Chapter 16 Sera
SERA
Something about his answer makes my stomach tighten, my skin so hot steam should be rising from the water. Alik lifts his hands, the muscles in his shoulders doing magical things as he grips the edge of the pool on either side of me.
His chest brushes mine. Barely a touch and I feel it all the way to my toes. Lips dry, I lick them. Alik tracks the movement like his life depends on it.
“Wh-what did you swear you wouldn’t do?” I stammer.
Still staring at my mouth, he answers my question with one of his own. “How did you know I’d be in here?”
“I didn’t.”
“Don’t lie.” A frown draws his eyebrows down, emphasizing his scar. “Dimitri wouldn’t have told you, but maybe one of the other guards… Who sold me out? Tell me which of my men was disloyal so I can castrate him.”
“Sold you out?” My voice pitches high in disbelief. “What the hell are you talking about? No one told me you’d be here.”
Alik jerks his gaze up to mine. For the first time I see how unfocused it is.
“You want me to believe it’s a coincidence?
That out of all the rooms in this entire fucking house, you happened to find your way to this one?
That you didn’t come down here just to keep driving me out of my fucking mind? ”
“Alik, what the hell are you talking about?”
He closes his eyes, his head rolling back on his thick neck. The movement seems to unbalance him, little ripples cascading out across the water.
“Wait—are you drunk?”
“Not nearly enough, apparently. I was sure I’d had enough vodka to drown a Siberian tiger.”
Jesus. I’m caught off guard by a surge of concern. “Then you shouldn’t be in here. Swimming alone and drunk—you could drown, you idiot. Why the hell would you do that?”
Alik’s eyes fly open. “Because I don’t have a choice.”
I don’t understand his answer or the way it makes every nerve ending in my body light up like a Christmas tree. “Why not?”
“Because,” he groans, his lips so close to mine, “if I don’t drink like this, punish my body like this, I won’t be able to stop myself.”
Alik’s breaths are coming out heavy, more rapid than before. His lips parted in a way that makes me insane with the need to slip my tongue between them. The heat simmering between us is rapidly melting my brain cells. “Stop yourself from what?”
On either side of me, his grip on the pool edge tightens. Power radiates up his arms, and I half expect the ledge behind me to crack. “From touching you.”
For a solid second, I don’t know if he’s teasing me or taunting me.
Or giving me shit for what happened at the apartment yesterday.
Anger and undeniable attraction war within me and it’s anyone’s guess if I want to slap him or kiss him.
But the longer he looks at me, body locked in punishing restraint, the clearer his eyes get.
The more obvious it becomes he’s telling the truth.
Holy shit. He wants to touch me. Badly.
The knowledge knocks something loose in my brain and I can’t stop myself from whispering, “What if I want you to?”
One question and Alik’s restraint falters. I watch it happen in real time, like a fissure opening in the earth. And every thought, every feeling I’ve had about this man coalesces into an unbearable desire for him to do the one thing he won’t.
I want him to touch me, to play with my body until I explode. Maybe then I can purge myself of the insane, reckless attraction I have to him.
“You don’t know what you’re saying, moya voitelnitsa.”
“I do. I want you to.”
Alik’s jaw ticks. I want to kiss him there. Everywhere.
I thought my statement would melt his resolve. It does the opposite. His whole body gets harder, his teeth grinding audibly. “Then tell me what you want me to do.”
“I said I want you to touch me.”
“But how? Where do you want me to touch you? What do you want me to do to you, Sera? I want to hear you say it.”
Visions of everything he can do to me tumble through my head, but there’s a disconnect between my brain and my mouth. I stammer, unable to find the words I’m looking for.
My silence seems to prove Alik’s point, whatever the hell it is. He stares over my shoulder, his thoughts a million miles away. Humiliation brings tears to my eyes and I’m about to fight my way out of the cage of his arms when he asks, “How much experience have you had?”
“Experience?”
“With sex.”
“None of your business.” I’m beyond humiliated now.
“Maybe not.” Alik returns his attention to me.
He’s still struggling to restrain himself, the heat in his eyes even more intense than before.
