8. Sierra
SIERRA
I awaken to the sound of my phone ringing insistently. Alone, in an unfamiliar bed, with my body aching from head to toe, I sit up, disoriented.
Nik.
Married.
Work. Oh, shit, what will I tell my boss? I was supposed to be onsite by now. The car and I are both missing. My boss will be furious.
I scramble to find my mobile phone with the cracked screen. Already, I’ve missed six calls. Two from my supervisor at the cleaning company, three from my partner who was sick yesterday, and one from my estranged sister, Rae. People must be worried if they actually contacted her.
With shaking fingers, I hit the dial icon.
“You’re alive after all,” my boss snaps. “Where are you? You were supposed to be in Beverly Crest hours ago. Where is the car?”
I wince. The time displayed on my phone is distressingly past the time when I should have been at work. “I can explain,” I say quickly. “I got—”
Kidnapped or married? Which is the right explanation?
Nik comes out of the bathroom with wet hair and a towel wrapped around his waist. He snatches the phone from my hand and says, “This is Sierra’s husband.
She quits. You’ll get your car back by this evening.
Do not involve the police, and don’t ask questions, or you’ll regret it.
” He hangs up, tosses the phone aside, and kisses me. “Congratulations. You’re unemployed.”
“But you’re still giving me ten million dollars, right?” I ask hesitantly, unsure whether it’s okay for me to ask for what he promised. I should have gotten the money before I had sex with him. Yet that felt icky. Insisting on it would have felt like I was reducing myself to prostitution.
Now, I feel like such a fool.
Will he keep me here long enough to ensure that I’m pregnant and then send me back to Los Angeles to live my life? We never discussed what would happen after the marriage—beyond getting me some real clothes.
Led astray by my own pussy and taste for bad men.
At least he put a ring on it before fucking me senseless.
I can’t regret it, despite our whirlwind 24-hour kidnapping/courtship/marriage-of-convenience.
My ass aches pleasantly and I haven’t felt this saddle-sore since that time I rode a horse in Girl Scouts.
Nik casts me this glare I can’t understand. As if I’ve said something offensive.
“You’ll get your money,” he growls. “As long as I get my heir.”
I swallow. Honestly, it’s one thing to agree to this myself, but to bring a baby into the situation? It’s bad enough that I barely know my husband. What if he leaves me?
You’ll be able to take care of a baby—even five or six babies—with ten million dollars. You won’t have to struggle. You can buy a home, pay for help. Anything.
He kisses my lips. Moves down while cupping my naked breasts.
Desire heats within me at his touch. I’m only half paying attention when he says, “I notified my assistant to create a separate account for you solely in your name. It will take a few days to transfer assets into it, but once it’s there, my name will be removed from the account and it will be all yours.
In the meantime, this pussy belongs to me. ”
I can’t believe it. I don’t. I will accept this as truth when I can log in and see the balance myself, not a moment before.
I won’t say that, of course. I don’t want Nik to feel as if I don’t trust him.
It’s beyond my comprehension that anyone could simply have ten million dollars to hand off like it’s pocket change.
Unfathomable that anyone would want to spend that much money to have me.
“Can’t you transfer it into my bank account?” I ask breathily as he finds my pussy and circles my clit with two blunt fingers.
“We could, but any transfer over ten thousand dollars triggers a mandatory notification to the Federal government. This way avoids creating a flag in the system.”
Something about what he says rings an alarm bell in the back of my mind.
Nik silences it by sinking two fingers into my pussy.
He teases my body until it’s humming with need.
I surrender to his touch, letting him roll me onto my back.
He teases my entrance with his cock. “I’m going to fuck this pussy whenever I want. ”
“Please,” I moan. He slams into me, burying himself so deep inside me I wince.
It’s not a bad feeling, only tender from the vigorous way he fucked me last night.
His hair is still damp from the shower. I cling to him, wrapping my legs around his, scraping his shoulders with my nails, climaxing around him within minutes.
