Chapter 13
One Day Later
I will never get used to waking up in strange rooms.
The weight around my limbs and neck is missing. That’s the first thing that I notice. The second thing that I notice before I open my eyes is that the bone seeping dampness is gone. I’m not frozen. I can actually feel my fingers and toes even if being aware of them hurts. Knowing that they are there and not in danger of rotting off my body is something else entirely.
The third is that the room doesn’t smell like waste. No more sick or bile, and my skin doesn’t feel like it’s covered in the same layer of grit and grime that it has been for the last month or so. Somebody has cleaned me, or I’m dead. The latter seems far more likely. It wouldn’t be the first time that I’ve thought myself to be dead. I’m almost scared to open my eyes.
The pain is the only indicator that I’m alive. Breathing is a wheeze in my chest and I can feel soft bedding underneath me. My fingers stretch and bend, more bandages there against my ravaged skin. I can hear the beeping of some sort of monitor beside me as my eyes slowly open. I wince from the brightness, even though my brain knows that the lights are dimmed. My eyes roll to the source of the beeping, an IV pump. It looks like fluids are being pumped into my arm, for the dehydration no doubt. A medical facility? How is that possible? No way. Nikolai would not let me within ten feet of a doctor and since I can feel my tongue heavy in my mouth, I know that I still have it. So not Nikolai.
It can’t be a hospital either. The room is far too comfortable for that. None of the normal equipment besides the IV line is there. The ceiling has squares molded into it decoratively. The crown molding on the edges and the fancy crystal light in the center of the room means I’m somewhere fancy. A home of some sort. Not unheard of for people in my line of work to have private doctors that work out of their houses. But who did it? Where am I? It’s a bedroom in somebody’s house. I would be willing to bet that, if I could magically summon the strength to cross the room and look out of one of the windows, I would see somebody’s backyard. Or at least the rolling expanse of somebody’s grounds. What happened to me? The last thing that I remember is soup, warm soup being brought into the room for me. My stomach had been in such knots over the smell of it that I hadn’t thought twice about guzzling the whole bowl in practically one gulp.
And now? Now I’m somewhere else.
It’s hard to feel grateful to be out of that cell when I don’t know yet whether I’ve jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire.
I try to sit, and my ribs bark in protest. If I got out , where’s Anya? She better be here somewhere or I’m going to riot. I push myself up, my limbs shaking in protest. I have always been an athletic guy, very fit, but I don’t feel it right now. I feel weak.
There she is! Anya, in all her stunning beauty, curled in the chair across the room from me. She’s asleep. Her arm bent awkwardly to serve as a pillow in the chair that is obviously too small for her. She’s wearing a long sleeved sweatshirt and soft looking shorts. Her legs are bandaged around the bottom of her foot and up to her shins where she was likely restrained, as I had been. I can feel the same sorts of bandages on my own legs. Legs that I can move as I choose to. It doesn’t really matter how badly they hurt, and they do, but I can move them. I have to presume that we are somewhere safe if she’s comfortable sleeping. She promised that we would get out, and we have.
I push up into a sitting position and start to swing my impossibly-heavy-feeling legs off the bed, holding my ribs with one arm, when the beeping of my monitors wakes Anya up. Her eyes fly open wildly, and a knife appears out of nowhere at all. She brandishes it wildly and unskillfully around her in sweeping arcs before she, too, remembers where she is and what she’s doing.
It’s strange that I feel so damned proud of her for something so small as remembering to have a knife on her person for self-defense purposes.
The moment she sees me sitting up, the knife falls out of her hand and clatters loudly to the floor. She throws herself out of the chair and crosses the room to me - practically climbing up my injured torso as she throws her arms around my neck tightly. Too tightly.
I tap her ribs softly. “Can’t breathe.” I wheeze.
Anya backs up instantly. “Oh my god, I’m so fucking sorry!”
“Such language.” I tease as I gingerly probe at my bandaged throat. My head feels oddly light now that the thick metal is no longer collaring me in place. It’s easier for her to think that touching me is painful, better that than the truth. I smile weakly at her. I don’t even know where to begin on expressing my gratitude for getting me out of there. For saving us. For leaving her husband. For keeping me sane. I don’t have words.
“This is Daniel’s place.” She explains, gesturing around her. “He has had a doctor in here every few hours to check on us both. You have two broken ribs, a lot of fractures, more bruises and cuts than I can count. Only three needed stitches. The IV has fluids and antibiotics for all the rest. Some vitamins and stuff too if I heard right…”
My smile widens. “Thank you.”
