Chapter 1 A Marriage of Convenience
CHAPTER ONE
A Marriage of Convenience
IRINA
“Marry me, Ri.”
If ever there were three words that could kill an orgasm in its tracks, it was those. I groaned, staring down at Rumi between my spread legs, her mouth slick with my almost-climax, but her eyes hard. Her thumbs were still spreading me wide.
My clit pulsed in frustration, but what was I supposed to do? Wind my fingers in her silky black hair and force her to finish me off before we had this pointless conversation for the fifty-thousandth time?
I felt like snapping my thighs shut and squeezing her skull with them instead.
She released my labia, propping herself up on her elbows. “Why are you making such a fuss about this?” Her tone made me wish I’d used the thighs-of-steel move on her. “It’s the end of all your problems!”
And the start of an even bigger one.
I slid my way up my bed and away from her growing impatience. Grabbing my sleep shirt, I shoved it over my head and tugged my thick mane of hair out the neck opening.
“I really don’t want to have this discussion again,” I muttered darkly, reaching into my bedside drawer, fingers wrapping around Thumper—my trusty clit vibe. It could get me off in less than twenty seconds, and that was without being fluffed by Rumi.
Thwack!
Rumi smacked it out of my hand. Thumper, torn from my grip, went spinning across the room and clattered against the wall.
“What the fuck was that for?” I demanded, getting to my feet to retrieve my poor, abused vibrator. Rumi grabbed my wrist and tugged me back down. My backside hit the bed with a thud. She might be small and slight, but she was determined.
Determined to harass me into accepting her marriage proposal.
“That … thing … is not a substitute for me!” she snarled, cheeks flushed.
She flicked her fringe out of her eyes. “I am offering you everything, Irina! Stability, financial security, a home … a fucking spousal visa for crying out loud—and don’t pretend that’s not more valuable to you than all the rest right now!
Not to mention eating you out every fucking night, if that’s what you want! ”
I swallowed. “I don’t want that,” I whispered, chest constricting at the lie. I wanted some of those things … well, one of those things … very much indeed. But not enough to let her be the one to give it to me.
Rumi huffed, eyes accusing. “You just don’t want it with me.”
I couldn’t answer. She was right. I didn’t want it with her. I didn’t want to give her another thing to hold over my head. I regretted even mentioning what awaited me back in Romania when my student visa ran out next month.
“I’m too young—”
“Not too young to be deported as an illegal alien if they catch you,” Rumi cut in. “Not too young to be shipped home to—”
“Fine!” I snapped before she could finish her sentence and remind me just how vulnerable I’d made myself to her.
“It is you. Things have been fun between us, but that’s all it was ever going to be.
” I launched myself off the bed, stormed across the room and scooped Thumper up.
“I’m not interested in committing to you. ”
Rumi’s mouth popped open as she let out an indignant gasp. “You would really harm your future here over your fear of commitment? Are you really that stupid?”
Of course Rumi would twist my reluctance to commit to her into a fear of commitment in general.
Nothing could ever possibly be her fault.
I wasn’t about to let myself be manipulated out of one trap and led straight into another.
Pasting a bland look on my face, I lifted my shoulders in a ‘what are ya gonna do?’ shrug.
“Maybe I’m just too young to know better.”
Rumi let out a furious growl and shoved herself off the bed. She yanked on her skirt, hunting around for that lacy top she’d worn over her black bra—the one she’d stripped off right after we got back to mine, tipsy off club cocktails and primed for some good old-fashioned fucking.
Fucking she’d just used as a weapon to try and get her way with me. To put a ring on it and keep me right where she liked me—utterly reliant on her.
I should have paid attention to the signs.
Instead, I’d let myself get swept away in enjoying sex with a woman …
and the lifestyle Rumi led. She was eight years older than me and from a wealthy Chinese-Australian family.
Her connections, as much as her ruthlessness, had gotten her a position at a prestigious law firm.
She had a penthouse in Bondi Junction, a Maserati and she ate out at chef-hatted restaurants multiple times a week.
None of it meant anything when she saw me as just another thing to show off—a foreign trinket to wear when it suited her, then box away when it didn’t. She’d done it all year, and I let her. Every time she came back with gifts, apologies and pussy eating, I forgot how it felt to be discarded.
She gathered her things from the floor, slinging her Gucci bag over her shoulder with a disdainful sniff.
“You’re an immature, unappreciative little …
piece of Eastern European trash! The way you tried to expose yourself for that man in the club tonight …
” She let out a derisive snort. “And he wasn’t even looking at you!
You’re so desperate for validation, you don’t care where you get it.
You don’t even like men and you still wanted him to want you—it’s pathetic! ”
It stung, but I let it slide. I’d heard much worse—from her, and from others.
It barely even hurt anymore. There was no point in responding, even if her ongoing insistence that my bisexuality wasn’t real irked me to my core.
That was what she wanted—to get my back up, to get me to react so she felt justified in taking a chunk out of me.
I wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction.
She waltzed towards the door, flicking her hair over her shoulder as she turned back to me.
“I could’ve overlooked your need for attention …
if we were married. But it’s too late now.
