Chapter 20
Lev
I spend the first hour outside Polina’s building telling myself I’m here for security, not punishment.
That lie dies fast.
I park across from the entrance with the seat pushed back and my coat folded under my head like a pillow, cramped and uncomfortable as I keep watch.
I deserve worse.
My phone sits on my chest. I check it every few minutes. No messages from her. Nothing from Ruslan except a short text at 11 p.m. asking if I needed company. I tell him no. He sends back one word.
Idiot.
Fair.
I doze for maybe twenty minutes at a time and wake every time a door slams on the street. My neck aches. My shoulders burn. My head won’t shut off. Every version of tomorrow ends in Dmitri Kozlov’s office, and every version after that gets harder to picture.
At 12:03 a.m., my phone dings.
I grab it so fast that I almost drop it. It’s a text from Polina.
If you’re going to brood in my parking lot like a divorced father in a bad film, come upstairs.
I stare at the screen for half a second and chuckle because she is furious enough to insult me and still letting me in.
I text back.
You knew I was here?
You look like a criminal on a stakeout. Come up before I change my mind.
The stairwell smells like old paint and someone’s dinner. I take the steps two at a time, then slow before I hit her floor because the last thing I need is to walk into her apartment looking like I’m about to kick a door in.
She opens before I knock.
Polina stands in the doorway barefoot, with her hair loose and messy and eyes red at the rims. A vodka bottle hangs from her fingers, and she’s wearing soft gray sleep shorts and a white tank top with no bra. My body reacts so hard that I have to lock my jaw for a second.
She looks pissed and wrung out, and she’s drunk enough that she wobbles when she leans on the frame.
“You took long enough,” she complains.
“You invited me thirty seconds ago.”
She points the bottle at my chest. “Do not get technical with me tonight.”
I step inside and close the door, locking it. “How much have you had?”
“Enough to hate you properly.” She turns and stumbles toward the kitchen.
I follow her and watch the way she holds onto the counter when she stops. Two shot glasses sit beside the sink. One is empty. The other is half full.
She takes a swallow straight from the bottle and winces.
I move in and take it from her before she can pull away.
“Hey,” she squeaks.
“You’ve had enough.”
She laughs once and braces her hands on the counter. “You think I invited you up here to discuss my drinking habits?”
I set the bottle down out of reach. “I think you invited me up here because you’re furious and scared and trying not to feel either.”
She lifts her chin. “At least you’re done with half-answers.”
“Do you want some water?”
“I want one hour.” She raises her index finger in the air as she adds, “I want one hour where my brain shuts up.”
“Polina… I don’t know if—”
She steps into me and grabs my shirt. “You’re right, okay? I’m furious with you. I’m terrified. I want to throw things at your head again, and I also want you to put your hands on me until I stop thinking. I am not in the mood for a speech, Lev.”
The force of that confession knocks me back.
I catch her wrists gently and look at her face, not her mouth. If I look at her mouth, I am done.
“You’ve been drinking.”
“I know.”
“You’re angry.”
“No shit.”
“Look at me.” I wait until she does. “If I touch you tonight, it is because you want me to. Not because you’re too drunk to decide.”
She stares at me for a second, then jerks one hand free and shoves me.
“Don’t do that,” she snaps. “Don’t stand there and act noble after everything else. I know what I’m asking for.”
She reaches for me again, drags me down by the front of my shirt, and kisses me before I can answer.
She bites my lower lip hard enough to make me curse into her mouth, and I grab her waist before she can lose balance. The taste of vodka hits first, then anger, then the desperate edge under both that wrecks me.
I should slow this down, but God help me, I can’t.
I slide my hands under her shirt and over warm skin, and she makes a broken sound that goes straight to my cock.
She breaks the kiss just long enough to say, “Bedroom. Now. And just so we’re clear, I’m the one running this.”
I don’t argue as I catch the back of her thighs and lift. She wraps her legs around me on instinct, and I carry her down the short hall while she kisses my mouth, my jaw, my throat, all teeth and tongue and no patience.
She grabs my hair and pulls my head back. “If you say one careful thing, I swear to God—”
I toss her onto the bed before she finishes.
The mattress bounces. She props herself up on her elbows, her eyes bright and wild, and drags her tank top over her head. Her naked breasts spill free, and she watches me watch her with fury and challenge written all over her face.
“Don’t stand there,” she says. “Do something.”
I strip my belt free in one pull and let the leather slide through the loops with a snap.
That gets her attention.
Her eyes drop to my hands, then slide back to my face. “You think you’re in charge?”
I move onto the bed and crowd her back onto the pillows. “Tonight, I’m the one making you stop thinking.”
Her mouth parts. “Cocky. You’ve had two years watching me without my knowledge. Tonight, I decide how this goes.”
I kiss her hard enough to shut her up.
She fights me the way I knew she would. Hands in my shirt. Nails against my ribs. Teeth on my tongue. She grinds up against me through our clothes and curses when she feels how hard I am.
“Take it off,” she demands against my mouth.
“Mine or yours?”
“All of it.” She shoves at my shoulders. “Now.”
I catch her wrists in one hand and pin them over her head. “Stay there.”
“Make me.”
I grin despite everything and wrap the belt around her wrists.
She goes still for half a second while I coil the leather and pull it snug enough to hold without hurting her.
“Too tight?” I ask.
Her chest rises and falls hard. “No.”
I thread the belt around the slats in her headboard and buckle it fast. Her hands stay above her head, palms open, and she tests the restraint with a sharp pull.
The bed frame knocks the wall, and her eyes flash with approval.
I drag my mouth down her throat and across one breast while I push her shorts and panties down her legs. She kicks them free and arches off the mattress when I spread her thighs.
