“I see.” Anger bites into me.
She did this, after I delivered the turquoise jewelry and shoes to her room. She did this knowing that I can see everything that she’s searching for online. So she wanted me to see these searches.
Her computer activity has been a concern to me. In Ohio, when she was at her apartment, she used a very effective virtual private network. There are numerous reasons that she could have done that. I understand that she needs to protect herself against her uncles, Vilyat and Edik. Either one of them would snatch up her and Anastasia and the kids for their own revolting purposes. Vilyat would punish his wife for running and taking the kids; he’d torture her to death, he’d sell Willow off to be married or enslaved, and he’d marry his daughter off to someone much sooner than Willow thinks. And sweet little Yuri? Vilyat would beat him to death for not being a cruel, dark monster.
As for Edik, if he got hold of them, he would use all of them against his brother, because Edik knows that Vilyat is the reason I’m destroying their family. He doesn’t know why, but he knows that he’s lost at least half of his business and has been marked for death. He lives in fear because of something Vilyat did, and for that, he wants to hurt Vilyat and then kill him.
Of course, I plan on ending this long, drawn-out game very soon, but Willow doesn’t know that. So maybe she was using the VPN to try to keep track of what her family is up to.
Or maybe she has been spying on me. Maybe that’s how she found out Ludmilla’s name. How else would she know it?
I send Maks to get her, and have him bring her straight to my office. She’s never been here before. I don’t mix business with pleasure, but this won’t be pleasant.
I am standing by the door when Maks shoves her through it. He slams the door as he leaves her with me.
She’s wearing white cotton Palazzo pants and a scoop-neck shirt, and a flower crown headband. My sweet little bohemian angel. I slam the door shut, then smack her on the side of the head so hard she staggers.
“What the fuck do you think you were doing with that search?” I snarl at her. I back her up against the wall. “You think that was funny?”
She goes as pale as a ghost and shrinks in on herself. She’s genuinely afraid of me right now. Once upon a time, that would have turned me on. Right now, I feel sick and furious. I don’t want to have to beat the shit out of her, but I need to know what she knows.
I grab her throat and squeeze until she wheezes and claws at my hands. “You knew I’d see that search!” I bark at her.
“Yes!” she spits back at me, tears filling her eyes.
I slam her so her head bangs against the wall. “Where did you get the name Ludmilla? Did you hack into my computer?”
She’s crying now.
“No! I overheard you talking in the hall the other day! You said that you couldn’t wait to kiss her! Or something like that.” She glares at me, tears spilling onto her cheeks.
I let go of her, and let out a long, angry breath that I realize I’ve been holding.
Then I measure out each word carefully, to keep myself from shouting. “I remember exactly what I said. I did not say I couldn’t wait to kiss her. I said I could kiss her. That’s an expression people use when they are very pleased with something that someone has done.”
“Who is she to you?” she screams at me. “Is she your girlfriend?”
I could just slap the shit out of her and tell her it’s none of her business. Instead I’m even crueler. I say the one thing I know will break her heart.
“I never told you we were exclusive,” I say nastily.
She lets out a screech of pain and rage, and flies at me, trying to claw at my face. God help me, it turns me on so much that my cock leaps to attention, instantly rock hard. She’s a magnificent tiger, and her jealousy speaks to her burning passion for me.
I grab her and pin her up against the wall, stretching her arms above her head, shoving my groin against her so she can feel my full, hard length.
She writhes madly, turning me on more. When I lean down to kiss her, she spits in my face.
“Fuck you, you asshole!” she screams at me. “Go kiss your girlfriend!”
I want her right now. I have to have her. The need roars through me, a freight train drowning out sound and reason. But the only way she’ll submit to me is if I open up to her. Yet again. I’m giving more and more of myself to her. What will I be when she finishes with me?
“Ludmilla is not my girlfriend, not my mistress,” I tell her truthfully. “You’re the only one I want to kiss. Or fuck. Honestly, I wish that wasn’t true, I wish I could satisfy myself with a whore or a gold-digger, but ever since I’ve met you, you’re the only one that makes my dick hard. In fact, I’m going to bend you over my desk right now and take you up the ass. Do you think you have a choice in the matter?”
Her expression has softened now. Her lips part for me. Her eyes go misty.
I cup her chin in my hand and bend down and kiss her as if I’m drowning and she’s my only oxygen. I thrust my tongue into her mouth, caressing the warm silken cave, swallowing her moans of pleasure.
And I don’t tell her a secret, one that I think would ruin me.
She’s the only woman I’ve ever kissed on the mouth. In my entire life.
I want to tell her, to make her feel special, because she deserves to feel special and she deserves the truth. But something silences my voice. Something weak and cowardly. I just keep kissing her, drinking her in. She melts into me, pressing herself up against me. Her eagerness turns me on so much I’ll come in my pants if I don’t get relief.
I spin her around, arm up behind her back, and march her over to my desk.
I bend her over and release her arm. “Pull down your pants for me,” I say. She does, with a moan. Her pants fall in a puddle around her ankles.
