Chapter 21
Artem lives in a three-story greystone a few miles north of Kaz’s townhouse. I’m slightly surprised by it when he pulls into the attached garage. The cabin had been so rustic, so much more his style than this elegant house.
It’s midnight, the air outside crisp with a chill.
Stars sparkle in the clear, dark sky. Not an everyday occurrence for Chicago, so I take a moment to enjoy the beauty of it.
Nearly every night looked this way at the cabin.
I can’t help but feel like the simplicity of the last few weeks with Artem are about to vanish into the ether of chaos.
“You’ve been quiet,” I say once we’re parked in the garage and he’s turned off the car.
“You’ve been half asleep since we got in the car.” He pops his door open. I wait for him to come to my side before I open my door, to which he lifts an eyebrow. “You’re trying to provoke me.”
“By opening my own door?” I laugh then jump down.
“You know what you do to me.” He places his hand on the small of my back and leads me to the entrance to the house. After punching in a code on the security box, he pushes the door open and gestures for me to go ahead.
“What? What do I do to you?” I ask, spinning around to face him once I’m inside. The house is beautiful, simple in its décor, and has a strong sense of home. Not what I would expect from the outside, but there’s plenty of time tomorrow to inspect his interior design.
He’s been too still since we left Kaz’s place. Almost brooding. He can say it’s because I’ve been tired, and I am—it’s been a long day—but there’s more he’s not telling me. Something my brothers said once they shooed me away to the kitchen.
His eyes darken when they fall on me.
“Do I make your palm itch?” I grab his hand and run my fingers over his large palm, repeating the phrase he’s thrown at me too many times to count over the last few weeks.
He watches with the intensity of a man headed for the electric chair as I bring his hand to my mouth and place a chaste kiss on his palm. Then, because he’s too damn serious, I lick it.
“You are playing with fire, Babygirl.” He shakes his head. “Let’s get you to bed. I’ll bring your bags up later.”
“But my night gown is in them,” I tease.
“You can wear one of my shirts.” He runs the back of his hand along my cheek. Slow, like he’s trying to commit me to memory.
“Artem.” I grab his wrist when he pulls away. “What did my brothers say?”
“We talked about business.” It’s a brush-off.
I’m tired of brush-offs.
“And now you’re walking around like a black storm cloud is over your head, ready to shoot you with lightning bolts at any minute. What did they tell you?”
He lifts his brow. “Elana, it was business. Everything is fine.”
“Did they fire you?”
“This isn’t the sort of business you get fired from.” A small smile tugs at the corner of his lips. “But no, it wasn’t anything like taking me away from my duties. Now, to bed. It’s late and you promised Megan you’d be over in the morning to go for breakfast.”
“She’ll understand if I’m late.”
“You won’t be late.” He spins me around and pops me in the ass to get me going.
If he was trying to intimidate me, he hasn’t been paying any attention the past few weeks. I stop on the first step of the winding staircase and look over my shoulder at him.
“We’re home now, Artem,” I say, turning around so I can face him, eye to eye thanks to the height of the step. “You aren’t hiding me away in the woods anymore. If you’re going to be all bossy, maybe I’ll go stay with Kaz.”
There’s more weight to the air than my threat, but the way the storm clouds roll into his gaze, I’m confident he’s taking me seriously.
“Your place is here.” He leans into me. “And if you run, Babygirl, I’ll find you. I always have, and I always will.”
He steps up onto the stair with me, making me have to lean back. I grab onto the railing to keep from falling over.
“But if I have to chase you down again, ever, you will feel more than the weight of my belt on your ass.” His eyes wander over my face, then lower to my throat. “I will collar you and chain you to my bed until you learn where your place is.”
A sane woman would see this threat as a red flag, but I lost all sanity the first time his lips brushed mine.
“I know you’re trying to threaten me, Artem. But at this point, I think we both know what saying that is doing to me.”
His eyelids lower. He licks at his bottom lip.
“What is it doing to you?” His nostrils flare. His chest rises and falls faster. “Tell me.”
He uses the gravelly voice, the one that’s a cross between losing control and taking it completely from my grasp.
“I think you know.”
“Say it.” He grabs my hip, squeezing. “You started this, remember that.”
There’s a warning that I should probably heed, but it’s been a long day, and emotionally I’m exhausted. I want my brain to turn off. I need the thoughts and emotions to just take a fucking rest. What I need is my daddy.
Heat rushes over my face as the words clog my throat. It’s one thing to realize how wet your panties are at the image of this insanely hot, unthinkably large man strapping a leather collar around your throat. It’s an entirely different beast having to put voice to it.
He moves his hand from my hip, unbuckling his belt with one hand and ripping it free from his pants. A small moan wiggles out of me.
“What does it do to you when I do this?” He wraps his thick, supple leather belt around my neck and slides it through the buckle. Pulling it tight, it snaps around my throat, and he holds the loose end like a leash.
“Artem,” I whine like a spoiled little girl who just wants her prize without having to play the game, but he’ll have none of it.
“Are your panties wet?” He takes pity, giving me a question I simply nod my head to. A wicked grin splays across his mouth. “How wet?”
And now we’re back to short answer questions.
“Very.” I manage. He pulls on the belt, tightening it. “They’re soaked. I want you, Artem. So fucking bad.” I finally say, the heat of my face exploding down my neck and through my entire body.
“Get on your hands and knees,” he orders, shifting his position down a step so I have enough room to follow his instructions.
But I don’t.
I stand frozen. When I’d gone through Tony’s things after everything that happened, I found images, short videos of the things he and his brothers did to the women they trafficked.
One of them was making a woman walk on a lead to a cage where he locked her inside.
She’d been beaten badly, blood dried on her thighs. It had made me vomit.
