin. "Look at the light."
His heavy hand on my hip slides lower, bunching up the thin silk of my slip until he pushes the ruined fabric entirely out of his way.
He finds my bare skin, his calloused palm a blistering shock of heat against my freezing, goosebump-covered thigh.
He drags his hand up the sensitive skin of my inner leg, his fingers confidently hooking right into the thin lace of my underwear and pulling it forcefully aside.
He uses his thick forearm to press my face even harder against his chest, totally muffling any whimper of protest I might make.
"Tikhaya..." he orders in Russian, his tone brooking zero argument. "Mine. Even here."
He finds exactly what he’s looking for. His blunt, calloused fingers are demanding and ruthless as they slip right into my heat, proving to both of us exactly how thoroughly my body is betraying my brain.
I am completely, humiliatingly slick for him.
He isn't gentle. He's relentlessly searching out a reaction, forcing a surrender I do not want to give.
He establishes a rhythmic, punishing, maddening pace with his hand, sliding deeply into my wetness while his hips continue that relentless, heavy grind against my backside.
I want to fight him. I want to scream at him.
But my hips arch back into his thrusts totally against my will, chasing the friction.
His teeth graze the sensitive shell of my ear, a silent, vicious threat.
"Don't you dare make a sound," he growls. "Feel what I do to you."
The patrol’s footsteps are fading further away down the hall, the distant clack of a fire door closing finally giving us a buffer, but Andrei doesn't slow down for a second.
He is completely committed to the violation of this moment.
He grabs both of my wrists, wrenching my arms up above my head and pinning them flat against the cold top of the shaft.
I am left totally exposed, stretched out, and completely helpless under his crushing weight.
His hand works me faster, his movements growing increasingly frantic and demanding, his breathing turning into a jagged, ragged rasp against my neck.
A single drop of his sweat falls from his forehead, landing with an icy shock on my bare shoulder in the drafty vent.
"Look at me," he demands, though I can't see a fucking thing in the dark. "You’re trembling, lapochka."
He is a beast. A beautiful, terrifying, unhinged beast who takes whatever he wants, whenever he wants it, regardless of the body count outside the door.
He reaches his peak with a sudden, violent, full-body tension.
He thrusts his hips brutally against me one final time, his entire massive frame locking up completely rigid.
He buries his face deep into the crook of my neck, his jaw flexing as his teeth sink directly into the soft skin there—not enough to tear the flesh and draw blood, but biting down hard enough to leave a permanent, possessive bruise.
The pain spikes perfectly with the pleasure.
His massive hand clamping down over my mouth is the only thing keeping me from screaming my lungs out as my own climax rips through me, forced, unwanted, and entirely devastating.
My body shatters around his fingers, trembling violently against the cold metal.
His grip on my wrists is so punishingly tight I know for a fact there will be dark purple thumbprints permanently etched into my skin by morning.
"Suka..." he hisses through his teeth as he rides out the aftershocks. "Mine."
The silence inside the ventilation shaft afterward is heavy and absolutely deafening.
Andrei just remains slumped heavily against my back for a long, agonizing minute, his dead weight crushing me down into the decades-old dust. Slowly, methodically, the bastard retracts his hand from my mouth.
His rough fingers linger for a second, dragging lightly across my swollen lips as if he's casually checking to make sure I’m still breathing.
He says absolutely nothing. The intense, violent intimacy of the act vanishes instantly, sucked right back into his cold, untouchable, tactical shell.
I hear the loud, abrasive scrape of heavy fabric as he wipes his wet hand off on the side of his custom wool trousers in the dark.
"They’re gone," he states flatly. "Move."
He taps the back of my heel with the hard toe of his tactical boot—a cold, entirely professional signal.
He begins to back his massive frame out of the shaft, dragging his body away from mine and taking all the suffocating heat with him.
I am left entirely alone in the pitch-black darkness for a few agonizing seconds, my skin literally humming with electric shock, my chest heaving.
My silk slip is twisted around my waist, damp and ruined.
I blindly reach down with trembling hands and try to yank the fabric back down over my thighs, but the silk is bunched up and stuck against my sweaty skin.
I have to force my shaking limbs to actually move, dragging my raw knees over the aluminum to follow the man who just claimed me like a feral animal in a cage.
"Don't fall behind," his voice echoes from the opening. "We have five floors to go."
I crawl out of the claustrophobic nightmare and tumble back out onto the carpeted floor of the 40th-floor hallway.
The harsh, flickering neon light is blinding.
Andrei is already standing up to his full, towering height, casually brushing the dust off his custom suit jacket and perfectly straightening his silk tie as if he literally just stepped out of a goddamn boardroom meeting.
He doesn't offer me a hand up. I stay on the floor for a second, my face flushing with a humiliating, toxic mix of shame and pure, unadulterated rage.
I drag myself up to my feet, glaring daggers at his broad back.
He just checks his expensive watch, his expression entirely bored.
"Patrol is on 42 now," he says, not even looking at me. "Fix your hair. We move in thirty seconds."
He’s not even out of breath. He is an absolute monster.
I step toward him, refusing to cower. Andrei turns, reaches out, and grips my chin in a tight vise, forcefully tilting my face up so I have to look him dead in the ice-blue eyes.
He searches my face intensely. He isn't looking for affection, and he definitely isn't looking to see if I'm okay.
He is digging for that exact same unimpressed, defiant spark he saw in my eyes back at the cafe when my life was normal and I didn't know he was a Bratva warlord.
I hold his stare, locking my jaw. I'd rather die than let him see how thoroughly he just dismantled me.
When he finds the stubborn fury still burning right under the surface of my trauma, a dark, deeply satisfied smirk touches the corner of his lips.
I gather the spit in my mouth, turn my head slightly, and spit right onto the marble floor, an inch away from his polished leather shoes.
"There she is," he murmurs, his voice a low purr of approval.
He lets go of my chin, drops his hand, and immediately starts walking toward the emergency stairwell with that same long, predatory stride.
"Follow me, Ruby," he calls over his shoulder. "Try not to die."