15. Cara
CARA
Idon’t see Dmitri standing in the doorway. My mind is taken up with the intrigue laid out before me. For the last few hours, it has shrunk around the scraps on the table until nothing else can get in.
Oleg moves clearances.
Morozov takes his family.
Evan brushes finance systems.
Patrick reaches him through Kathryn.
My mind completes the circle, then swings into another arc.
Or Patrick flatters him. Makes him feel chosen. Makes him feel useful. Weak men blabber when someone important lets them believe they matter.
A sound pulls my attention to the door. A cough, maybe. Or my own reflex finally catching up. I freeze. Dmitri walks in. He circles the table, his gaze fixed on the scraps, and I understand one beat late that he’s not looking at what I found.
He’s looking at what I left out.
“Whose name are you keeping out, Cara?” he asks.
My skin goes cold. My hand stays over the page, covering the one part of the grid I should have destroyed the second I wrote it.
He has already seen enough. Oleg. Evan. Patrick. Professional usefulness and personal pressure point. Work and love. Access and leverage. Mikhail sits in the blank space under my palm.
“No one,” I say.
Dmitri’s gaze moves from my hand to my face. “Don’t lie badly to me.”
“Then stop asking questions you haven’t earned.”
Sergei shifts outside the partly open door.
Dmitri doesn’t look away from me when he speaks. “End of the corridor.”
Sergei leaves without comment. His steps fade, and my pulse starts making terrible decisions.
Dmitri closes the library door.
I stand straighter behind the table. “That’s not helping your case.”
“Are you hiding a name?” He frowns.
“I’m protecting a person.” I drag my fingers across the page, rubbing hard over Mikhail’s name until the paper thins, then tears. Good.
“From me?” he asks.
“From every man who thinks love is just another place to put a knife.” I take the torn sheet and walk toward the waste bin.
His mouth tightens into a thin line. Good. Let him feel that one.
Dmitri moves in front of me, slow enough to give me the choice to step back, close enough to make the choice useless. “Give it to me.”
“No.” I crumple the paper into a ball.
“If Patrick knows, Morozov can know.”
“He doesn’t know everything.” I dare him to lose his stupid patience.
“You don’t know what he knows.”
“No, I know what he wants.” I grab his shirt front and crush it in my fist. “Patrick wants to be the man holding the string.”
“And you?”
His blue gaze holds me with so much force, it’s difficult to meet it for long.
I laugh, but it comes out thin. “I want my life left alone.”
“You were never left alone.” He removes my hand from his shirt without looking away.
“Because of men like you.” I push him once.
His face closes. A muscle jumps near his cheek, then vanishes under control.
I see the wound beneath it, and some foolish part of me wants to touch it.
Hate is cleaner. I hold on to that. His hand closes around my wrist, hard enough to remind me that he could take anything if he chose to.
Heat flashes down my spine, unwanted and alive.
“Let go,” I say.
He does that immediately. That makes it worse.
“You think I want you easy?” he asks.
“I think you want me contained,” I persist.
“Yes.”
The answer is honest, and it stings.
Dmitri steps closer. “Contained isn’t owned. Learn the difference.”
“Funny. From this angle, they look related.” I sneer.
His hand lifts, then stops short of my face. Control, control, control. I see it in every inch of him, and suddenly, I want to break it so badly, my mouth goes dry.
“You aren’t property,” he says, then turns toward the door.
That’s it? He says the controlled thing, then walks away before I can make him bleed for it.
“No?” I close the last space between us. “Then stop deciding where I belong.”
His voice turns rough. “Right now, you belong where I can reach you.”
I shove his chest with both hands. The bastard lets me, then catches my wrist when I go to push him again, and the touch burns through every lie I have been using to survive him.
“Say it,” I snap. “Say you need me.”
Dmitri turns my wrist and pulls me in until I crash against his chest. His breath is hot on my face.
“I need you.” His voice scrapes, stripped of pride.
I kiss him. It’s five years of fury, one night of memory, Patrick’s rot, Moscow’s locks, and every unanswered question crashing through my hands as I grip his shirt and pull him down.
Dmitri makes a sound against my mouth, and the last of his restraint goes with it. His mouth crashes back into mine with a groan that vibrates through my ribs. I bite his lower lip, hard, and he grunts but doesn't pull away. His hands grip my waist, fingers digging in like he's afraid I'll bolt.
Good. Be afraid.
“You're impossible,” I say against his teeth.
“You started it.” He walks me backward until my hips hit the edge of the library table. Papers crumple and scatter. I don’t care. Let Patrick’s pattern go to hell.
Then he pulls back, and his eyes are wild, blown dark, jaw tight. He looks at me like he's making a decision that will ruin us both.
“I'm not going anywhere with—”
He bends, hooks one arm behind my knees and the other across my back, and lifts me off the ground like I weigh nothing.
