32. Natalia
NATALIA
Leks. The whole world smells like Leks. I sigh and nuzzle against his side, breathing in the strong, clean smell of cedar. He moves away.
Unfair.
I reach for him but find nothing but empty sheets, still warm from where he was lying.
Then I remember that he hates me right now. For no good reason.
Hot tears rush down my face. I open my eyes to bright daylight streaming into an unfamiliar room. I have no idea how I got here, but my head pounds with what feels like a hangover. Did Leks drug me?
I try to go back to sleep, turning over and burying my face in a soft pillow in an attempt to forget where I am. No luck. I can’t get back to sleep. Not now that I remember everything has gone wrong.
He decided that I betrayed him. Like it was a foregone conclusion. I couldn’t even summon the words to reply to his accusation. After everything, he still believes I would work with my father. The thought makes me queasy.
I open my eyes again.
Leks is standing beside the bed, looking down at me. The expression on his face isn’t one of tenderness or love.
No, Leks is looking at me like I’m a stranger, his deep blue eyes unfathomable.
“Where are we?”
My voice cracks on the words, scratchy and painful, like I’ve slept for a whole day. He wordlessly hands me a glass of cold water and an aspirin.
I peer out the window of the wooden cabin. No people. No landmarks that I recognize.
All I can see is forest. And mountains. Covered in cedar trees, I realize. I’ve never been so far out of the city. It’s too quiet, just the rush and groan of the wind in the trees.
Leks is staring out the window too. Even feeling groggy from whatever drugs he gave me, I can feel the distrust radiating off him.
Never trust a Bryusov.
It must be more of a deep-set belief than I’d thought.
Because there is no forgiveness in Leks’s eyes.
“You hate me,” I whisper.
His heavy gaze settles on me but he doesn’t deny it.
I’d tried to help Leks and Yuri, I’d thought I was doing enough to be forgiven, but the guilt sinks in again, making my limbs heavy. As his gaze rakes over me, I realize that I’m naked, pulling the sheet up over my breasts.
“Had to check for recording devices,” is all he says.
I shake my head at him. He’s seen me naked countless times over the past week but he thinks I would wear a fucking wire?
He opens a dusty-looking wardrobe and drops a pile of clothes at the foot of the bed, leaving the room.
I grab a pair of black leggings and an oversized t-shirt with some kind of fish on it.
Suspiciously, they’re in my size. I wonder if this is a place Leks brings women.
It would be a left-field choice. It’s not exactly five-star accommodation.
I purposely avoid the mirror after my shower. The tiny bathroom is lined with brown floral linoleum. There was no conditioner, only coconut flavored shampoo, so my hair must be a mess. My lips are chapped from the dry air. No point trying to be fashionable with my fish t-shirt, anyway.
I stumble as I walk into a living room that looks straight out of the 1970s. Brown wood panelling. Yellow flowery curtains. An ancient-looking television. Padded chairs with vinyl covers.
Leks pushes a plate of pasta towards me over the kitchen counter.
“Eat.”
I want to be strong enough to refuse, in protest at how I’m being treated, but my stomach gives an embarrassingly loud rumble. I devour the food. He gives me another helping and I scarf that down too. Whatever drugs he gave me to get me here must have knocked me out for more than just one night.
I narrow my eyes at him, feeling more awake after the food.
“I told you, I destroyed every single one of the devices.”
“Which is clearly a lie.”
“Based on what?”
“Based on the fact that your father knew, to the letter, the paintings that we were planning to flag to Zakharov as forgeries.”
“Which has nothing to do with me!”
My denials sound hollow, even to my ears, but I have nothing else to give Leks. I destroyed every one of the devices. If information got back to my father, it wasn’t from me.
He gives a heavy sigh, like he’s disappointed in me.
“If you’re not on board with the plan to bring your father down, I can understand that. You didn’t have to be involved. But don’t act like you’re on my side and then double-cross me.”