It doesn’t encompass nearly what I want it to, but it’s a start.
“You don’t have anything to thank me for. I promise.” Anya lifts a gentle hand and brushes a stray bit of hair off my forehead.
“Once I can get off this drip, the hair will have to go.” My smile turns bashful as I rub my hand over the beard that’s grown in on my face and then pushes up into the far too long hair on my head.
“How do you normally wear it?” Anya asks, watching my every movement.
“Short.” I answer. “Second nature, I guess.” I fist my hair in my hand and pull, demonstrating why I never chose to keep it long. My scalp is still tender and no doubt bruised from Nikolai doing the exact same motion that I just demonstrated. I’m not going to tell her that though.
“I think I’ll like it short.” Anya agrees, her hand lifting to touch my hair and I have to catch her by the wrist. She startles.
“Sorry.” She mumbles.
I shake my head. Where to begin?
“It’s not you.” If she were to touch my hair I would forget where I was. I would feel the pain of having my hair ripped in chunks from Nikolai’s hands. It’s always been that way. I’m a man with terrible luck. Physical touch has always been hard because most of the hands that have touched me in my life have done so with the intention of hurting.
Even with Lilian the sex tended to be painful, bordering on violent.
That was how she liked it - she always picked a fight to initiate sex. I have grooved scars down my back from that very same act. After Nikolai she had had a hard time getting off without pain.
I came to enjoy it. I had no choice. I found ways to make it better, to control it. Careful rules, controlled environment where nothing was left to chance, where I could trust the outcomes because I was the one who created them situations.
“If it’s not me, then what is it?” Anya asked softly.
“The last thing that I want to do is hurt you, Anya.” I bring her captured wrist closer to my face, kissing the inside of her arm softly before loosening my hold on her. “It’s… too soon… I…”
I didn’t know how to explain.
If it’s controlled… if I can be the one touching, then it’s my choice. But her unpredictable movements? Being touched? It triggered the fight instincts in me. But Anya was so kind, so gentle. Even after seeing what Nikolai did to her body. I can still see the bruises on her inner thighs and the backs of her legs…
“Fuck… I didn’t think… I didn’t… oh, I’m so sorry…” Anya starts to pull away from me, leaving the space that she had entered between my knees and I had to catch her wrist tighter again to keep her from pulling away.
“It’s not that I don’t want to…” My dark gaze turns to her mouth, her shoulders, the swell of cleavage under her sweatshirt. “The thought of you… of touching you again… it’s been the only thing keeping me going for days, Anya.”
Her breath catches in her throat.
My thumb brushes over the skin of her wrist and I shake my head. “I warned you that I… I’m broken, Anya. I don’t know how to do this like normal people. I’m so happy that you got us out of there, that we are here with another chance and whatever else comes next. Believe me, all I want is to pin you to the bed and kiss you.”
She steps closer, the fronts of her thighs pressing into the side of the bed where she stood. Even sitting like this, she’s only eye to eye with me. So impossibly small. I might fucking break her if I tried to have my kind of sex with her... No, I bet she’s stronger than that. Stronger than I give her credit for.
She looks up at me through thick black lashes with her perfect brown eyes. “So, what’s stopping you?”
I open my mouth to explain, but logic is failing me when she looks at me like that. “We just got out…what you just went through…”
“Alek… if this is about Nikolai…”
“It’s not.” I cut her off. I don’t even want to think about that bastard. His time will come. He has no place in this room, that’s for sure.
“Then tell me, because I’ve been so worried about you. You’re all that I’ve been able to think about. I… I meant that kiss, Alek. More than you know. All I want is to feel alive, to celebrate our freedom. I want your hands on me, to erase every touch of his until my skin knows you, and only you…”
Fuck if her words, that damned sultry voice of hers, doesn’t go straight to my dick.
The corner of my mouth tilts upward. “Such a mouth on you.”
“So shut me up then.” She says in challenge, her fiery spirit unbroken.
I want to be the same. For her, I want to be the man that I was before Nikolai’s dungeon of terrors. I want to be the man that deserves a woman like her.
“It would be my honor.” I groan as the warmth of her draws nearer. The apricot and floral shampoo that she used is intoxicating. I want to run my tongue over every inch of her skin until neither one of us can feel anything but pleasure… and yet… a shudder runs down my spine. “I can’t…”
Anya deflates before my eyes. She tries to pull her arm back, and I stop her.