But there’s an openness in his expression that makes my heart squeeze in a way that has nothing to do with how horny I am.
“But anything that happens between us is.”
He draws in a ragged breath, raw desire straining his expression.
“I shouldn’t want you, Sera. Can't want you. This thing between us, whatever the hell it is, is fucking with my head. Fucking with everything I need to be doing but can’t because all I can think about is how gorgeous you looked touching yourself.
Fuck, that little performance of yours… Do you have any idea how much I wanted it to be my fingers between your thighs?
How much I wanted to pull those needy nipples into my mouth and suck on them until you screamed?
Holy shit. Watching you touch yourself like that, torment me like that—I’ve never been so hard in my life, and I’d just finished jacking off to fantasies of you. ”
Alik’s face is millimeters from mine. This close together, there’s no way he can’t see into my soul. No way he can miss how his confession affects me.
“But,” he says, “no matter how much I want you, moya voitelnitsa, I can’t let myself have you.”
But… “Why?” I hate how plaintive I sound, how desperate.
“Because.” His voice licks across my skin. “Once I have you, once I take you, I won’t be able to give you back. You are a warrior, Sera, a woman who can bring me to my knees, and neither of us can afford for me to be distracted. The men I came to Chicago to find, to kill—”
“My uncle?”
“Yes, him. But there are others, too. Men who are still out there, who are still a threat to you. Who have earned a brutal death for what they want to do to you. For what they already did to my…” He shakes his head, leaving the sentence unfinished.
“I can’t let them get away, Sera. I won’t.
I refuse to let anything distract me from hunting them down. Not even you.”
His rejection is a slap in the face, and I hate that it makes me want to cry. Hate that I can’t stop myself from saying, “But then what am I supposed to do?”
“What do you mean?”
I can’t believe I have to say this. Can’t believe I’m even considering saying this, but if I don’t, I think I’m going to scream. “I need...to…umm.” Shit! “I can’t, you know, umm, without…”
“Tell me.” Alik is strung tight, sexual energy pouring off him in waves, but his voice—that goddamn voice of his sneaks into all my broken places and promises it’s going to be okay.
I close my eyes, pray that it is. “I need to come.”
A statement that’s met with dead silence.
I bite my bottom lip, try again. “Come. Like, orgasm. I need to, you know…do that.”
Alik must’ve been holding his breath because it coasts across my face in a rush. “Jesus Fucking Christ, Sera. Are you trying to kill me?”
“No, no.” I peek at him through cracked eyelids, cheeks on fire. “What I’m trying to say…oh, God.” I cover my face with my hands. I can’t do this. “Never mind. Forget it. It doesn’t matter.”
I duck, about to dive under one of Alik’s arms when he slips a finger under my chin. One touch and I’m riveted in place. “Just tell me, moya voitelnitsa. Whatever it is, you can tell me.”
“I need to come but I can’t.” I stare at his shoulder, my desperation and embarrassment spewing out at a rapid rate.
“I was close, really close when we were kissing, and again when I was doing that thing for the cameras after I saw you doing that thing you did, um, with yourself…but then when I tried to finish in my room, I couldn’t, and I’m so frustrated, and I haven’t been horny in so long and now I am, but nothing is working, and I can’t get anywhere close except when I’m with you and now, after what you just said about wanting me, wanting to touch me, I think I could be really close again, but if you leave I might not be able to… um, you know…”
We stare at each other, each second stretching longer and longer. I swear Alik’s voice is an octave lower when he finally says, “You know—what?”
God, he’s going to make me say it.
Fine. He’s right. I am a virgin. My experience with sex and orgasms is limited to a few awkward gropes with high school crushes and what I used to be able to do with my own hand.
I don’t have the decades of experience he probably does.
I don’t have a stockpile of memories to tap into.
I don’t even have a favorite toy to play with.
But I do have fight and an itch that needs to be scratched very, very badly.
I’m not letting potentially fatal levels of humiliation come between me and what I want.
Straightening my spine, I lock eyes with the man practically on top of me and say, “I need you to help me come.”