“Put me down!” I slam my fist against his shoulder. “Dmitri—”
“No.”
He carries me out of the library and down the corridor, his stride long and purposeful. I pound his chest twice more, and he doesn't even flinch. My legs kick uselessly against his grip. The bastard is built like a wall, and every muscle in his arms is locked around me with infuriating control.
“You think this is charming?” I grab the back of his hair and pull. “Caveman bullshit?”
“I think you need to stop running from me for five minutes.” He shoulders through a door into a bathroom I haven't seen before—his, clearly, dark tile, glass-walled shower already steaming because someone left it running.
He sets me down on the vanity counter, and my hands grip the marble edge on reflex.
“Five minutes is generous for you,” I snap.
His hand catches my chin. “Keep talking.”
I shove his chest. He catches my wrist and holds it, his thumb pressing against my pulse, which is hammering so loud he can probably feel it.
“Get undressed,” he says.
“Don’t tell me what to—”
“Cara.” His voice drops to gravel. “Get undressed, or I’ll do it for you.”
My stomach flips. I hold his gaze while I pull layers over my head, while he does the same—faster, rougher, buttons popping off when they won’t cooperate.
When I hesitate at the last piece, he steps forward and takes care of it himself, peeling it down my hips with hands that aren’t gentle.
I return the favor, shoving his clothes down until there's nothing between us.
He’s hard. Thick and flushed and curving up against his stomach, and looking at him makes my mouth water even through the anger.
“Get in the shower.” His gaze rakes down my body, slow, proprietary, and I feel every inch of it like a touch. “Now.”
I step past him and into the glass enclosure.
Hot water hits my shoulders, my back, runs down between my breasts, and I tip my head back.
The steam wraps around us. He follows me in, pulls the door shut, and the space shrinks until there's nothing but heat and skin and the sound of water hitting tile.
“Still furious?” he asks.
“Obviously.”
He grips my hip and spins me around to face the wall.
“Hands on the tile.”
“You're insufferable—”
His palm presses flat between my shoulder blades and pushes me forward.
My hands catch the wet tile. The position is obscene—bent at the waist, back arched, ass pressed against him, water streaming down my spine and between my thighs.
I feel his cock slide against me, not inside, just along the slick seam of me, and my legs shake.
“Say you want this.” His mouth finds my ear, breath hot beneath the water. “Say it.”
“I want—” The words catch. I hate how true they are. “I want you to shut up and fuck me.”
His hand comes down on my ass once, sharp enough to sting and bloom heat across my skin. I gasp, clenching around nothing.
“Again,” I say. “Do that again.”
He does—opposite cheek, harder—and then his hand wraps around my hip and he guides himself to my entrance and pushes in.
One deep, relentless stroke that punches the air out of my lungs.
“Fuck—Cara—” His forehead drops against the back of my skull. “You feel so good. So fucking good.”
“Don't stop.” I push my hips back into him, taking him deeper, and we both groan. “Don't you dare stop.”
He doesn’t. He pulls almost all the way out and drives back in, setting a pace that's punishing from the first thrust. Each one shoves me against the wet tile, and my palms slip before I brace harder. Water runs into my mouth, my eyes. I don’t care.
His hips snap against my ass, and the thick head of him drags across that spot inside me with every stroke until I'm shaking.
“Yes,” he says, ragged. “Take it. Take all of it.”
“I hate you.”
“I know.” His hand slides from my hip around to my front, fingers finding my clit, and he circles it in time with his thrusts. “Hate me all you want. Your cunt doesn’t.”
That’s filthy. That's disgusting. That makes me clench so hard around him, he swears in Russian.
“There,” he breathes. “Right there. You’re so tight. So wet for me.”
“Shut up—”
“Make me.” He thrusts harder, and his fingers press faster, and my thighs are trembling so badly the only thing keeping me upright is his body pinning me to the wall.
The orgasm builds like a blade sliding home. I push back into every thrust, chasing it, hating him, needing him, and when it breaks I come with a sound that's half scream, half sob. I clench around him in waves, and my knees buckle.
His arm locks around my waist, holding me up. “Yes. Fuck, yes. Good—so good—”
He keeps thrusting through my orgasm, drawing it out until I’m twitching and oversensitive, and then his rhythm turns ragged. Desperate. His fingers bruise my hip.
“Inside,” I say. “Come inside me. Now.”
He drives deep one last time and holds there, his body locked behind mine, and I feel every hard pulse of him as he comes with a broken groan against my wet shoulder. His breath comes in harsh, broken gasps against my neck.
For a long moment, there’s only the sound of the shower and our breathing.
Then he presses his mouth to my shoulder. Not a kiss. Just contact.
“You’re still angry,” he observes.
“Obviously.” I brace against the tile, water still running down between us. "That didn’t fix anything."
“No.” His hand slides slowly up my ribcage, and the gesture is so gentle after all that brutality that it makes my chest hurt. “But you’re here.”