Chapter 5 Riley
Chapter five
Riley
Mikhail's voice rumbles outside the penthouse door.
I can't hear the words, but I know the tone.
Low, rough laughter. Probably, "How's your future baby mama doing?
" and the answering chorus of chuckles. It's easier to picture that than the truth—that he's checking on the prisoner he's keeping locked in a penthouse like a very expensive, very willing hostage.
I haven't left. Why would I? I'm still here in his shirt.
The black button-down I grabbed this morning, sleeves shoved to my elbows, the hem barely skimming the tops of my thighs.
It smells like him—that expensive, dark cologne that clings to men who own entire cities.
Heat gathers between my thighs before he even walks in.
The door opens, and Mikhail fills the frame. Black wool coat open, gray eyes pinning me immediately. The shadows under his jaw are darker than yesterday. Neither of us slept. I know exactly why.
I lean back against the kitchen island, letting the shirt ride higher on one hip, and give him a slow, filthy smile.
"You couldn't stay away, huh?" I purr, voice low and mocking. "Middle of the day, Pakhan? Don't you have people to terrify?"
He doesn't answer. He shuts the door. The lock clicks. Once. Twice. The sound sinks straight between my legs.
Four long strides, and he's on me. His hands ask no questions and allow no arguments as he spins me against the wall, rattling a framed photo.
My breath leaves in a sharp gasp. The wall kisses my shoulder blades.
His mouth crashes down on mine before I can speak again, all lips, tongue, and raw hunger. I'm here for all of it.
One thick thigh wedges between mine and grinds up, dragging the coarse fabric of his trousers against my bare clit. I moan into his mouth, hips rolling shamelessly against the pressure.
"Always running that fucking mouth," he growls against my lips, voice dark and wrecked. His hands shove the shirt up to my waist, exposing me completely. Cool air hits my wet pussy right before his fingers do—two thick digits sliding through my folds, spreading me, testing how soaked I already am.
"Fuck," he mutters. "You've been dripping for me all morning, haven't you?"
"I was bored," I breathe, "had to do something." I pout even as my hips chase his hand.
He laughs once—low, dangerous—then hauls me up like I weigh nothing. My back hits the plaster again. My legs wrap around his hips automatically. The sound of his belt coming undone is obscene. Zipper rasping. Then the hot, heavy weight of his cock slapping against my slick lips.
He lines up and thrusts in one brutal, relentless stroke.
I cry out, head cracking back against the plaster as he splits me open.
The stretch burns—thick, deep, perfect. I need time to adjust. He doesn't give it.
He fucks me until I catch up, hips snapping hard and fast, driving me up the wall with every thrust of his pelvis.
The wet, filthy sound of him pounding into my soaked channel fills the penthouse.
"Look at me," he says.
I force my eyes open. His eyes darken, almost black, locked on mine with an intensity that makes my stomach flip.
"You think this is a game?" he grunts, pounding harder, the head of his cock dragging against that spot inside me that makes my vision blur. "You think I come home in the middle of the fucking day for anyone?"
"No—" My voice breaks. My nails dig into the back of his neck. "Just me."
"That's right." One hand drops between us. His thumb finds my clit and rubs tight, vicious circles. " Tell me who you belong to. Say it."
"You," I gasp, already trembling. "Fuck—Mikhail—you—"
He rewards me by fucking me harder, the wet slap of skin loud and shameless. My thighs shake around his waist. I feel myself getting tighter, wetter, the pressure coiling low and brutal.
"Come," he orders, voice rough. "Now."
Pleasure tears through me so hard my knees almost give out.
I lose the ability to breathe. My body locks down on his cock, pulsing in thick, rhythmic waves while I scream his name. My whole body jerks in his grip. Pleasure crashes over me in hot, relentless pulses until I'm shaking and gasping, forehead pressed to his.
He doesn't stop.
He fucks me through it, chasing his own with short, savage thrusts. Two more brutal strokes and he buries himself to the hilt, growling my name into my neck as he comes. I feel every thick pulse of him—hot, deep, flooding me until it leaks out around his cock and down my thighs.
For a long moment, the only sound is our ragged breathing.
He doesn't pull out. He stays buried inside me, forehead resting against mine, one hand still gripping my thigh like he's afraid I'll disappear. I feel his heart hammering against my chest. Feel him softening, still thick, still deep, as we settle.
"I came to take you to lunch," he says eventually, voice hoarse.
A breathless, wrecked laugh escapes me. "Yeah? Is that what this was? A lunch reservation?"
His mouth curves against my temple, almost a smile. "Clean up. We leave in fifteen."
He finally lowers me, pulling out carefully. His seed trickles down my inner thigh. Mikhail watches it with dark, satisfied eyes, then drags two fingers through the mess and pushes it back inside me.
"Keep that in there until after lunch," he murmurs. "Or I'll bend you over the restaurant table."
My breath catches.
He tucks himself away, zips up, and gives me that cool, unreadable look that always sets my blood on fire.
"Go."
I walk on shaky legs toward the bathroom, his shirt still unbuttoned, warmth still leaking down my thighs. He licks his lips when I glance back.
No way we're making that reservation on time.
The restaurant is in an upscale district, a sort of haute-cuisine spot that makes me nervous.
How much does food here cost? The ma?tre d' knows Mikhail by sight, not by name, which means he didn't need a reservation.
He leads us past the main floor to a private room in the back—wine-colored velvet, a single window looking out onto the street, enough space that I can breathe but not enough that I can escape the weight of Mikhail's attention.
I order the steak frites because I like the idea of the fancy version of steak and fries.
Mikhail folds his menu and has the same.
He orders a dark soda. It arrives in an ice-frosted mug with a slice of lemon.