Don’t come crawling back when the money’s gone and you’re hiding from the feds.
I offered you forever, and you chose to whore yourself out for validation.
Just remember, you need me more than I need you. And the offer’s off the table.”
She waited, lips pursed, eyes expectant. The pause stretched, more and more awkward with every moment as she waited for me to say something. I didn’t bite. Blotches of red bloomed on her cheeks.
With a muttered, “Stupid bitch,” she wrenched open the door and flounced out of my bedroom. I waited to hear the front door slam, but instead it clicked with a quiet finality that had me releasing a long-held breath.
I shouldn’t have felt relieved she’d left with just a few insults. I was still on borrowed time, my visa ticking down, with no real plan on what to do to stay in the only place that had ever felt like home.
But I was relieved. On paper, her offer made sense—a marriage of convenience to keep me legally in Australia while I figured out everything else.
But I knew, deep down, it wouldn’t stay just ‘on paper’ for her.
To Rumi, it was a symbol of ownership. And I knew I’d be miserable living as something she owned.
With any luck, I’d gone far enough this time that she wouldn’t be back, and I wouldn’t have to turn her down even more forcefully next time.
Damn it, I needed a distraction! From Rumi’s tantrum and from my imminently visa-less state. I tucked Thumper away after flicking him on to check he wasn’t permanently out of action thanks to Rumi and her hissy fit. Reaching deeper into the drawer, my fingers latched around Nikolai.
“Hello, my giant, thrusting fucker!” I crooned, tugging my sleep shirt up and spreading my legs.
At least one good thing had come from Rumi’s half-baked oral—I was still wet enough to accommodate his girth.
I needed something big and … masculine …
inside me, to wipe the memories of the last half hour from my mind.
Nikolai was more reliable for an orgasm than a man.
Certainly more reliable than Rumi tonight, trying to manipulate me into marriage using orgasm denial.
Seating Nikolai deep in me, I switched him to thrust mode, with a side of pulsing vibrations, and let my legs fall wide to feel everything he was giving me. I snatched up my phone and opened the Tickle app I’d downloaded a couple of weeks ago.
I opened my saved posts, scrolling until I found the video of a man and his wife having some of the hottest vanilla sex I’d ever witnessed.
As Nikolai thrust, and pulsed, and filled me so perfectly, I watched that husband gently kiss his wife and then lean back, his palms sliding down her body to grip her hips as he thrust in and out of her with measured strokes.
She arched off the bed, mouth falling open on a moan as she fondled her breasts and stared up at her husband with delighted adoration.
I arched up too, gasping as Nikolai hit my G-spot, just the way that husband no doubt was hitting his wife’s.
And when I came, it was with a sigh, and a tremble, and a silly, sentimental wish that I could have something like that.
A lover who worshipped me in bed, without the unfair expectations, the cruel words …
the hot and cold until I never knew where I stood.
Was that really too much to ask?
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Kat, my bestie of four years, asked as she bustled into our kitchen in her black work uniform, empty coffee cup in hand. “I feel like we need a debrief on your love life dramas, and I’m such a bad friend that I took up the entire morning with my man dramas—”
I clapped a hand over her mouth, plucking the mug from her fingers with the other.
“Your man dramas are so much more interesting than my night! Hot, dirty stranger fingers you in public, then disappears? That’s juicy?
My night? Not even worth mentioning. But if you really need details, Rumi and I fought, like we have so many times before.
She left, like she has so many times before, and I consoled myself with a very pleasant orgasm from Nikolai—like I have so many times before. That’s really all there is to tell.”
Kat wrinkled her nose. “I wish you’d never told me you named your vibrator that. It’s too close to my cousin’s name for comfort, and every time you talk about using it, all I can see is him in bed with you!”
I smirked and waggled my eyebrows. “Oooh, I think I like imagining you imagining me with your cutie-pie cousin. Maybe a big blond boy is what I need to get me back in the dating pool …”
Kat shook her head, chuckling. “Look, Nik is great, but you are far too much woman for him.”
“Up the top for womanpower!” I crowed, holding my hand up high for Kat to slap. She laughed, rolling her eyes. “Don’t leave me handing!” I begged.
“It’s just up top … and it’s hanging—don’t leave me hanging!” But she gave me the high-five anyway.
“English is such a bizarre language,” I complained. “I’m literally holding my hand up; my version makes so much more sense! But to answer your first question, I will be okay. I’m going to train this morning—swim off the hangover.”
“You’re not hungover,” Kat argued. “I’ve seen you mainline a bottle of vodka without any side effects—a couple of cocktails is child’s play for you!”
“What can I say? I was weaned from breastmilk straight to hard spirits. It’s the Romanian way.” I grinned to show her I was joking … sort of … but the mention of my childhood made my nerves jangle vigorously in my stomach.
Kat giggled wetly. “I’m going to miss you so much when you go home, Ri,” she said, leaning in for a hug. I wrapped my arms around her, holding her tight. I hoped I didn’t have to miss her, but I was cutting it fine …
Less than a month until visa-day. And still no plan of how I avoided leaving.