“I can’t… you can’t touch me, Anya… I can’t…”
Something on my face must convey my meaning better than my words because she stops. “Not just me… but anyone?”
I nod once.
“Because of the bruises?”
I shake my head.
“Because…” she looks me over, noting the scars on my bare torso where the bandages don’t cover them. The tattoos and the cigar burn marks on my arms and neck - she looks at everything and takes her time in noting each and every one. “Because… it hurts?”
My eyes close as I wait for her rejection, but I nod all the same.
“To… I would have to tie you up Anya and given what we have just been through I don’t expect you to be okay with that. I can’t have you touch me. The unexpected… even just in passing…I don’t know my reactions… I can’t…” emotion clogs my throat as hot embarrassment replaces every one of my nerve endings. I hate that it’s not something that I have mastered, this vulnerability.
When I open my eyes again, she’s looking down at her own hands and then back to me.
“I don’t think I could trust myself, that I could keep my hands to myself without being tied.” Anya speaks as if it”s a puzzle that she’s trying to figure out…debating how to make it work.
“You’re not…” I ask, hesitant to press the gift that dangles between us.
“Until you are comfortable Alek, it’s the least that I can do.” She smiles up at me and my heart damn near skips a beat.
She holds her hands in front of me, wrists crossed, and I lift a hand to encircle them in my much larger hand, locking them into the space between them. Her breath hitches, and I pull her closer. Her eyes widen in anticipation, something deep and hungry reflected there before she closes her eyes and lifts her chin to me, vulnerable and soft.
“I’ve thought of these lips for days, Anya.” I whisper before I kiss her. Not like the first time where we both feared that Nikolai might walk in. Not a kiss born of the desperation of a dying man. Something slow and passionate. I want her to feel my kiss through every part of her. It should consume her.
I shift her wrists so that they are behind her, pressing her perfect chest out toward me as I pull her closer, still not touching anywhere but her wrists and my lips against hers. She moans softly into the contact and opens for me, allowing me to consume her until neither one of us can breathe.
I don’t need oxygen, I only need her.
In a movement more fluid than I actually feel, I manage to lift up onto my feet and shift us so that she’s the one on the bed. I press against her until her hands are up over her head on the bed and I press them into the bed firmly as if to say that she should leave them there.
“You’re overestimating my self control.” Anya warns me in a breathless voice.
I smirk. I’m only just beginning. I turn from her only long enough to pull the IV line from my arm. I have to make do with what I have. The machine beeps but I turn it off quickly before shifting my focus once more to her. I wrap a bandage around my arm where the port was. Repurposing the tube is my only option. Pulling the soft plastic free, I loop it around her wrists and then together so that it forms makeshift cuffs that she cannot easily free herself from.
I watch with growing delight as she tries, and fails, to free herself. I hook a piece of tubing through the slats at the top of the bed to keep her hands exactly where I want them - keeping her wholly and utterly trapped in place. Anya’s thighs press together as she bites her bottom lip. I pull a pair of gauze scissors from the table beside my bed and slowly start to cut her sweatshirt away, revealing every inch of skin to my hungry gaze. I stop halfway, just before her breasts. I toss the tools away and climb up onto the bed with her, pushing her knees apart with my own to make space to kneel between her thighs.
“I won’t lie, there were many nights that I imagined this same scenario in that basement, to be used for other purposes. But we would’ve needed much better lighting, of course.” I wink at her and she grins.
“You’re a tease is what you–”
Her words are cut off as I rip the sweatshirt she is wearing off her, baring her perfect breasts for my admiration. She said that she wanted my hands to replace the memory of any other hands on her body, and that’s exactly what I intend to do.
My hands slide up the curve of her waist to her breasts, pushing them together - learning the curves of her body and committing them to memory as I savor the feel of her. Like a feast to a starving man, I cannot imagine anything more stunning than this pure-hearted woman so pliant underneath me… a body built for sin and a heart of gold.
I lean forward to kiss her. Her legs start to lift around my body and she catches them - no touches apart from the ones that I initiate. She listened. If I hadn’t already been hard as granite a moment ago, I certainly am now. She moans into my mouth as I roll her peaked nipple between my finger and thumb, pulling softly. Her body arches in response to my touch. Fuck, she’s so fucking perfect. I couldn’t build a woman in any dreamscape like it.