It's so bizarrely normal that I almost question my sanity, watching the most feared man in the city wrap his scarred fingers around a sweating glass of cola.
"I'm not really that hungry," I say.
"You still need to eat. You didn't touch breakfast."
I stab a fry. It's crisp, salted, perfect. "Were you watching me?"
"Of course, someone has to."
Silence follows. It's the quiet that fills up with old pain if you let it.
And I'm letting it. Because I'm looking at him across this tiny table, at the way his hands rest on either side of his plate—scarred, capable, currently weaponless—and I realize I don't know where he came from.
Not really. Not before the warehouses and the money and the penthouse that swallows sound.
"Your family," I say. The words just fall out. "Where are they?"
His jaw tightens. Not a lot. Just enough that I catch the micro-expression before he smooths it away. But his eyes change. Something shutters behind them.
"They're dead," he says. Flat. Factual. "Killed in a shooting. I was eleven."
I knew he was alone. You don't get to be the Pakhan by being some beloved son with a fat inheritance and a summer house. But shot. Both of them. He was just a child.
"I'm sorry," I say. It sounds pathetic. I mean it more than I've meant almost anything.
Mikhail shrugs, but the movement is strained. "It was a long time ago."
"Doesn't mean I'm not sorry." I set down my fork.
"I don't have anyone either. You know that.
The system is only required to provide for you until you turn eighteen.
After that, you're on your own. I got into a career training program that helped me earn my cosmetology license and provided room and board for another two years.
Then nothing. Nobody. Not even a caseworker who pretends to check in anymore. "
He watches me. Those gray eyes, usually so sharp they could cut glass, soften at the edges. "I know."
"It means," I say slowly, feeling my way through the sentence like it's a dark room. "Being nobody's person. It means you learn to hold your own hand. You learn to sleep with one eye open. You learn that everything is temporary, especially if it's good."
He nods. Just once. "Yes."
I swirl the ice in my water glass, watching the circles distort.
"I don't remember much of my mother. Just her perfume—fruity, like candy left in a hot car.
I was four, almost five, when she left me at a social services office.
We went together, and then she just… didn't come back from the bathroom. "
Mikhail goes very still.
"She told me to stay in the plastic chair.
Don't move. Be a good girl. I sat there for an hour before anyone noticed.
I counted the tiles on the floor. Seventy-two blue, forty-eight white.
When they finally asked about my mother, the lady gave me this look.
Pity mixed with sorrow, like she already knew my fate.
" My voice stays steady, but my hands are shaking.
I press them flat against my thighs under the table.
"She'd walked out the side exit. Left my birth certificate on the counter.
My jacket, too. It was November. I remember because they gave me a sweater from the lost-and-found bin, and it smelled like cigarettes. "
For a second, I'm back there—the chill of that laminated chair against the backs of my legs, the social worker's acrylic nails when she finally knelt in front of me and said, You're going to be just fine, sweetheart.
The lie of it. The way they all lied, passing me from house to house like used luggage.
"I used to make up stories," I continue, my throat tight.
"My mom was a singer. My dad was in the army.
They were coming back. Any day now. I'd stand by the window in every foster placement, waiting for a car I knew wasn't coming.
Then you hit thirteen, fourteen, and you realize nobody's coming.
So you stop looking up. You look straight ahead. "
Mikhail's hand moves across the table. He doesn't touch me. His fingers rest on the linen cloth, close to my wrist, close enough that I feel the heat of him.
"Did you ever try to find relatives?" I ask. "Before. I mean, did you ever look for family?"
For a second, I think he's going to shut down. But he takes a sip of his soda, and when he sets the glass down, his thumb traces the handle like he's measuring it.
"As a child," he says. "I dreamed of it. Aunts. Uncles. Someone who would claim me from the orphanage. I wrote letters that were never answered." A ghost of a smile that isn't happy. "Then I stopped dreaming."
"Yeah." I look at my plate, but I don't see the food. I see that gray sweater. I see the empty chair beside me at every school play, every awards ceremony, every holiday morning in a house full of other people's unwanted children. "Same. Survival."
"Survival," he murmurs.
I meet his gaze, and it is terrifyingly tender. It looks more like recognition than pity. Pity would break me right now. This is worse. This is hope.
The waiter comes, clears the plates, and disappears. Neither of us moves for the check. Mikhail leans back in his chair, his gaze pinning me in place.
The muffled street noise from the window feels very far away.
He leans forward, elbows on the table, and the space between us shrinks to nothing. His eyes search mine, ruthless and gentle all at once.
"You walked through fire to survive," he says. "You learned not to want. Not to need. And soon you'll carry the one child you can't keep." His voice drops, gravel over silk. "When the time comes… will you really be able to give up your baby and walk away?"
My chest constricts. I think of the contract in his desk drawer, the one with my signature at the bottom.
Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. A fresh start.
A life that doesn't belong to him. I think of the way he looked at me this morning in his shirt, like I was already a memory he was trying to burn into his retinas.
I think of the baby—not an abstract concept anymore.
I think about being six years old in a sweater that smelled like someone else's smoke, learning that love was just another word for leaving.
I think about what it means to create a family and then voluntarily become the ghost in its margins.
I think about my mother walking out the side door, not looking back, and how I swore I would never be the one left behind.
But I never considered how much worse it might be to be the one who leaves.
I think about his hands on me in the penthouse, rough and reverent. I think about the colony of moths that moved into my ribcage, fluttering every time he calls me Baby Girl in that ruined voice.
I think about how easy it would be to say no. To say I can't. To crack open right here on this overpriced linen and beg him to let me stay—not as the surrogate, not as the transaction, but as someone who means more.
But wanting is a trap. So I lift my chin. I let my mouth curve the sharp and careless shield I forged in every disappointment.
"Remains to be seen."