I kneel behind her and lave her rosebud rectum with my saliva, and slide my fingers in and out of her butthole, moistening it. Stretching it.
Then I stand and push my cock against the tight little hole, and she tenses and cries out.
“Relax,” I growl. I move in very slowly, forcing my way up. The resistance of her muscular tunnel makes me want to tear into her like a battering ram, but I listen to her gasps of pain and inch my way in bit by bit, until I’m buried to the hilt. She’s quivering, and clutching the edge of my desk so hard her knuckles are white.
She’s enduring the pain for me. She gets pleasure from letting me hurt her. God, she’s magnificent.
I grab her hips and pump into her slowly. She’s whimpering, and I know it hurts and turns her on at the same time. My balls slap against her flesh, and I pump faster and faster, and the hot pleasure builds and builds. I pull out and let go of her hips, and explode, splattering my warm come on the smooth, round globes of her ass. I stand there as the waves of pleasure splash over me, and my panting breath slows to normal.
“Oh,” she moans. She turns around, her eyes huge with desire.
I know what she expects. What she craves like oxygen.
She’s not getting it. Not today.
“You shouldn’t have tried to check up on me,” I growl. “So here’s your punishment. I’m not going to make you come today. Not only that, but I’m going to come in and handcuff you to your bed tonight, so you can’t make yourself come. You’re going to tell me before you shower, and I will watch you on the video I have installed in your shower, and I’ll jerk off to it, but you’re not allowed to touch yourself. I will do this for as long as I want, cuffing you every night, and if you dare to get yourself off before I let you, I will never make you come again. Understand?”
“You… But I…” Tears of frustration fill her eyes. Beautiful, beautiful tears.
“‘You, but I,’” I mock her. “Did you actually think that your bad behavior would be without consequence? Get out of my office. Now.”
She pulls up her pants and stumbles from the room, gasping.
Chapter Eleven
Days
five, six, seven, eight…
I take great satisfaction in watching her over my video system for the next few days. Her lust for me comes and goes. She tries to act as if everything is okay when she’s spending time with her family, but she’s distracted and clumsy.
I see how she writhes in her seat sometimes, biting her lip, her forehead creased in frustration. She rocks back and forth. She clenches her fists. She hugs herself. She glares around the room, searching for the hidden cameras that are recording her humiliation. I hold my cock in my hands and jerk myself off until I come, again and again.
Of course, jerking off isn’t the same as being with her – but punishing her like this is so satisfying that it’s worth it.
God, if only I could keep her. I could spend a lifetime punishing her and then fucking the breath from her body. Devising new tortures to make her moan in pain and weep for the sweet release that only my mouth and cock can give her.
As the days go by, I feel the ghost of something nagging at me, and I revisit our last conversation. I play it back in my head; I have a near-photographic memory.
What I settle on is that she said that she knew about Ludmilla because she was eavesdropping on me. But on the issue of whether she was using the internet to snoop on me or my business…I think she somehow dodged that issue.
I could ask her directly, but she won’t tell me the truth.
Instead, I can shake her up just by doing something she wouldn’t expect – like taking her out to dinner. That might get her to trust me. To open up to me.
I know that if I offer to take her out to dinner it will be huge for her. So far all I’ve done is drag her to one room or another and use her for my own needs. I’ve set the bar pretty low. It’s not something I’m proud of.
Day eight…
I check with Maks for her location, and he directs me to the garden. She’s standing in front of her easel near the sugary sands of my private beach, sketching an ocean scene. Her pastels bring the brilliant blue sea to life, and when I look at it, I can feel the water’s depth and mystery. She’s really good. I feel a welling of misplaced pride when I look at it.
I don’t do many good things in my life, and usually when I do, it’s purely by accident – I need something, so I do something good for someone to get something in return. But this, I did for Willow because I knew it would be good for her. I encouraged her because I know she loves to draw.
“It’s about time you stopped neglecting your talent,” I say. “You didn’t draw at all after you left here, which was a shame.”
She sets down her pastel and gives me a sharp look. “And you know this how, exactly?”
I realize that I’ve said too much. Now she knows how long I was watching her. I just let information slip, and that is something I never do. And letting her overhear me when I was talking to Ludmilla…what the hell? What is it about her that gets under my skin like this?
Instead of answering, I go on the offensive. I walk over and slide my finger under her chin.
“Willow.”
“Yes?”
“To use an American expression, don’t push your luck.”
She manages a sad smile. “Am I lucky, Sergei?”
“Compared to some, yes.” I glance out at the sea.
“This place is beautiful,” she sighs.
“My offer still stands. It’s yours. You should take it.” I can’t imagine staying here after I’ve sent her away. She’d still be here, like a ghost. Every room would echo with her absence.
She frowns. “Prove to me that you didn’t buy this place with money from gun running, or drugs.”
“Okay,” I shrug. “I’ll show you the paperwork from my construction company.”
She does a double take. “You will? Now?”
