8. Kira
KIRA
I was somewhere between sleeping and lucid dreaming when the mattress shifted, and my whole body rolled a little.
Though, I didn’t move. I lay there frozen solid with my eyes shut, flat on my back as I tried to keep my breathing calm.
My heart wasn't cooperating, though. It slammed against my ribs so hard, I was sure he could hear it.
Nikolai had never chosen to come to this room for bed.
The entire time I'd been here, he slept somewhere else in the house, downstairs maybe, or in some other room I hadn't been allowed to see.
This bedroom had become mine by default, the one tiny scrap of territory I controlled, and now he was climbing into bed with me like he owned me.
It was infuriating but this was his bed, his house, his everything—except me. I didn't belong to him and I wasn't about to start letting him do whatever he wanted with me.
My skin prickled and my pulse wouldn't come down no matter how many times I told myself to relax.
He had catfished me and then locked me up.
There was absolutely no reason my body should've been reacting to him, and yet here I was, flustered and hyper-aware of every inch of space between us.
And pretending to sleep wasn't working for me.
Not only would he get the idea that I was okay with this if he found out, but he would keep doing it.
If I pushed back, however, he might do something worse, though he hadn't been that way with me at all so far.
I just wasn't sure what sort of man he really was.
I knew nothing about the real "Niko", only the facade he'd played me with.
He shifted and his knee grazed the back of my thigh.
It was barely anything. It was just accidental contact that happens when two people share a bed.
But heat shot up my leg and pooled in my belly and I clenched my teeth against it.
It made me squirm a little as my cheeks flushed and I remembered how incredible it felt to be owned by him.
"I know you're not sleeping, Kira."
God, I hated him. I kept my eyes shut and didn't answer, but it was obvious he'd read me like a book.
"Your breathing changed the second I got into bed."
"Go to hell," I whispered.
He chuckled and then I felt him shifting, turning over toward me and causing the blanket to pull back a little.
It didn't expose me, but it let a gush of cold air rush under the covers.
I turned to my side, hoping to put more space between us, but the bastard hooked his arm around my waist and pulled me back until my spine stretched along his body from shoulders to hips and I felt his warmth wrap around me.
"Get out of my bed," I told him angrily, but he only tightened his grip.
"It's my bed."
"It's been mine for a week. You forfeited it when you decided to hold me hostage."
He was quiet for a second, and I could feel his chest rise and fall against my back.
His heartbeat was annoyingly steady compared to mine, which was going so fast, I felt lightheaded.
I hated how much he got me worked up and not just because I was so mad at him.
He made me flustered and aroused and none of this was okay with me.
"I'm not trying to hurt you, Kira." Nikolai sounded calmer than I'd heard him in a week, more like the sweet man who met me in front of that restaurant before life erupted. "I never wanted it to go like this."
"And yet here we are." It was hard to let go of the anger, but I was trying. I knew it served no purpose. I’d get my blood pressure up for no reason. No matter what I did, acting out or playing toward his weakness, I was trapped here. I had to get used to that.
"Here we are," he agreed. "I'm sorry for that. But your father's been bleeding me dry for six months. He's taken my men, my businesses, my territory. I tried to handle it quietly and he kept pushing. Taking you was the only move I had left."
"Taking me?" I said flatly because I wanted him to hear stupid how it sounded. "You didn't take me, Niko. You tricked me. You spent two weeks pretending to be someone I could trust and then you used that trust to trap me."
"I know." Was that a hint of remorse in his tone? Was this a joke? Now he was trying to loosen me up or make me think he wasn’t a monster?
"It's not something that just happened. You literally planned this enough that you studied me and memorized ways to get in my fucking head.
" Tears welled up in my eyes and I blinked them back.
What I wouldn't do for a man who was actually the things Nikolai said he was.
Every woman wants a man that incredible whom she meshes with so perfectly, and I was a fool for thinking he was a dream come true.
"You lied to me and pretended you were interested." Now I was quieter too, but not because I was calmer. I just felt the fight leaving me, and what was left was sadness. "Why even ask me about the things I'm interested in if you didn't care?"
"I asked because I wanted to talk about it. Not because it was part of some plan."
"How am I supposed to believe that?"
"Because it's the truth. Everything I told you in those messages was real. I didn't make any of that up, Kira."
Even if it was true and he had shared real moments from his life, and he was interested in the same hobbies that I was, what he'd done was still wrong. "You made up the part where you were a decent person."
"I am a decent person in a very indecent situation." When his thumb started strumming over my knuckles, I grimaced.
"Decent people don't lock women in bedrooms," I snipped.
"No," he said quietly, "they don't. And I wish I'd had another option. But your father doesn't respond to anything less than force, and you were the only thing he cared about enough to notice."
