Chapter 21 #3
He’s angry with me but only over the way I’m talking to him, over my reaction to seeing him, and how negative it is. Aside from that, I can tell that he’s still relatively open, he’s receptive, and whether I want to admit it or not, I can feel how hopeful he is.
Hopeful of what, I don’t know, because the truth of our situation is a lot heavier than he seems to think it is.
“Why are you going by that name?” He pulls a pack of cigarettes from inside his jacket, sticking one between his teeth and lighting it with a match while keeping eye contact with me. “And why the mask?”
“I’m sorry, what part of you betrayed me and tried to kill me aren’t you understanding? Maybe how it relates to my shitty attitude, or the bond you don’t give a fuck about but still seem to think matters to me?”
Dimitri clenches his jaw, the muscle ticking along the sharp line as he exhales through his nose. “I never said that.”
“The gun in my face said otherwise.”
“It’s not that simple, Niko.”
“Oh my god,” I say with a sigh, pinching the bridge of my nose while I close my eyes. “You can’t even follow basic instructions. Don’t fucking call me that.”
“It’s your goddamn name, Nikolai.”
“Not here!” I snap. “Get that through your thick skull!” Then I pause, annoyed as fuck that I’m even entertaining this bastard right now. “You know what, how about we just go back to no contact? We did fine with that for almost two years and I see no reason to change it.”
We stand there quietly for a few moments, staring at each other in anger, both of us ready to go to war despite the silence that stretches between us.
I don’t know what cruel, twisted game the universe is playing with me, but it would be really fucking cool if it stopped.
I have enough bullshit to navigate between Liv and Rune, Styx and god knows who else since I obviously don’t know what it means to live a simple life.
The last fucking thing I need, or want, is this asshole sweeping in to complicate everything on an entirely new level, and quite frankly, my fucking heart can’t take much more.
Despite how goddamn angry and hurt I am, how confused I am, I still love this man so much, and it’s killing me to watch the same emotions pass over his bruised and bloody face. Especially when it feels like fixing it could be so easy.
I can’t let him know that, though.
With an exasperated sigh, I push a hand back through my hair and ask, “Why are you here, Dimitri? How did you find me?”
“I wasn’t looking for you.”
I flinch but try to hide how that statement affected me. “Did Boris send you to finish the job? Carry out the one and only hit you never made good on?”
He takes another long drag of his cigarette and shakes his head. “He doesn’t know where I am.”
Yeah fucking right. “So, what? You went looking on your own then? You can’t really expect me to believe this was all a coincidence.”
“Alexei is my cousin. I came out here…” Dimitri trails off, dropping his stare briefly before he shakes his head. “It has nothing to do with you.”
I can feel myself getting angry all over again, a new level of rage simmering right under my skin over that bullshit lie.
Whatever reason he had for leaving New York is connected to me in some way, it has to be, and if it’s not so he can kill me, it must just be to torture me.
Then again, if he wanted to, Dimitri could have found me at any point over the last twenty months to do that.
Since he hasn’t, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I can’t see through his bullshit as easily as I used to.
It’s entirely possible his showing up in Minneapolis has nothing to do with me.
I bet he hasn’t even given me a second thought since he put a couple of bullets in me. I bet he… oh, hell no.
“You’re here for the goddamn auctions, aren’t you?”
Dimitri’s head snaps back as if I slapped him. “No. Why the fuck would I come out here for that?”
But I nod and take a few pissed off steps toward him.
“That’s it, isn’t it? You’re out here to find a new omega, one you don’t have to worry about your daddy wanting killed.
One you can use to cover that fucking mark on your throat.
You came out here to erase me because you failed to do that in person last time, because—”
“Shut up, Niko.”
“I swear to god if you call me that one more fucking time—”
“Take off the mask.” He drops his smoke on the ground then stomps it out as he takes a step toward me. “Take it off.”
I shake my head. “I don’t answer to you anymore. Especially when you’re out here looking for an unbiased and naive piece of ass to use to break our bond. You lost the right to say shit to me when—”
Dimitri’s hand is on my throat and my lower back is against the nearest sink before I can blink. “Shut your mouth, Niko. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Then fucking tell me,” I grit through clenched teeth. “Explain it to me, or let me fucking go and leave me the fuck alone.”
He stares at me for a second, that bright blue eye shifting back and forth between mine, and that’s when I can see him register my contacts that have my eyes almost matching his.
“Who are you hiding from?” Dimitri squeezes my throat a little, stepping into me until we’re almost nose to nose. “Did someone hurt you?”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” I laugh in his face. “You did! You fucking hurt me, dumbass, but I can promise my new life has nothing to do with that, or you.”
He narrows his stare, a sharp stab of anger spiking through our bond. “New life?”
I just nod.
He’s the one who threw my old one away, he doesn’t get the details of this one.
“You better start talking, maly, because I’m seconds from making you.”
“I better start…” I roll my eyes and try to shove him off me but the bastard doesn’t budge. “You’re the one who owes me an explanation, Volkov, and if you aren’t going to give me one, you can fuck right off and out of my life again.”
His fingers tighten on my throat as he reaches for my mask, tearing it from my face before I have the chance to stop him. “Explain.”
“Fuck off.”
Dimitri yanks me away from the sink, pulling me upright before he spins me around and shoves me against the mirror. “Contacts. A fake name. A goddamn mask. I want to know why you’re hiding in plain sight.”
I flatten my palms on either side of my body and try to push back but it doesn’t work. “And I want to know why the hell you threw me away but since we’re just talking in circles, I’ll settle for any line of bullshit you want to feed me just to get this over with.”
“I don’t like it,” he growls in my ear, his grip tightening on the back of my neck. “I don’t fucking like it at all.”
