Chapter 4 Mikhail
Chapter four
Mikhail
I expect darkness. Silence. The penthouse breathing its usual sterile rhythm around the girl who sleeps somewhere inside. Instead, Riley is waiting, coiling her fury into something sharp and bright. The combination makes my blood roar.
The living room's lamplight cuts a single slash across the ivory carpet.
Riley sits in the armchair by the window, legs tucked beneath her, one of the silk robes I ordered pooled around her thighs.
Not the charcoal one she wore that first night.
A new one. Blush-colored. It clings to every tempting curve.
Her hair is loose; the red braids undulate into a crimson storm that falls past her shoulders.
“Where were you?” she asks.
“Working.” I hang my coat. The gun under my arm is wrong for this room. For her. “You should be asleep.”
“Should I?” She rises, and the robe slips open at the knee. She does not close it. I taste copper at the sight of her thigh. “Should I sleep, Mikhail? Should I curl up in bed and dream about a fairy-tale ending while you play whatever game you’re making us play?”
I turn. She is closer than I expected. Jasmine and defiance, the same scent that burrowed under my skin in the warehouse. It has only deepened since she moved into my space. She is in my soap. My towels. My air.
“I am not playing,” I say.
“No?” She gestures wildly at her clothes, the coat rack, the kitchen beyond. “You bought me shampoo. You’ve given me pajamas. Clothes in the closet with the tags still on. Organic groceries and fifteen different kinds of tea, and you think I don’t notice?”
I take a step toward her. “I’m trying to make you comfortable. Give you time.”
“I don’t need time!” The shout fractures the room.
She shoves at my chest with both hands, small fists thudding uselessly against me.
“I don’t need a goddamn body pillow and a skincare routine.
I need you to stop treating me like a ghost in your house.
I need this—whatever the fuck this contract is—to actually happen. ”
“It’s going to happen.”
“When?” She stops, and her eyes narrow. “Maybe I’m asking the wrong questions. Are you gay? Is that why you can’t get your own woman pregnant? You can’t get it up for–”
I snatch her before I can stop myself. My hands catch her wrists.
Not hard. But enough. “You never stop pushing. Sometimes, Riley, you go too far.” Her pulse hammers against my thumbs, a trapped bird.
“You want to know what game I’m playing?
” I ask. My voice is barely above a whisper, but it makes her freeze.
“I am trying not to devour you, Riley. That is the game. I am trying to be the man who waits. Who asks. Who does not take a twenty-year-old virgin to bed like the animal I am because I signed a piece of paper that says I can.”
She is breathing hard. Her pupils are blown wide, swallowing the brown. “So… you want me?”
I release one wrist. Trace the line of her jaw with a knuckle that has broken men’s teeth.
“Yes, Riley. I want you. I want you so much, I have been jerking off in the shower every morning like a teenager, so I don’t drag you into my bed every time you walk through my kitchen. Is that what you want to hear?”
Her throat ripples as she swallows. She does not pull away. “Then just fucking do it already.” I don't move a muscle.
“I am giving you an out,” I say. Then I take my last stand. My final mercy. “Right now. Walk to your room. Lock the door. Tomorrow, the doctor comes, and we will do this clean. Clinical. It’s my last offer. Take it.”
She tilts her chin. Saucy. Reckless. Alive. “And if I don’t want clean? If I want you dirty, Pakhan? What then? You gonna make me beg?”
The last thread of my control snaps. Whipping free along with my restraint. “Strip.”
She blinks. “What?”
“Take off the robe. The shorts I know you are wearing underneath, because you've been teasing me with them since I arrived. The little cotton tank that rides up when you reach for a glass. Take it all off. Then go to my bed, lie down on your back, and wait for me like a good girl.”
Her lips part. Her eyes are wide, enormous, suddenly seeing something she missed before. “I didn’t… I thought you were…”
“Thought I was what?” I step closer. Crowding her. Letting her feel the heat and the violence coiled in every inch of me. “A gentleman? A saint? I am neither. I have not been gentle a day in my life. And if you walk through that bedroom door, you will learn exactly how not-gentle I am.”
She swallows. Her bravado trembles at the edges, but she does not run. She's so fucking fearless.
For a long moment, we stare at each other, from opposite cliffs, contemplating the dive. Two people who are staring into the abyss of what we actually are.
She moves first.
Her fingers go to the tie of the robe. It falls.
Beneath it, the silk camisole and shorts, blush-pink and obscene against her dark skin.
She pulls the camisole over her head. Her breasts are small, perfect, the nipples already tight with want.
The shorts slide down her hips. She is bare.
Completely. I take it all in. The soft curl between her thighs.
The scars on her hip from a life she survived without me. All of it.
She turns. She walks to my bedroom.
She does not close the door.
I stand alone in the living room, counting my heartbeats, until I can breathe again.
When I enter, she is on the bed exactly as I commanded.
On her back. The duvet white and pristine beneath her, a canvas waiting for ruin.
Her hands are fisted at her sides. Her knees press together, then part slightly, then close again.
She has no idea what to do with her body.
For all her dirty talk, research, and bravado, she is truly innocent.
Not ignorant. Innocent.
I undress at the foot of the bed. My shirt first. Her eyes track the ink on my chest, the scars, the muscle earned by hurting people and surviving being hurt.
My trousers. My boxer briefs. I let her look.
Let her see what she has summoned. I am hard already, heavy and thick, and her gaze widens, and that makes me harder.
“You’re staring, Baby Girl,” I murmur.
“That's not going to fit,” she whispers.
I smile. “We'll make it fit.”
The mattress dips when I crawl onto the bed. She tenses, her spine arching slightly off the mattress. She gasps when I grab her ankle.