"Clearly, he doesn't care that much, or I'd be home by now." My bitterness about my father came out in every word I said, but Niko didn't respond. Something had happened with my father. Something Niko wasn't telling me, and the way he went quiet made my stomach drop.
I'd known for a very long time that my father was obsessed with his work more than normal men.
My mother didn't just jet off to Europe for months at a time because she wanted to escape being a mother.
When Dugan and I would talk about it, even he would point out how bad he thought it was, probably one of the reasons Dugan never wanted to follow in our father's footsteps.
So it comes as no shock to me that no rescue attempt has been made. Though, if Nikolai is hoping for a ransom, he can stop waiting. Dad would never do that.
"What?" I asked when Niko sighed heavily.
"Nothing."
"Don't do that. Don't bring up my father and then go silent. What happened? Did you talk to him?"
"Yes."
"And?"
His arm shifted and his thumb moved absently across my stomach, just a small back-and-forth motion that I didn't think he was even aware of.
It made my skin tingle thinking of how caring a gesture it was, and wondering why he'd offer me a kind gesture at all right now.
I was his prisoner, not his lover. That ship had sailed.
"He told me he wouldn't stop," Niko said carefully, "regardless of what I did."
Pressing my eyes closed, I sucked in a breath and blew it out. "You're lying," I told him, though he had no real reason left to lie to me. I was already caged. What more could he do?
"I'm not."
I pulled forward and scooted away from him, dragging the covers with me until there was a solid gap between us. He let me go without resistance. His arm slid off and I heard him settle onto his back.
"My father would never say that," I said to the wall. "He loves me."
"I believe he does. But he loves his empire more, and right now, those two things are in conflict."
"Stop talking," I spat as the tears burned at my eyes.
I couldn't listen to him say things about my father, even if somewhere deep in my gut, a tiny voice was whispering that it tracked with everything I already knew.
My father was ruthless. He always had been.
I just never imagined his ruthlessness extended to me.
Niko didn't say anything else and after a few minutes, his breathing deepened and evened out.
I listened to him as I tried to make my heart not feel so devastated by my father's actions.
It was inevitable that this day would come, where I felt deserted by him or abandoned.
My mother told me years ago and promised me that when that day came and I asked her to help me, she'd be there.
But she deserted me too, left me for months on end, and honestly, I didn't know how to admit that she'd been right all along. I ached to hear her voice now, but there wasn’t a chance in hell Niko would let me go so I could be with her.
I'd have to get away from him, and right now might be the perfect chance.
I counted his breaths for five solid minutes to make sure he was really under.
Then I replayed him walking in and tried to remember the sound of the door.
He'd opened it, stepped through, and pulled it shut behind him.
But I couldn't remember the click of the lock.
I'd been so focused on faking sleep and so rattled by his climbing into bed that I missed the one detail that actually mattered.
If the door was unlocked then the hallway was right there… and the stairs… and the front door was at the bottom just waiting to be opened.
I didn't let myself think about it too hard because overthinking would keep me planted in this bed and too scared to move.
So I peeled the covers back slowly, an inch at a time, and swung my legs over the edge.
The floor was cold and I stood there for a long second making sure his breathing hadn't changed.
In order for this to work, I had to get out of his house before he even woke up.
I crossed the room carefully, barely making any sound at all, and when I opened the door, I paused for a few seconds just to make sure he didn't stir. My heart surged as I eased the door open just enough to slip through.
The house was dead quiet and I was free. Though, I only had these boxers and the thin T-shirt, but I'd gladly walk through Midtown like this if it meant going home and away from him.
I tiptoed toward the stairs, keeping close to the wall, placing each foot carefully.
Every settle of the house made me freeze, but the farther I got from his door, the faster I went.
I was almost running when a hand clamped over my mouth from behind and an arm locked around my waist and yanked me off the floor.
"What are you doing?" Nikolai growled into my ear.
I screamed into his palm but the sound went nowhere. He dragged me backward with my feet kicking and my fingernails clawing and he didn't even flinch.
"And to think I was trying to be nice to you…" He dropped me just inside his room as he turned and opened the drawer next to the bed. He pulled something out I couldn't see, but I assumed it was a key when he went to the door and I heard clicking.
I scrambled backward and he stood at the foot of the bed as the first tears spilled over my eyelids, and when he hung the key around his neck on a chain, I knew my escape attempts were over for tonight.
"Come to bed… Let me hold you," he grumbled, and it didn't sound like an invitation at all.
I would've much rather slept on the floor without him, but he took my hand and pressed a kiss to my cheek, saying, "Please."
I was really beginning to get confused by this man, and anger seemed a better self-defense than vulnerability.