“And I hate that you won’t admit to coming out here so you can find a replacement for me.”
“Because I’m not!”
“Bullshit.” I shove off the mirror briefly before he slams me back into it. “That’s bullshit and you know it. If you’d have wanted me, if our bond was enough for you, all that shit at the cabin would have gone differently, and you would have left with me when you had the chance.”
“That’s not true,” he hisses next to my ear. “You were… our bond… it was—”
“A fucking lie, Dimitri, and you need to say the words so you can start believing them.”
He growls again but doesn’t speak.
No, he goes stoic and silent as fuck, holding me in place while he seethes against my back.
I should have known he wouldn’t say jack shit about anything of relevance. There’s no way Dimitri is going to betray his daddy by telling me all the juicy details of why there was a hit on me, or what was supposedly his reason for shitting all over our bond.
He’s my goddamn scent match, my bonded alpha, and even that wasn’t enough to stop those things from happening, why would now be any different?
“I have thought about you every fucking day for the last twenty months, maly.” Dimitri buries his nose in my hair, catching me off guard with how he veered away from the direction we’ve been going by inhaling my scent like it’s oxygen. “Every single day. I never meant to hurt you.”
“No, you just meant to kill me.” My eyes flutter closed as he rubs his face against my neck, scenting me the same way he did the night we bonded.
I hate this.
I hate how badly I still want him, how much I still love him even after everything that happened between us.
“It’s not that simple.” He nips at my neck as his hand slides around to my throat, tilting my head to the side to gain more access. “Not at all.”
“Then fucking explain it to me,” I almost moan, my hand lifting on its own to bury my fingers in his hair. “Tell me, Dimitri. Make me understand.”
He flattens himself against me, his front pressed to my back, his lips ghosting over my cheek. “I can’t.”
A jolt of pain radiates through my chest, nearly piercing my heart as his empty words cut like a knife.
Bond or not, history or not, he still isn’t going to tell me what happened, even if it could help both of us move on.
Dimitri Volkov doesn’t actually give a shit about me, and I doubt he ever did.
And that’s exactly why I shove my ass against his crotch, the closeness of my alpha after so much time apart causing us both to physically react, then I stoop to his level and try to hurt him the same way he’s hurting me.
“I wear the contacts and mask, go by a different name, I do all of it for my mate.”
He freezes, all movement stopping as he holds his breath, and his stare finds mine in the mirror. “What did you just say?”
I nod, grinning at him like an asshole. “My mate, Volkov. She’s here, and she’s why I’m hiding in plain sight. I love her, and I’d do anything for her.”
Well, that fucking did it.
Dimitri shoves my face against the glass with a muffled roar, his free hand flying to the front of my jeans where he unbuttons and unzips so fucking fast it makes my head spin.
I try to get him off of me, my hips pushing back against him, but my naked ass presses against his equally naked cock instead and I am done for.
My body reacts on instinct, perfuming so goddamn hard, slicking immediately, my dick like granite and throbbing as I whine.
“I’m your mate,” Dimitri growls as his hand starts squeezing my throat. “Me. I’m your fucking mate.”
I shake my head despite the way I’m presenting to him like a needy little bitch, widening my stance and shoving my ass against his erection. “Go to hell.”
I hiss as he slams into me, my face sliding up the mirror as my chest flattens against it. My eyes snap to his as he pushes inside me all the way to his knot, bottoming out in one brutal thrust before I feel his fingers close around my cock.
“You’re mine, Niko.” Dimitri slams into me again and again, creating a rhythm so primal I’m forced up on the toes of my boots while he chants the word I used to long for him to say. “Mine.”
I start to moan as he fucks me, my alpha claiming me all over again and despite the way it has my body singing, the way it has the bonded omega in me practically weeping with joy, it pisses me off, too.
“Not anymore,” I grunt as I push back against him, meeting him thrust for thrust, fucking myself on his cock as hard as he’s pounding into me. “I don’t belong to you anymore.”
Dimitri growls, the sound feral and unhinged as he sinks his teeth into the side of my neck, sending me right over the fucking edge with a whimper as my orgasm races down my spine.
His jaw locks as he buries his knot in my ass, swelling inside of me and I keep fucking myself on his cock in spite of it.
The first rope of my cum shoots from my body as Dimitri squeezes my throat, pumping my dick to match my pace, his grip bordering on painful with each stroke of his palm.
I cry out as I completely explode, coming all over myself and the wall in front of me as soon as I feel my alpha come, filling me so full of his cum it instantly starts spilling from my ass.
We climax together, orgasming hard in a never-ending wave of pain-tinged bliss but as quickly as it happened, as fast as Dimitri acted on instinct and reclaimed what he still feels belongs to him, it all comes crashing down around us.
He pulls out and immediately lets go of me, putting a significant amount of space between us while I hear him pull up his jeans. He’s silent as he watches me do the same, both of us righting our clothes even though we’re covered in cum, not looking at each other or saying anything at all.
My heart breaks as I chance a look at him in the mirror, Dimitri shaking his head as he looks down at my mask on the floor before his eyes meet mine briefly, the same pain I feel reflected in that ocean blue gaze.
But instead of saying anything, of doing anything to turn this moment around, to redeem himself in some way, he just stares at me a little longer before he spins on his heel, quickly moving to unlock the door then slip out of the bathroom as my anxiety resurfaces so fast it makes me sick.
I drop to my knees as the first tears roll down my cheek and as I cradle my face in my hands, my pack rushes to the forefront of my mind; Liv’s beautiful face, Rune’s aura of protection, and that has me sobbing.
Another horrible interaction with the backstabbing liar I’m bonded to, a moment I both completely hate and desperately longed for with zero answers, and Dimitri might have just ruined my life all over again because of it.
And I fucking let him.