Chapter 22
ROLAN
She’s challenging me.
She’s sitting on my bathroom vanity, bare and completely unashamed of it, biting her lip.
I should find this irritating.
I do find it irritating.
I saw her on the cameras with Dmitri earlier, and the bomb detonated. No warning. Just — her face turned toward him, her hands moving the way they always move when she’s talking, animated and unselfconscious.
She didn’t know the rule. I’m aware of this. The rule didn’t exist before today, which I’m not going to admit out loud.
She knows it now.
And she’s still sitting on my vanity saying, Or what.
I take a step toward her.
“Get down, I dare you.”
She looks at me. I watch her run the calculation, watch her decide.
She puts one foot on the floor, pauses, and looks at me.
I don’t move.
The second foot follows .
There it is.
I close the distance in two steps.
My hands find her throat, not hard enough to hurt, just enough to feel the pulse accelerating under my palms, to communicate that the space between us has changed and she is not the one determining how it changes.
Her breath catches. The flush moves from her chest upward, visible even in the low light, her body announcing what her face is trying to compose.
“Turn around.”
She turns.
Her eyes meet mine in the mirror’s reflection.
“Very good,” I say. My voice comes out lower than I intended. “You turned around.” I hold her gaze in the mirror. “But I told you to stay where you were.”
Her chin lifts fractionally. “I know.”
“And what did you do?”
“I got down.” Her voice is controlled.
“I told you to stay.” I move closer. My chest is now against her back, my hands leaving her throat to settle at her hips. “Do you regret it?”
She holds my gaze in the mirror, considers, and decides.
“No.”
My palm comes down against her.
It echoes. She gasps, her hands finding the edge of the vanity. White-knuckled.
“Do you enjoy disobeying me?”
She’s breathing through it, thinking about her answer.
“Maybe.”
The second strike is harder than the first.
She makes a yelp I’ll be thinking about for the next three days. Her hips shift backward, toward me, the involuntary response she hasn’t learned to suppress yet.
“We’ll see,” I say against the back of her neck, “whether you still feel that way when I’m done with you. ”
I position myself and push inside her in one motion.
The whimper she lets out goes through me. I pull, tilting her head back, watching her face in the mirror. Her mouth open. Her eyes half-closed.
I move, pulling her hair harder. Her spine arches.
“Do you want to come?”
“ Yes .” Immediately. Breathless. Then, like she’s remembered she’s supposed to be negotiating, with a harder edge: “Yes.”
“Then apologize.”
Silence.
Her hands tighten on the vanity.
My hand slides around to the front of her and finds the precise location. Her entire body responds. I feel her clench around me, the sharp exhale, the way her hips angle to chase the sensation.
I stop.
Pure frustration escapes her mouth. Low, private, and absolutely devastating.
I bring my palm down again.
She gasps. Her hair is still in my fist. Her eyes find mine in the mirror. I hold her gaze and wait.
“We can stay here all night,” I say. Conversational. “It’s not an inconvenience to me.”
Her jaw sets. I watch her decide whether her pride is worth more than what I’m withholding. I already know the answer.
I bring my hand forward again and let her feel it. I take it away before she comes.
A half moan, half gasp, more desperate. Her forehead drops toward the mirror. “ Rolan .”
“The word,” I say.
Another silence. Shorter this time.
“I’m sorry.” Quiet. “For disobeying you.”
“Are you going to do it again? ”
She shakes her head. The motion pulls against my grip on her hair.
“Say it.”
“No.” A breath. “No, I won’t.”
“Ask me.”
“Please.”
One word. Unguarded. No armor around it.
“One more time.”
“ Please .” This one comes out almost broken.
I let her have it.
Her body contracts around me as she comes, a full, shuddering response, her hands sliding on the marble. I watch her face in the mirror, and I follow her, coming again inside that tight little pussy.
The bath has been running long enough that the water is nearly at the top.
I turn off the taps, and she gets in. I slip in behind her, which is not what I planned.
And yet here I am, in my bathtub, with Elizabeth Calloway between my knees and the back of her head resting against my chest, the steam moving in slow patterns above us.
I watch her.
The flush from before is still on her face, high color in her cheeks, her lips slightly swollen, her hair loosely tied with a few dark strands falling at her neck. She’s looking at the far wall.
The tension in her shoulders is visible.
“What?” I ask.
She turns her head slightly and glances at me from the corner of her eye.
“What happens now?” Her voice is careful. “Is this the part where you fire me?”
I look at her .
The question is almost comical; the priority hierarchy visible in a single sentence.
“No,” I say.
“Then what part is it?”
“Now,” I say, “you can’t go anywhere.”
She turns slightly, listening.
“I’ll take you wherever I want,” I continue. “Whenever I want. And you’ll be a good girl and behave yourself.” I hold her gaze. “Or I’ll have no other option.”
The way her thighs press together under the water is not subtle. She enjoys this.
Good.
Because she isn’t going anywhere.
After a while, the water begins to cool.
I should send her back to her room. I don’t sleep with anyone. The last person who shared this space with any regularity had her own room in the east wing and used mine as an instrument. She’s also been dead for six years, and the lesson I took from that situation was to keep my bed to myself.
I look at Elizabeth.
Her head is still against my chest, and her breathing has gone slow and even, but she’s not asleep. I can tell by her stillness, the slight tension that remains in someone who is conscious and present. But she’s unwound in a way I haven’t seen.
The thought arrives: If I send her to her room, she might leave.
Not the estate. She can’t leave the estate.
The contract, the debt, and the reality of her situation all prevent that.
But she could leave this. Reassemble herself overnight, reconstruct the careful management she applies to everything, and come to breakfast tomorrow morning with the professional distance back in place and the armor rebuilt.
I would sit across the table from a woman who has decided that tonight was an anomaly she’s chosen not to repeat .
I don’t want that. Which is the most honest thing I’ve thought in weeks.
“You’re staying,” I say.
She lifts her head and turns to look at me over her shoulder. The surprise on her face is genuine.
“I have to make Anya’s chocolate tonight,” she says. “I promised.”
“Then you’ll go make it,” I say. “And come back.”
She looks at me for a moment longer, reading my face the way she does.
“Okay,” she says.
She gets out.
I hand her one of my shirts hanging on the back of the bathroom door.
She puts it on, and the dark gray fabric falls to mid-thigh. She rolls the sleeves twice and looks at herself briefly in the mirror.
Then she looks at me and leaves.