She is already soaking wet.
I look at her once before I touch her.
She stares back with her wrists bound over her head and says, “Don’t you dare be gentle.”
I run two fingers through her folds and feel her jerk. “I wasn’t planning to.”
“Good.”
I swipe my thumb over her clit and drive two fingers into her at once. She curses with her heels digging into the mattress, lifting her hips to meet my hand.
“That’s what you wanted?” I ask, pumping hard.
Her eyes squeeze shut. “You know what I wanted.”
I lightly slap her thigh with my free hand. “Look at me when you talk to me.”
Her eyes fly open, furious and dazed. “Bossy bastard.”
I hook my fingers and drag another curse out of her. She pulls against the belt again, breasts lifting, nipples brushing my chest through my shirt.
“Harder,” she demands.
I give it to her.
My hand works her fast and rough, thumb grinding, fingers driving in deep, and she takes it. She twists her wrists against the belt and gasps my name like she hates needing me.
I keep my mouth at her breast and bite gently around the pebbled nipple before I suck it deep.
Her body bows off the bed as she curses, “Fuck, Lev.”
She breaks into a moan when I push my fingers deeper and hit the spot that makes her shake.
“You wanted one hour,” I remind her. “You’re not wasting it arguing.”
“Stop talking and make me come.”
I pull my fingers out, and her eyes go wide.
“You asshole.”
I grin and slide down the bed, where I open her thighs wider. “You don’t get to order me around when I’ve got you tied to a headboard.”
“Watch me.”
I put my mouth on her, and she loses whatever she was about to say.
I hold her thighs apart and eat her hard, with no patience or slow buildup, and she thrashes under my mouth with a hand she can’t free and a mouth that curses me out between moans.
“Lev, I swear to God, if you stop again—”
I press one finger into her while I suck her clit, and she goes silent except for a moan that I feel more than hear.
That does not count as enough.
I add a second finger and work them deep while I keep my mouth on her, and she starts shaking so hard the headboard knocks again. Her thighs close around my shoulders, and I force them back open.
“Keep them open,” I order against her.
“You keep them open,” she shoots back, and I laugh into her before I bite her thigh lightly in warning.
“Careful.”
“Make me.”
Stubborn, furious woman.
I push her right to the edge and hold her there, backing off every time she starts to tip, then driving her back up again until she curses my name and yanks at the belt hard enough to leave marks on her wrists.
“Please,” she finally begs, and it comes out wrecked and furious and almost ashamed.
I look up from between her legs. “What do you want?”
Her face flushes deeper. “Do not do this to me.”
“Say it.”
She glares down at me with her hair all over the pillow, chest heaving. “Make me come, Lev.”
I smile against her thigh. “That’s better.”
I finish her with my mouth and my hand, and she comes with a cry that tears out of her throat while her body bows up off the mattress. She shakes through it, thighs trembling against my shoulders, and wrists pulling against the belt while I continue until she twists away from the sensitivity.
“Too much,” she gasps.
I lift my head and wipe my mouth with the back of my hand. “You’re the one who said not to be gentle.”
I stand and strip off my shirt. She watches every movement as her eyes lift to my belt, where it holds her wrists, then to my hands as I open my fly.
“Untie me,” she says.
“Why?”
“So I can touch you.”
I climb onto the bed and push her thighs apart again with my knees. “You can touch me tomorrow.”
She glares. “I might kill you tomorrow.”
“Maybe.” I stroke myself once and line up. “Tonight, you take what I give you.”
Her mouth opens on a curse when I push into her.
She’s slick and tight and still pulsing from her orgasm, and the first thrust takes both of us out at the knees. I brace one hand beside her head and hold onto her hip with the other while I sink all the way in.
“Fuck,” I say into her mouth.
There is nothing controlled about the way I fuck her.
It borders on violent from the first stroke, and the bed bangs the wall.
Her wrists stay over her head, belt stretched tight, and the sight hits every filthy part of my brain.
Strong and raging and tied down by her choice, while she fights me for every inch.
I kiss her open-mouthed and deep while I drive into her, and she turns her head enough to curse in my ear.
I move my hand from her hip to between her thighs and press my thumb to her clit. Her whole body responds.
“There she is,” I praise.
“Don’t get smug,” she pants. “Just fuck me.”
My arm burns. My shoulder pulls. But I do not slow down. She takes everything I give her and demands more with her eyes, her mouth, and the way she lifts into me and refuses to break first.
“Lev,” she says, and this time my name sounds different. Less fury. More need. “I’m close.”
I look at her tied to the headboard with tears still dried at the corners of her eyes, and something in my chest goes hot and vicious.
“Come for me,” I tell her. “Now.”
Her orgasm hits hard enough to make me grunt. She clenches around me and arches under my hand while I keep my thumb on her and drive through it until I lose the rhythm and slam into my own.
I bury my face in her neck and come with my teeth in my lip and my hand locked on her hip hard enough to leave marks by morning.
For a few seconds, neither of us moves much.
Then she turns her face and says against my jaw, “Untie me.”
I lift enough to reach the buckle and free the belt. Her arms drop to the bed, and she winces.
“Sorry,” I mutter, rubbing her wrists.
She looks at me, dazed and annoyed. “Don’t apologize for that one.”
A short laugh leaves me before I can stop it.
I get up, grab a wet cloth from her bathroom, and come back to clean her. She watches me silently the whole time. Her eyes close while I pull the blanket over her.
I lie down behind her and keep my hands to myself until she rolls away from me and curls on her side with her back to my chest.
The message is clear.
Stay, but don’t ask for more.
So that’s what I do.