14. Vadim
VADIM
Sloane stands in the middle of the suite wearing the same uniform she has been trapped in for most of the day, looking around as though she has only just realized that accepting my invitation to stay here created a practical problem neither of us considered.
“I don’t have any clothes.”
She says it with genuine irritation, one hand gripping the strap of her small bag while the other gestures vaguely toward herself.
The suite is large enough that the complaint sounds almost absurd inside it.
Two adjoining rooms open from the private foyer, with tall windows overlooking the lights of Bucharest, a sitting area arranged around a low marble fireplace, and a bedroom separated by sliding doors of dark wood and smoked glass.
Someone has already placed fresh flowers on the dining table and arranged a tray of food neither of us has touched.
Sloane looks tired against all of it.
“How could I forget my luggage on the plane? So irresponsible,” she says.
“You will survive.”
She looks at me through the reflection. “That’s easy for you to say. You apparently travel with an entire replacement wardrobe.”
“I plan ahead.”
“You were shot tonight,” she says, folding her arms in front of her chest.
I take a good look at her. Tired, rumpled, and more attractive to me than she has any right to be after the day we’ve had.
Her hair is coming loose again. The mark from Hale’s hand is still faintly visible across one cheek despite whatever she did to cover it, and the fitted blouse she has been wearing since before takeoff is creased around her waist.
I lean against the edge of the desk and watch her. “Besides,” I say. “You won’t need clothes tonight anyway.”
Her head turns slowly. The look she gives me could melt metal. “Excuse me?”
I almost smile. “You heard me.”
“Oh, I heard you. I’m deciding whether the concussion you insist I don’t have somehow transferred itself to you.”
I push away from the desk. She watches me approach, and something changes in her posture before I touch her. Her shoulders remain straight, but her breathing becomes slightly shallower, and her fingers loosen around the bag strap.
I stop in front of her. Close enough that she has to lift her chin to meet my eyes.
“I can have clothes brought up if you want them.”
“That wasn’t what you meant.”
“No.”
The room becomes quiet, as the humor leaves her expression. I reach up and brush one of the loose strands of hair away from her cheek, carefully avoiding the place Hale struck her.
Sloane doesn’t move.
“I want you,” I tell her.
Her lips part.
“But I’m not taking advantage of what happened to you tonight, and I’m not guessing what you want, just because you kissed me in a hospital and again in the car.”
Her eyes hold mine. “You kissed me in the hospital.”
“You participated.”
“You keep using that word.”
“Because you keep participating.”
The corner of her mouth moves.
I let my hand fall. “If you want your own room, I will arrange it. If you want to lock the door and sleep until morning, nobody will disturb you.”
Her lips part. “I should have gone with Camille.”
I raise a brow. “Is that what you want?”
“No,” she says quietly, “that’s not what I want.”
She studies my face so intently that I wonder what she’s looking for.
“And if I want you?” she asks. The question is quiet.
Something inside me tightens. “Then say it.”
Her gaze drops briefly to my mouth. “I want you.”
It takes considerable effort not to reach for her immediately.
I have spent most of my life obtaining things before anyone can use them against me. Businesses. Territory. Information. People, when necessary.
But not Sloane—this has to be her decision.
“Because you want me,” I say. “Not because I helped you on the plane. Not because you are alone here.”
Her eyes narrow. “Do you always interrogate women before you sleep with them?”
“No.”
“Then stop treating me like I don’t know my own mind.”
I move before she can say anything else. My hand closes around the back of her neck and I kiss her.
Sloane makes a soft sound and rises onto her toes, arms coming around my shoulders as if she has been waiting for exactly this. I kiss her slowly at first because I want to feel the moment she stops thinking, the moment all that control she carries like armor begins to loosen beneath my hands.
It doesn’t take long.
Her fingers slide into my hair, and I pull her against me. The uniform between us becomes intolerable almost immediately. It has to go. My hands move over her waist and hips before reaching the buttons of her blouse. I open them one at a time, deliberately, looking at her face while I do it.
She watches my hands.
Her breathing changes.
“Want me to stop?” I ask.
“No.”
“Good.”
I part the blouse. Her bra is pale beneath it, simple and practical, which somehow makes the sight of her breasts spilling against the cups more erotic than anything deliberately chosen for seduction.
I kiss the base of her throat. Sloane tilts her head back. My mouth travels lower, over the warm skin between her collarbones, then down to the upper curve of one breast.