“I didn’t.”
“I trusted you.” Another heavy exhale. He’s acting so hard done by, when I’m the one who is kidnapped in this situation.
“You seriously think, after everything you’ve told me, that I would be providing my father with information?”
His gaze settles on me, heavy and absorbing. “That’s exactly what I think, Natalia. You’re a little traitor who distracted me with this,” he waves a hand in my general direction, “and some sob story about how much you loved your brothers to make me trust you.”
I open my mouth to protest that but he holds up a hand to stop me. Fine. I shut my mouth. There’s no point trying to reason with him, anyway.
“I don’t want to hear excuses.” His voice is harsh, with no space for argument. “Unless you’re about to confess, I suggest you stay quiet.”
I want to point out how unfair that is, but something about the tension in Leks's voice, like a string about to snap, gives me pause. He’s decided that I’m guilty and he doesn’t want to hear anything else.
So I stay silent for the rest of the day. Wherever we are, we’re high enough up in the mountains that the air has a cold bite to it. Nothing like the New York late-spring humidity that’s set in.
Leks wraps a scratchy blanket over my shoulders.
I shrug it off.
I don’t want his help. Not if he’s refusing to tell me where we are or what’s going on.
I pace around the tiny, 70s-era cabin. Eventually I dig out an ancient VHS player, find a videotape with some hand-written label scrawled on it, and flop onto the couch.
There doesn’t seem to be much to do here except nap and look at trees.
The ancient TV hisses to life to play an episode of Golden Girls.
At least whoever’s cabin this is has good taste in sitcoms.
The next morning, I wake to find him sliding out of my bed again. There’s only one bedroom, but if he’s acting this mad at me, I feel that he should at least put the effort in.
I close my hands around his wrist as he tries to leave. My body does crave his touch, even if he’s being ridiculous right now.
“Are you seriously trying to pretend you slept on the couch?”
There’s no amusement on his face. He gives me a withering look that threatens to fry me into dust. There are dark shadows under his eyes, like he hasn’t slept at all.
He tugs away from my hand like he wants to leave this conversation, his forearm muscles flexing, but lets me pull him back towards the bed.
“Please. Leks, I want you.” I soften my voice and try to remind him that he wants this too.
“You want me,” he repeats slowly. His hand comes to my chin, but his touch isn’t tender. It’s mechanical. He lifts my face, peering into my eyes.
“Is that a lie, too, Natalia? Some kind of fucked-up strategy in this game you’re playing?”
I shake my head. I’m a hopeless liar and I hate that he thinks I’ve become some kind of criminal mastermind. It’s like he doesn’t know me at all. I’m getting whiplash from the sudden lack of affection he feels for me.
Luckily, if there’s one thing I can prove to Leks right now, it’s that I want him so much it’s a need that goes against every instinct. Even self-respect.
I pull him close, tangling my hands in his hair and arching against his stomach. God help me, my nipples are already aching with heat as they scrape against his t-shirt.
A dark, furious hunger settles in his eyes. He brings a hand to tweak my nipple through the fabric of my top. I press into him, his fingers leaving indents in my soft flesh. His fingers graze my aching nipple, but he doesn’t give me the friction I’m craving.
His hands trace over me lightly, without trying to give me any pleasure. Like he’s assessing how much I truly want him, like it’s written all over me. Maybe it is.
And still, despite the fact he’s not touching me anywhere that should turn me on, the way his calloused hands skim over my body is making my skin heat and ache for him.
I let out a shudder as he traces his mouth along my jawline, as if tasting me.
Slow-moving desire rolls like treacle through my veins, heating me from the inside out.
His mouth drops to trace over the same places he claimed with his hands.
My shoulders. The tips of my fingers. The hollow of my navel.
Like he’s making an inventory of my body.
Soon my need for him is all-consuming enough that I forget where I am, forget what’s happening, and forget the restraint that should stop me from begging for the cock of a man who’s kidnapped me and accused me of something I didn’t do.