Abruptly he pulls out and flips me over, lifts my hips, and smacks my ass.
“Whose ass is this, Sierra?”
“Yours,” I pant. Nik digs his fingers into my hips and drags me backward onto his cock—and stops. Confused, I wiggle, trying to get friction.
“Fuck yourself on my cock,” he commands.
A wordless whine escapes my lips. Frustration builds as I tilt my hips in awkward patterns. Nothing works. He’s in me, watching me struggle, and not helping me at all. Reveling in my desperation, the sadistic prick. I hate the way it makes me desperate to come.
“Tell me what you’re thinking, Sierra.”
“I think my husband needs to start fucking me.” His quiet chuckle only makes me writhe harder. “I’m yours, Nik. Do anything you want to me, whenever you want. I promise I’ll be a good girl for you.”
“That’s right you will.” At last, he wraps my hair around his fist and forces my head back, his pelvis slapping against my thighs as he fucks me deep and hard.
With my head torqued up at this extreme angle and my back arched, he reaches a part of me that I’ve never felt before.
The orgasm builds and builds. I fight to hold it back, knowing I can’t come until he does.
Or what? He’ll punish you? You’d like that. Do it. Just let go. I silence the naughty voice in my head.
“Are you close, kitten?” he demands. I try to nod, but I can’t move my head more than a fraction of an inch. “Good. Don’t come until I say you can.”
By now, my need to climax is so intense it’s borderline pain. “I can’t hold out,” I pant. “Please, Nik, let me come.”
“Not. Yet,” he grits out. Our bodies slap together rhythmically. My arms give up the ghost. Elbows bend and collapse like a suspension bridge giving out on one end, until the only thing holding my torso upright is Nik’s grip on my hair. The pull at the roots only coils me higher, until—
“Now,” he orders. I tumble into climax with his name on my lips like a prayer, a plea, the words I love you jumbled somewhere in the unintelligible mix of syllables.
“Oh—Nik—I love—I can’t—love you-oh—OH—” I cry into the pillow, soft down feathers swallowing my humiliating litany of surrender while my pussy milks his cock.
He holds me like this, face down on the bed with him buried so deep inside me that I imagine fleetingly that we’ll never be able to physically separate again.
It’s with a pang and a feeling of profound emptiness that I return to myself when he withdraws.
Despite the warning signs, I trust him. I know that Nik would protect me from danger.
Intuition tells me that he’s seeking something from his family.
Approval, I think. He thinks the only way to get it is through me, and there’s something heartbreaking about his devotion to a family that doesn’t seem to value him quite as highly as he deserves.
A knock at the door prompts me to roll over and pull the sheets over myself in embarrassment.
Despite my caution, I realize the hotel suite’s door is angled for privacy.
Male voices confer in a language I don’t understand.
Russian, I think. Nik, in his towel, returns to the bedroom a moment later carrying two large shopping bags. He places them on the end of the bed.
“Get dressed. You have shopping to do. I have to get to work,” he says.
“Work? On our honeymoon?”
His lips quirk up to one side. “I didn’t exactly plan for time off.
I’ll take you on a babymoon as soon as you’re pregnant, how’s that?
” He kisses me lightly and says, “I had to guess the sizes. Here is my credit card. Charge anything you want. My sister will accompany you shopping for clothes and anything else you need. She has impeccable taste. One thing, and this is important. Stay with her guards at all times. Understand?”
I eye him warily. “Guards?”
“The casino business is cutthroat. Literally, Sierra. You’ll have your own assigned guards in a few days. Do not get separated from your bodyguards today, or ever.” He cups my chin and looks at me seriously. “Understand?”
I swallow, but quickly agree.
“Good girl. You’ll be safe as long as you do exactly what I say.” Nik kisses me again, tenderly this time. “I won’t lose you the way I lost my father.”
Again, that alarm bell rings in the back of my mind. When did he lose his father—and how?