Chapter 016 Isabella
“Tell me what you want.”
The words leave my lips calm, almost clinical, though every nerve in my body hums with the effort of restraint. I have one of Viktor’s wrists pinned to the leather armrest; the other rests obediently where I placed it. My free hand strokes the length of his cock—slow, deliberate—then withdraws entirely.
He whimpers.
I am settled fully across his lap, bare beneath the white shirt I stole from his closet. Nothing separates my slick heat from the rigid heat of him. This man who snaps spines for breakfast trembles beneath my palms.
“You.” The single syllable fractures on his tongue. “Just you.”
“Specifics, Viktor.” I roll my hips once more, letting the ridge of his cock glide through my folds without granting entry. The shirt stretches tight between us, hiding the view but not the evidence—my arousal already glistens on his thighs.
His fingers flex against the leather. He could shatter my grip in an instant. He does not.
“I want to be inside you,” he says, voice ragged. “I want your cunt clenched around me when you come. I want to taste you on my tongue. I want to fuck you until you forget every name but mine.” The plea slips into Russian, raw and stripped of pride. “Pozhaluysta, Isabella. Mne nuzhno tebya trogat'.”
I need to touch you.
I silence him with a kiss that claims rather than comforts. My tongue invades, tastes vodka and smoke and desperation. I bite his lower lip until copper blooms between us. We both groan at the metallic tang.
When I pull back, his chest heaves. A thin red line beads on his lip.
“Please, Isabella.” The words tear free. “Let me touch you.”
“No.”
I grind again, deliberate, cruel. The wet sound of my body against his is obscene in the quiet room. The leather creaks beneath us.
“You’ve taken everything since the day you dragged me here,” I murmur against the frantic pulse in his throat. “My freedom. My pride. You forced me to my knees, made me choke on you while you watched.” I drag my teeth along his skin until he shudders. “Tonight you return it all.”
“Take it,” he rasps. His hips jerk upward, seeking friction. “Take whatever you want from me.”
“I will.”
I rise slowly, legs trembling with the effort of denying myself what I crave most—sinking down and ending both our torment. The sudden loss of contact draws twin sounds of protest from our throats. His gaze drops to the wet streak I’ve left across his skin, marking him.
“The shirt stays on while you watch,” I say, fingers drifting down the front placket. “You do not move. You do not speak. You watch what you are not allowed to touch.”
First button. Second. Each release deliberate. By the fourth, the fabric parts enough to reveal I wear nothing beneath. My nipples strain against the cotton.
Fifth button. I cup one breast through the shirt, pinch until pleasure spikes sharp and bright. His breathing fractures.
Sixth. The shirt gapes open. I turn, presenting my back as I ease it off one shoulder, then the other. The cotton whispers to the floor.
“Christ,” he whispers, cock jerking, a bead of moisture gathering at the tip.
“You’ve seen me naked before.”
“Not like this.” His voice is ruined. “Not when you choose it. Not when I can see how drenched you are for me.”
I step close enough that he could lean forward and taste. Restraint cords every muscle in his body.
“Now,” I say softly, “you may touch.”
His hands are on me instantly—reverent and ravenous. Palms brand my waist, ribs, the heavy undersides of my breasts. When his thumbs graze my nipples, I cannot quite swallow the moan.
Then he finds the scars.
The thin silver line along my ribs. His thumb traces it; his mouth follows, tongue warm and slow. My knees threaten to fold.
“Every mark,” he murmurs against my skin. “Every story.”
“Later,” I manage, as his lips close over the bullet graze on my hip, sucking until fresh blood rises beneath the surface.
I fist his hair and yank his head back. His eyes are black with surrender.
“Right now,” I tell him, “you are mine to use.”
I tear at his clothes. Buttons ping across hardwood. Belt buckle clatters. Fabric rips. Soon he is bare beneath me, cock flushed dark and leaking.
The map of violence across his torso stops me for a heartbeat. So many raised lines, so many stories.
I trace the long scar over his ribs.
“Chechnya,” he says before I ask. “Nineteen.”
The puckered circle high on his shoulder.