My mouth moves down the point of her chin, under her jaw and down the column of her neck, licking and biting, savoring each and every moan that comes from her lips like the gift that it is. I don’t remember the pain in my body, the memories of the nights before this one and all of the cold, bleak misery all start to fade until there’s nothing but my lips on her skin and the perfect sounds that she makes.
I kiss between her breasts, savoring the weight of them in my palms before I move lower. Past the planes of her navel toward her sex, stopped only by the waistband of her shorts.
My fingers curl into the fabric, running along the seam of them, slowly teasing before my lips run horizontal to my fingers. Only then do I start to lower them. Anya tries to lift her lips to help me bare her, ready to rush her nudity so that she can try to get what she wants. Another time I will go over how she ought to be patient, I will reprimand her for such an action… but now I’m just as eager for her. Even the sweatpants I am wearing feel too tight against my cock.
“Please,” Anya breathes.
I smile into her skin as I pull her shorts lower. I don’t know how patient I can be. I want to have her shatter and scream my name until she can’t see straight. I should pace myself, but she’s so sweet.
I pull her shorts off and throw them aside, not caring where they go or who might walk in on us in such a state. There’s no knowing for sure that we will ever have another moment like this to share and I’m not going to let this opportunity go to waste.
I lower myself between her thighs, groaning in delight at how wet she already is for me.
My fingers dip lower, gathering her wetness between my fingers and lifting my fingers for her to see. “Look at that, princess.” I praise, “So ready for me and we’re just getting started.”
Anya holds my gaze. “So what are you waiting for?”
“Careful what you wish for princess,” I warn her just before my hands slip under the backs of her thighs and lift. I pin her knees to the bed, laying her bare and exposed. Anya gasps, struggling in my hold but I won’t be denied. I lick her bottom to top, pausing to savor the collection of wetness gathered. Her head turns and her eyes shut as she moans. I take my time in devouring her, learning quickly what seems to make her the loudest. I want her wild for me when I claim her, when I replace those memories once and for all. When I make her mine, and only mine.
I bring her close to the edge until her legs are trembling and she tries time and time again to ride my face, but each time her hips lift, I back away. My own sadistic little dance. Always bringing her close - but never too close. Never quite over the edge. Not yet. When she goes, I want to go with her.
“Alek, please… please… please!” She begs, her throat raw.
I think the sound of my name on her lips might be my favorite thing.
“What do you want, princess?” I ask her, speaking into her skin before my tongue delves deep into her.
“Please! More… Alek… I need you.”
“What was that?” I suck her clit into my mouth, pulling on the swollen flesh for just a moment. “I couldn’t hear you.”
“Alek! Please!” She begs, and I decide to have mercy on her.
“Since you asked so sweetly.” I push two fingers inside of her, pumping slowly, stretching her with one hand while the other pushes my sweats low enough to free my hard cock for her. “Is this what you want?”
Anya’s head lifts, her eyes widening in disbelief.
“Think you can take it?” I ask, wrapping my fist around my cock and aligning it with her center. She almost looks like she’s going to shake her head. “What am I saying, of course you can.”
Anya can’t take her eyes away from it as I slowly start to ease inside of her, replacing my fingers - pushing despite how tight a fit it is. She’s so wet I almost feel like I’m losing my damn mind. My head falls back as I bury myself, inch by inch inside of her.
“Fuck, you take me so good, princess.” I growl, my hands falling back to her thighs, holding her open for me. “Ready?”
I can barely get the word out, but she nods enthusiastically despite the slight hesitation in her eyes.
I start to move, fucking her slowly at first and her head falls back, then turns to the side and bites the skin of her own inner arm to keep from screaming as I fuck her. making her feel it. Making sure she won’t forget the feeling of me filling her for a long fucking time.
“Such a good girl, fuck you feel so good Anya.” I groan, my hand drops between us, rubbing her clit until her walls tighten impossibly around my girth. I might have died and gone straight to heaven. It was like she was built for me and only me. “That’s it…”
“Alek, I’m so close… I’m going to–” Anya’s breath hitches and then catches in her chest. Her body seizes and I feel it the moment that her orgasm throws her over the edge, squeezing me so tightly that I’m tumbling right into the blissful abyss with her. Every wave I feel crash through her body, takes me with it. I can’t stop as she milks each and every drop from me.
Absolutely and utterly perfect.