“Elana,” Artem’s voice breaks through the memory, and he’s caressing my face. “What’s wrong?”
His eyes search mine. My mouth goes dry.
“Say no, Elana. If you want me to stop, say no.”
He’s not Tony. Or his brothers. This is Artem and he would never do anything to hurt me.
“Don’t stop,” I say breathlessly. Tony never would have let those women have a say in what he did to them. What the men he sold them to did to them.
He slides his hand along my jaw. “Then get on your knees, Babygirl. Daddy needs to take you to bed.”
All of Chicago could be powered by the electricity coursing through my body. Every muscle tightens and my nerves come alive. But all of it is small in comparison to the surge of arousal that fills me when my knees hit the stairs and he steps next to me, urging me forward with his makeshift lead.
He goes slow, taking me up the stairs and down the hallway to a closed door. If I wasn’t wearing these leggings, there would be a trail of my arousal left on the wood flooring behind me.
When he gets to the door, he looks down at me, tugging on the belt until I sit back with my ass on my heels.
His fingers brush across my forehead, pushing away my hair. “So pretty on your knees.”
Heat flashes in his eyes, and any gentleness I thought I was going to get vanishes. He shoves open the door and jerks his chin, an indication he wants me inside.
As soon as I’m across the threshold, he scoops me from the floor and carries me to the bed. I’m tossed into the middle of it.
It’s dark. The door slams shut and a second later, a light flickers to life from the bedside table.
A perfect storm of desire and prowess circles in Artem’s eyes. He climbs on the bed with me, grabbing at my leggings and ripping them down my legs. They fly off into the shadows of the room where my inhibitions seem to be hiding.
I sit up enough to work the buttons on his shirt open. Two pop off in my urgency. He doesn’t stop me when I shove the material down his arms and press my hands to his chest. Slowly, I trace the scars, the tattoos, the markings of the violence in his life.
Scooting my ass back so I can sit up better, I press a kiss to a raised scar along his right side. He hisses when I run my tongue over it, and grabs the tail end of the belt, pulling on it until I look up at him.
Worry fills his gaze.
“You can’t think these scars don’t make you hotter than you already were.” I half laugh. But it’s evident in his stare. He does. I touch another scar unhidden by ink, raised and pink. “I don’t think anything about you could make me see anything other than who you are in here.”
I press a kiss to his chest, right over his beating heart.
He groans.
“If I had scars, would you hate them? Would I be ugly to you?”
He fists my hair and yanks my head back until he’s glaring down at me. “Nothing could make you ugly.”
I smile, even when he tightens his grip and my hair is yanked. “We don’t see with our eyes. We see with our hearts.”
His jaw tightens. His eyes flicker away for a brief second then come back to mine. He grabs my face in one large paw and kisses me. It’s raw and powerful and breath stealing.
My skin comes alive. His tongue brushes across mine, and he pushes me back to the bed, blanketing me with his body. His pants are gone, along with his underwear. I’m not sure where my panties went, but it doesn’t matter.
His skin presses against mine, and he tightens the belt around my neck.
“I should keep you this way forever. You’re compliant. Sweet.” He kisses my cheek.
“You’ve broken me.” I laugh, because it’s true and because I’m not at all upset by it. If my brothers could see how easily I follow this man’s lead, they’d never believe it.
He lessens his hold on the belt, spreads my thighs and settles between them, lining up the thick head of his cock with my entrance.
Grabbing my face again, he kisses me. I’m lost to him, to this euphoria. Wrapping my arms around his neck, I hold him to me, kissing him. I lift my hips at the same time as he drives forward, fully embedding himself inside me.
He growls against my mouth and bites at my lips. Then he’s a man consumed. I’m an addict, chasing my next high. How had I thought I could ever be satisfied with anything less than this?
He mutters my name, driving harder into me while peppering my throat with kisses. The belt is slack but there, a reminder that I wanted his leash, and he gave it.
The headboard smacks against the wall. I cry out his name as his teeth scrape across my collarbone. When did my shirt fall off? If any part of my brain still worked, I’d know. But I’ve surrendered to him, to his obsession to tame me, own me.
Another guttural growl, and he pulls free of me. As though I’m nothing more than a toy, he grabs my hips and flips me to my stomach, dragging my ass up into the air and plowing straight into me again.
I slap my hand against the headboard, holding myself steady so I don’t fall forward as his powerful thrusts rock me. Over and over again, he plows into me. His fingertips dig into my hips. His cock fills me as his balls slap against me.
“Artem! Oh, god, Artem!” I fist the bedding, feeling as though the world is about to slip out from beneath us and swallow us whole. I would welcome it, so long as Artem falls with me.
He grabs hold of the end of the belt, pulling it until the leather tightens around my throat.
“Elana.” He grinds my name out as though it’s taken every ounce of patience he has to mutter it.
It’s a command. A permission granted.
My body, much like my mind and heart, obeys him, unleashing an orgasm so intense, my voice dies as I scream out from the pleasure. The belt is released, and he grabs hold of my hips again, pulling me to him as he drives forward, riding me through my orgasm until I’m a breathless mess beneath him.
Only then does he plow hard into me and still, spilling himself inside of me with a low growl of pleasure.
Long moments later, when we’re beneath the bedsheets and I’m tucked against his chest, he kisses the top of my head.
“Elana.” This time my name sounds pained. “We should talk soon.”
“We’re talking now,” I say lazily, my eyelids dropping closed. The warmth of his body against mine and the even beating of his heart beneath my ear has me half-asleep.
“Soon,” he says, again kissing my head.
In the darkness, somewhere between consciousness and dreaming, I say the words burning my tongue.
“I love you, Artem.”
In the morning, the bed and the house are empty.
I’m alone.