She shivers as I push the blouse from her shoulders. It slides down her arms and lands somewhere behind her. My fingers find the clasp of her bra.
She looks down. “You’re very confident.”
“I have managed clasps before.”
“With all your supermodels?”
Jealousy. Small, but unmistakable.
I look up at her. “Are you asking?”
“No.”
“You are.”
“I absolutely am not.”
I unfasten the bra, and her breasts fall free into my hands.
The argument leaves her face.
Fuck. She is beautiful. Full, soft, her nipples already hard from nothing more than my touch and the cool air of the room.
I cup both breasts and rub my thumbs over her nipples. Sloane gasps, her hands gripping my shoulders.
“Vadim.”
I lower my head and take one nipple into my mouth. Her entire body arches. The sound she makes is helpless and sweet, and it makes my cock harden painfully beneath my trousers.
I suck slowly, tongue circling the tight peak while my hand kneads the other breast. She presses closer, and her breathing turns uneven. I switch sides, kissing across the center of her chest before closing my mouth over the other nipple.
Her fingers curl into my hair. “Fuck.”
I smile against her skin. “You swear more when I touch you.”
“Maybe you’re just annoying,” she pants. “Have you considered that?”
“That is not what your body says,” I say.
She tugs my hair hard enough to make me lift my head.
“That hurt.”
“Good.”
I kiss her again. This time there is nothing slow about it. We stumble toward the bedroom together, my hands everywhere I can reach and hers tugging impatiently at my shirt.
The wound in my side complains when I twist.
I ignore it.
Sloane does not.
She feels me tense and immediately breaks the kiss. “Your stitches.”
“They are intact.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I would know.”
“You’re impossible.”
“You have said that several times.”
“And you keep proving it.”
She reaches for the hem of my shirt carefully. I let her pull it over my head.
Her eyes drop.
The dressing at my side remains clean.
Satisfied, she looks up again. Then her gaze moves lower. I know exactly when she sees the shape of my cock straining against my trousers because her lips part slightly.
I enjoy that reaction far too much.
“Problem?” I ask.
Her eyes snap back to mine. “You are extraordinarily smug.”
“I asked a question.”
“No problem.”
I step closer. “Good.”
She backs into the edge of the bed. I push her gently down, and she lands among the white sheets and looks up at me, hair finally escaping completely from its knot.
I have never seen anything more inviting.
I remove her shoes first. Then her skirt. Sloane watches me slide it down her legs, her thighs pressing together when the fabric clears her knees. I run my palms slowly up her calves, over her knees, then higher along the soft inside of her thighs. She trembles.
“Open your legs.”
Her eyes flash. “Still ordering me around?”
“Yes.”
She should argue.
Instead, her knees fall apart.
My mouth goes dry. The thin fabric between her thighs is visibly wet. I run one finger over it, and Sloane jerks.
“Oh.”
I do it again. Slowly.
Her hips lift toward my hand.
“Vadim.”
“You are very wet.”
“Don’t sound so pleased with yourself.”
“I’m pleased.” I hook my fingers into the sides of her panties and pull them down.
She watches me, a flicker of uncertainty now in her gaze. I bend and press my mouth to the inside of her knee, then move higher in an unhurried line, letting my lips travel over the soft skin of her thigh while I keep one hand wrapped around her leg and the other resting lightly at her hip.
She’s tense beneath me, not with fear but with anticipation, and every time my mouth moves closer to where she wants me, her breathing changes just enough to tell me she is losing patience.
I could end the distance between us immediately.
I don’t.
I kiss the sensitive crease where her thigh meets her body, then turn my head and drag my mouth along the other side, close enough that she feels my breath against her pussy without giving her what she’s waiting for.
Her fingers twist into the sheets. “Vadim,” she purrs. My name has never sounded so good to me before.
I glance up at her. She’s watching me through heavy-lidded eyes, hair scattered across the pillows, breasts rising quickly with every breath, and there’s something about seeing the usually composed Sloane Mercer this open beneath me that makes restraint feel almost cruel.
I finally lower my mouth to her.
The first slow pass of my tongue over her clit pulls a sharp cry from her, and her entire body reacts at once, thighs tightening around my shoulders while her hips lift instinctively toward my face.
I grip her more firmly and keep her where I want her.
“Fuck,” she breathes.
I don’t answer. I’m too busy tasting her.