“My father.” His jaw tightens. “A reminder that weakness is punished.”
I bend and press my lips to that mark—salt, old pain, survival.
“You are not weak,” I whisper against his skin.
“With you,” he says, “I am.”
I straddle him again. This time there is no barrier. His cock slides through my folds, coating himself in me. We both groan at the slick contact.
I grip him at the base—thick enough that my fingers barely meet—and guide the head to my entrance. I sink down just enough to take the crown, walls stretching around the intrusion.
His hips twitch.
“Stay still,” I order.
“Isabella—”
“You can. You will.”
Inch by devastating inch I take him, savoring the burn, the impossible fullness. When he is fully seated, I pause, breathing through the intensity, feeling my body adjust and flutter around him.
Then I move.
Slow rises, deliberate falls. Each drag of his cock against my inner walls sparks white behind my eyes. I set a ruthless rhythm, chasing my own pleasure, grinding my clit against his pelvis on every downstroke.
He tries to thrust. I slam a palm to his chest.
“Did I say you could move?”
“Please.” The plea breaks. “Let me—”
“No.” I ride harder, breasts bouncing, wet sounds filling the room. “You take what I give.”
I circle my clit with two fingers, pressure building fast and fierce.
“Look at me.”
Our eyes lock. I see everything laid bare—obsession, surrender, ruin.
The orgasm crashes through me without warning. My cunt clamps down, milking him as pleasure rips me apart. I cry his name, grinding deep to keep him buried.
Before the last tremor fades, the world tilts. He surges upward, lifting me with impossible strength, cock still inside. My back meets the mattress; suddenly he is over me, in me, driving deep with one brutal thrust that steals my breath.
“My turn,” he growls, pinning both wrists above my head with one hand. “My fucking turn.”
He fucks me like punishment and prayer combined. Each stroke slams home, hitting depths that border on pain. His free hand grips my thigh, hitching it higher, changing the angle until every thrust drags across that devastating spot inside.
“Is this what you wanted?” He snaps his hips harder. “To drive me past reason?”
“Yes,” I gasp, already climbing again.
“Eleven years,” he grits out, swelling impossibly thicker. “Eleven years I have watched you. Hated you. Wanted you. Fucked my own hand to stolen photographs of you.”
“And now?”
He releases my wrists to cup my face, forcing my gaze to his.
“Now I cannot let you go. Now I want to flood this cunt with my seed every day until you carry my name in your blood.” His thumb finds my clit, circles mercilessly. “Now I want to ruin you for any other man.”
“Then ruin me.”
The command undoes him. His rhythm falters; his cock pulses. My second orgasm seizes me just as he spills hot and deep, rope after rope marking me from the inside. He groans my name like a prayer and a curse.
He collapses atop me, both of us shaking, sweat-slick. We stay joined, his softening length still inside, his release slowly leaking out around him. The intimacy of it aches behind my ribs.
His fingers trace lazy patterns on my hip. I thread mine through his damp hair.
“I spoke to Rocco today,” I say into the quiet.
His body tenses. “And?”
“I found fresh intelligence. Updated Kuzmin schedules, security rotations, everything my family needed.” My voice cracks. “I photographed every page. Then I deleted it all.”
Silence stretches, thick and heavy.
“Why?”
“Because I could not send it.” Tears slip hot into my hair. “I chose you over them. I am a traitor to my own blood.”
He shifts to look at me, cock slipping free. A rush of warmth follows, and I shiver.
“You chose me.”
“Do not paint it noble.” Bitterness coats my tongue. “I am everything I swore I would never become.”
“You are human.”
“I was forged to be a weapon.”
He kisses me gently, tasting salt on my lips.
“You are more than any weapon. You always have been.”
I fall asleep with his seed still inside me, marked in ways no shower can wash away.
In the dream there is no Dimitri, no forgotten garden, no broken promise.
Only Viktor between my thighs, gazing up at me like I am both his salvation and his damnation.
A voice—mine, perhaps—whispers through the dark: This is a cliff you cannot climb back from.
I know.
I leap anyway.