Chapter Five #3
“Decent women are often lied to by men who want the right to commit violence first.”
My thumb stopped.
His voice stayed calm. “Gennady put his hands on your wrist, your life, your brother, and a room full of men paid to watch your fear. You’re allowed to be glad he bled.”
The breath that left me didn’t feel like relief. It felt older than that. Like something in my ribs had been braced so long I had mistaken the ache for bone.
“I don’t want to be a person who needs that,” I said.
“You do not need his blood. You need him stopped. The blood was mine.”
I looked up at him.
The robe shifted against my skin. His eyes followed the movement this time, not down to the opening, but to my hand where it held the silk together at my chest.
Heat crossed his face and went nowhere. He caged it behind control so quickly I might have missed it if I had not spent last night learning what that control looked like when it broke.
My pulse changed.
“I need to get dressed,” I said again.
“Yes.”
Neither of us moved.
His hand was still in mine.
I should have let go.
I didn’t.
“Vadim.”
“Yes?”
“If I stay here today, it is not because I accept being locked away.”
“I know.”
“If I let your men guard Petya, it is not because you own my brother.”
“I know that too.”
“If I want you—”
My voice caught.
Vadim’s hand closed very carefully around mine. “Say the rest.”
“You don’t get to make that a debt.”
His eyes burned down into mine. “Never.”
The answer came too fast to be polished.
I believed it before I decided to.
I pulled his hand toward my mouth and kissed the bruised place below his knuckles.
Vadim stopped breathing.
The sound in the room changed. Or maybe I did.
I kissed him there again, slower.
His fingers flexed once, then stilled. Held back. Always held back until I crossed first.
The knowledge moved through me warm and fierce.
I had crossed so many lines because men had cornered me. Signed because men had hunted me. Stood under lights because men had priced me. Last night, I had crossed a different kind of threshold with him.
This morning, I wanted a choice that didn’t arrive shaking.
I wanted to make it with my eyes open.
I looked up at Vadim and let the robe fall open.
His gaze dropped.
Not like Gennady’s. Not lazy. Not greasy. Not a hand before a hand.
Vadim looked at me like seeing me cost him control.
My nipples tightened in the cool air. The inside of my thighs warmed. I stood in front of him naked under the open silk, marked by sleep and sex and his mouth. Fear came with the heat, but I didn’t step back.
I was alive.
“I want you,” I said.
His eyes lifted back to mine. “You’re tender.”
“I know.”
“Gennady reached your brother less than ten minutes ago.”
“I know that too.”
“This does not have to happen now.”
“I’m not confused because a bad man made a phone call.” My fingers tightened around his. “I want you. Not because I’m grateful. Not because Petya is safe. Not because I don’t understand what you are.”
Vadim’s throat moved.
“Tell me what I am.”
I let my eyes move over him. The size of him. The expensive shirt with the sleeves rolled back. The blood under one cuticle. The stillness that felt less like emptiness now and more like a storm kept away from my skin by will alone.
“Dangerous,” I said. “Possessive. Arrogant enough to think your roof can change the weather.”
His mouth almost curved.
“And?”
“And the reason I’m not with Gennady.”
“That is not enough.”
“No,” I said. “It isn’t.”
He waited.
My throat tightened under the silence. He could have filled it with his own claim and didn’t. He wanted words, but he would not steal them out of my mouth.
I stepped closer until the open robe brushed his trousers. “You make me feel like my yes matters even when you could take everything else.”
His jaw tightened.
“That is why,” I said. “That is why I want you.”
Vadim’s hand came to my face.
Slowly.
I leaned into it before he touched me.
His palm settled against my cheek. Warm. Rough in places. Too gentle for the hand that had split Gennady’s mouth.
“My wife,” he said, low.
The words hit deep enough that my breath changed.
“You keep saying that.”
“I will keep saying it until the world learns.”
“What if I haven’t?”
“Then I say it to myself.”
“What if I say it back?”
His thumb stopped along my cheekbone.
The power in that pause made my knees weak.
I rose on my toes and kissed him.
Vadim didn’t ease into it.
He had eased enough. He caught my mouth with a sound that went through me like a match struck in darkness. His hand slid from my cheek into my hair, not pulling yet, just holding. His other arm wrapped around my back and brought me against him, silk trapped between my bare skin and his shirt.
I opened for him because I wanted to.
His tongue stroked mine, hot and demanding, and the first real sound I made disappeared into his mouth. The ache between my legs came so quickly I felt my face heat around the kiss.
Vadim broke away first.
His forehead touched mine. “If I take you back to that bed, I will be careful.”