I grip his head with fingers laced through his hair, forcing his eyes to my face instead of my body. “Please, Leks.”
He looks at me for a beat, with a palpable mix of frustration and desire, and seems to make a decision.
“I had time to think, last night. I can’t be married to a traitor, Natalia. We’re getting a divorce. Unless it somehow comes out that you weren’t the one providing the information to Maksim. ”
A divorce.
The thought hadn’t even crossed my mind.
I can’t contemplate the idea of not being with Leks, not being his wife. I can’t return to my life before this, where everything I believed was a lie. The thought of separating from Leks makes me feel heavy with grief.
I know that he’ll find that it wasn’t me. But what if he doesn’t? What if the leaked information does stop, by coincidence?
“But…” he continues.
Hope flares in my chest.
I raise my head to look at him. He’s looking at me intently, with desire. “I’m not going to be able to stop thinking about this pussy, Natalia. I’ve been without you for two days and already it’s fucking with me.”
He leans over me, those deep blue eyes penetrating and hard, and my clit gives an involuntary flutter, even as his harsh words makes clear exactly how little I mean to him.
“There is no coming back from this. But you get a choice, Natalia. Two options. You can choose to be my slut or you can choose to have nothing to do with me. Understood?”
I look at Leks for the first time in days and see that he is serious.
All care, all emotion towards me, is gone. He wants me for sex and nothing else.
Maybe I was wrong to think that he ever loved me, that he could ever overcome our differences. All this time, while I got closer to him, while I let myself believe he loved me, he was just taking what he wanted from me without giving me a thing in return.
“Can’t I just go home?”
It’s a helpless plea, and an unwise one.
I realize my mistake as soon as I raise it. My home, my family, are exactly the reason that Leks is feeling so betrayed right now.
He chuckles darkly. “Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you? Got more information to spread to your Daddy about me? Gonna give him more of my secrets?”
“I told you I didn’t do that.” My voice is just a whisper now. I can feel how pointless it is to change Leks’s mind.
“And why would I believe you?”
There’s no way to make him understand.
I’d never seen this side of Leks before — the crazy, unreasonable side, but now I see that it was there all along. He’s been betrayed so many times that he truly believes there’s nobody he can trust. Including me.
He thinks I lied about loving him. Lied about the best thing that’s happened in my entire life.
I’m realizing that was the only true thing I’d experienced my entire life.
Marrying Leks was like looking up from a painting only to discover that the real view out the window was more beautiful.
And it only lasted a month. One single month of the life I wanted. I guess that’s all I will get.
I’ll take whatever shred of his affection I can get, no matter how twisted or harsh it is.
I don’t reply, tears springing into my eyes.
“So what do you say?” He stands over me and I can’t stop myself from staring at his jawline, his dark tattoos. Familiar, but not. Not with this newly harsh face, this belief that I’m part of the world that has wronged him his entire life.
And even with that, I can’t resist him. Can’t stay away from his harsh midnight-blue stare and his disappointment in me.
“Will you be my slut, Natalia?”
No part of me considers saying no.
I squeeze my eyes shut as I nod. I don’t want to see the satisfaction in Leks’s eyes as he realizes how much I need him, how desperate I am for him.
He pulls away and leaves the room. I sit waiting for him and feeling like the lust-weak idiot I am. When he comes back, it’s with a length of rope.
My lips part in surprise and I suck in a breath. He wants to tie me up.
His lips quirk into a smile at my reaction.
“Maybe you really do want me, Natalia, but while we’re here, it’s on my terms.”
The process of Leks tying me to each corner of the bed, with ropes tight around my ankles and wrists, does nothing to stop the ache of need. In fact, with every rough binding that he tightens around my limbs, I only grow more breathless with anticipation.
Then the fucking sadist walks away, leaving me tied to the bed with only the heat in my core for company.