“Shh.” I run my palm up her calf, the inside of her knee, her thigh. Her skin is furnace hot. “I told you I would ruin you. But first, I am going to make you feel so good you forget your own name. Can you be quiet for me, Riley? Can you stop talking long enough to let me own this pretty pussy?”
She nods, quick and jerky, eyes wide.
I brace above her, cage her with my body, and take her mouth.
The kiss is deep, deliberate, a slow stroke of my tongue that demands she open for me.
She does. A soft, broken sound vibrates from her throat into mine, and my cock throbs against her hip.
I kiss her until her hands fist in my hair, until her breath turns ragged, until every smart remark and defensive wall she owns melts against my lips.
Only then do I drag my mouth lower.
I taste the frantic pulse in her neck, then close my lips around one tight nipple.
I suck hard, drawing it deep, flicking my tongue until her back bows off the bed.
Her fingers dig into my shoulders. I switch to the other breast, sucking, biting, soothing with slow laps while my hand slides between her thighs.
She is soaked. I push two fingers inside her tight heat, curl them, and stroke that spot that makes her hips jerk.
I keep sucking her breasts while I fuck her with my fingers, relentless, steady, reading every hitch in her breath, every clamp of her cunt. Her thighs start to shake.
“Mikhail—” Her voice cracks.
“Come for me, Baby Girl. Let me feel it.”
She shatters. Her pussy clamps down around my fingers, pulsing, flooding my hand. I keep stroking her through it, keep my mouth on her breast until the last tremor fades and she is gasping, eyes glassy, lips parted on a silent cry.
I don’t give her time to recover.
I slide down her body, spread her legs wide, and cover her velvet lips with my mouth.
The first flat drag of my tongue over her swollen clit rips a raw sound from her throat.
I feast. I lick and suck and thrust my tongue inside her, then seal my lips around her clit and suck hard while I push my fingers back into her still-spasming heat.
I work her without mercy, devouring every drop of her pleasure, growling against her slick flesh because she tastes like mine.
She comes again, harder, thighs clamped around my head, a choked scream tearing from her lips as she bites her own fist. I don’t stop until she shoves at my shoulders, oversensitive and sobbing.
I rise over her. Her face is wrecked. Tears leak from the corner of her eyes. Lips swollen from my kiss. For the first time since I met her, Riley Miller has no words. No armor. Only trust and raw need.
She is naked in every possible way.
I grip my cock and nudge the head against her entrance. She is drenched, scalding, fluttering. I catch her chin, force her eyes to mine.
“Eyes on me, Baby Girl. I want to watch the exact second you become mine.”
I push forward.
Tight. So fucking tight. Her barrier resists, and the primal part of me preens at the gift she is giving. She whimpers, nails gouging my shoulders. I stop, press my forehead to hers, exhale with her.
“Breathe,” I rasp. The word scrapes out of me, rough and stripped of every title I carry. “Breathe for me, Riley. Let me in.”
She exhales. I thrust through.
Her cry is sharp, then deepens into something that sounds like surrender. I seat myself to the hilt and hold still, jaw locked, every muscle trembling with the need to move. She pulses around me, impossibly hot, impossibly perfect, adjusting to the stretch of my cock. Her eyes stay locked on mine.
“Okay?” I manage.
She nods, exhales, and nods again.
I start to move. Slow, dragging strokes that grind against her clit with every roll of my hips. Her whimpers turn into moans. Her moans fracture into my name—over and over, Mikhail, Mikhail—until the sound of it brands itself onto my soul.
I hook her knee over my shoulder, open her wider, drive deeper. The bed slams against the wall. Her breasts bounce with every thrust. I lose the last thread of control and fuck her the way I have needed to since the moment she shoved that placard under my nose—hard, possessive, relentless.
She comes again, violently, squeezing my cock like a fist. The orgasm tears through her, ripping away every last defense. She sobs my name, shaking, tears leaking from the corners of her eyes as she claws at my back.
I follow her over with a roar that shakes the room.
I thrust deep and spill inside her, pulse after heavy pulse, emptying years of hunger into the only woman who has ever made me feel anything real.
I keep moving through it, grinding against her, wringing every last tremor from her body until we are both wrecked.
When it ends, I don’t pull out. I collapse to my elbows, face buried in the sweat-slick curve of her neck. Our hearts hammer against each other. Her fingers loosen from my biceps, then slide into my hair with a tenderness that burns my throat.
She is mine now. In every way that matters, Riley Miller belongs to me. How long before she accepts that?
I gather her to me. Roll onto my back, bringing her with me so she is sprawled across my chest, still impaled, still connected. She is limp. Weightless. Her breath hitches against my sternum.
I reach down and tip her chin up. Her eyes are swollen, her lips bitten red.
“Riley,” I say softly.
She looks at me. No walls. No placard. No price tag. “Yeah?” Her voice is a thread.
I brush the matted hair from her forehead. “Are you alright?”
She stares at me for a long moment, as if she is seeing me for the first time. Not the Pakhan. Not the monster. Just a man, holding her tighter than I should.
“Yeah,” she whispers. “I’m… I’m good.”
“You sure?”
A faint, watery laugh. No sarcasm… just quiet. I let her have the moment. I need one, too.
I kiss her temple. Her eyelid. The tip of her nose. I don't trust myself to speak. So I just squeeze her closer. Because, hell, what the actual fuck?
She settles against me, her hand over my heart. Within minutes, her breathing evens out into sleep. I stay awake, holding her, feeling the warmth of her seep into the places I thought had iced over decades ago.
I press one last kiss to her hair. “My Baby Girl,” I whisper.
She sighs in her sleep, her fingers twitching against my chest, and holds on.