“I don’t want careful the whole time.”
His breath left him harshly.
I took the front of his shirt in both hands. “I want you to stop treating me like I might break because Gennady tried to buy me.”
His eyes opened.
I swallowed. “I didn’t break.”
“No.”
“I’m angry. I’m scared. I’m sore. I’m still standing.”
“Yes.”
“And I want to feel something he doesn’t get to touch.”
Vadim’s hand tightened in my hair.
Heat flashed under his control, dark and immediate.
“He does not touch what is mine.”
My spine stiffened.
Vadim’s hand loosened at once.
“What is yours?” I asked.
“Your safety. Your pleasure if you give it to me. The blood I spill for you. Not your will.”
His answer stole the air from my lungs.
I pushed his shirt back from his shoulders.
He let me.
Button by button, I opened him. My fingers were clumsy at first, then steadier when his breathing changed. His chest appeared by degrees, broad and warm, dark hair dusted lightly down the center. A scar cut pale along his ribs. Another marked the upper edge of his abdomen.
I touched that one. “What happened?”
“A knife.”
“When?”
“Years ago.”
“Did he live?”
“No.”
I looked up.
Vadim’s face didn’t change. No boast. No threat. Just fact.
I should have stepped back.
Instead I flattened my palm against his chest and felt his heart hit hard under my hand.
“You’re not polished under the suit,” I said.
“No.”
“Good.”
His eyes flared.
I pushed the shirt down his arms. He shrugged out of it and let it fall. Then he stood bare-chested in front of me while I unfastened his belt with fingers that shook only a little.
He watched my face.
Not my hands. Not where the robe had fallen off one shoulder. My face.
The belt slid free with a soft rasp of leather.
I dropped it on the floor.
His trousers opened under my fingers.
“Nadia.”
I looked up. “Are you going to tell me to stop?”
“No.”
“Are you going to ask if I’m sure?”
“I’m trying not to ask every ten seconds.”
“Ask once more.”
His eyes held mine. “Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
The word came out steady.
I pushed his trousers and briefs down enough to free him.
His cock sprang heavy and hard into my hand.
My breath caught. I had felt him inside me. I had felt the stretch and pressure and impossible fullness. But holding him like this in morning light, with his body rigid and his eyes fixed on mine, made power move differently through me.
He wasn’t untouchable.
He was in my hand because I had reached for him.
A bead of pre-cum shone at the tip. I brushed my thumb over it.
Vadim’s hand shot out and caught the edge of the dresser beside him.
I smiled before I could stop myself.
His gaze sharpened. “Careful.”
“No.”
The word surprised us both.
Then I sank to my knees.
Vadim’s whole body locked.
The carpet was soft under my shins. The robe pooled around me in blue silk. I looked up the length of him and saw the strain cut across his face.
“You don’t have to,” he said.
“I know.”
I wrapped my hand around the base of his cock and leaned in.
The first taste of him hit my tongue salty and warm. He made a low sound and braced harder against the dresser. His other hand hovered near my hair, shaking with the effort not to grab.
I took the head of him into my mouth.
His breath broke.
The sound went straight between my thighs.
I licked him slowly because I wanted to learn what made that controlled face fracture. I wanted to know how much of Vadim Sorin could be undone by my mouth. I wanted something in this room to be mine to give, mine to take, mine to decide.
I took him deeper.
“Nadia.” His voice was rough now. Almost unrecognizable. “Christ.”
I hummed around him.
His hips jerked once before he stopped himself.
That restraint, that brutal effort not to take more than I offered, made me wet enough to feel it slide hot between my thighs.
I pulled back and looked up. “You can touch my hair.”
His hand slid into it at once.
Not forcing. Holding.
My scalp prickled. My nipples tightened harder under the open robe.
I took him again.
This time his fingers closed, and the sound he made wasn’t careful at all.
I worked him with my mouth and hand, learning the weight of him, the pulse in the thick vein underneath, the way his abdomen tightened when I used my tongue just below the crown. He tasted like heat and salt and the edge of losing control.
His head tipped back.
For once, Vadim looked like a man who had forgotten the room had doors.
I drew off him. “Look at me.”
His eyes opened.
The heat in them almost knocked me backward.
I took him into my mouth while he watched.
His curse came low and filthy in Russian.
I didn’t know every word. I understood enough.
Heat slipped low through me, wet and immediate.
His grip tightened in my hair. “If you keep doing that, I will come.”
I stroked him with my wet hand. “Is that a warning?”
“It is a plea.”
I went still.
Vadim looked down at me, chest moving hard.
A plea.
From him.