“No. No hurry. Maybe tomorrow. Tonight, we’re going out to dinner.”
Her eyes light up at that. “Really?”
I feel like a bastard. I’m doing this because I want to find out what she’s been up to, and she thinks it’s a sweet date. Is it, maybe just a little?
“I like you in the blue tulle dress,” I say gruffly. “I’ll get you at seven p.m.”
A few hours later, she’s wearing the dress I requested, and she’s breathtaking. She doesn’t know it. She moves a little awkwardly, and she keeps nervously tucking her hair behind her ear. She’s all the more beautiful for her gawkiness.
We drive half an hour to a Mediterranean restaurant, with security in my car, and then another car full of men following behind us. I’m not worried that she’ll try to make a break for it – not with her aunt and cousins back at my house.
There are palm trees inside the restaurant, and we’re ushered to a room designed to look like a private grotto with frescoes of ancient Rome painted on the walls. There are two other tables there, but my men are sitting at both of them. The single entryway to the room is through a door that only the staff have access to.
A blonde waitress approaches us with the menus and flutters her eyes at me. I glare at her to send her the message to back off.
I order wine for us, and appetizers, and then dinner.
It feels stiff and awkward. I don’t do seduction; I never have. I go out to an exclusive nightclub or casino and select the most beautiful whores. If I’m feeling inspired, I take them back to my playroom. When I’m done with them, I send them on their way with a chunk of cash or something sparkly clutched in their greedy little fists.
Willow notices my awkwardness.
“So, you don’t take a lot of women out on dates?” she says.
“I don’t take any women out on dates.”
A startled look flashes across her face. “This can’t possibly be the first time you’ve ever taken a woman out on a date with you.”
My lips twist up in a smile. “Not only that, I’m a virgin.”
She chokes on a laugh, then shakes her head reprovingly. “No, really.”
“On occasion, if it was convenient I might have eaten dinner with a woman. Not on a pre-planned date.”
She looks even more confused. “Why would a woman put up with that and come back for more?”
I tear off a piece of bread and drag it through the dish of peppery olive oil. “They don’t come back for more. Because I do not invite them. Does anything about me give you the impression that I can offer emotional intimacy?”
“Sometimes,” she says without hesitation, which surprises me. She’s not lying. “It’s hidden deep and it’s hard to get to. But when you get to that space…” I see the look of longing on her beautiful face. She wants it to be like that all the time. Or at least more often. If I could give that to anyone, it would be her.
“What about you and your relationship history?” I ask, and then an explosion of rage erupts deep inside me and I instantly say, “Don’t answer that.” I take a deep breath, clench my fists, and let it out slowly. If she told me about any of her former boyfriends, I couldn’t stop myself, even if I wanted to. I’d hunt them down and kill them with my bare hands.
She looks at me steadily. “I have never had romantic feelings for anyone but you. I probably never will again, after you send me away.”
“You don’t know that.”
But I suspect she does. And a horrible part of me is glad. It’s not that I want her unhappy. It’s just that even after I leave her, I know that I will keep tabs on her, and if anyone got too close to her, I’d cut them to pieces – while they were alive.
Willow is tucking in to her paprika chicken when the waitress comes back, supposedly to see if everything is to our liking. Her gaze drifts over my custom-made suit, my fifty-thousand-dollar watch, my Italian loafers. Women like her know what to look for. A greedy, eager light shines in her eyes.
Her breasts are spilling out of the top of her black halter dress. In Italian, she says, “Too bad you’re settling for her. I could show you a really good time.” And she gives me an exaggerated wink. I suspect she doesn’t realize that I speak fluent Italian, she
just thinks she’s being clever.
Willow doesn’t understand the words, but she gets the gist of it. She stiffens and stares down at the table, humiliated.
I speak to the waitress in Italian. First she smiles, then she goes pale, then she looks at me in horror and flees.
“What did you say to her?” Willow asks me.
I told the waitress that I’d love to take her home with me…because she had such beautiful skin…and I needed a new belt and wallet.
“I’ll answer that question if you promise to answer a question for me,” I say.
She frowns at that.
“Depends on the question,” she says.
I arch an eyebrow at her. “Willow. You hiding something from me, sweetheart?”
She looks at me defiantly. “Why shouldn’t I? You’re hiding lots of things from me.”
“Yes,” I say, my voice growing harder. “And it’s not a two-way street. I’m the boss here. The master. You are subservient to me.”
“For twenty-two more days.” There’s a quiet sorrow in her voice, and I want to pull her to me, and comfort her, and promise I will keep her forever. I want to give her flowers and diamonds and my heart.
So I lash out. “Why? You want to stay longer?” The old mockery is in my voice, and instantly she shuts down. She shrinks in on herself. She sets her fork down carefully, her meal half finished.
“I’m done.”
I should apologize.
I never apologize.
“No, actually, you aren’t.”
She raises her eyes to meet my gaze, with a quiet, resigned pain. “Well, I no longer feel hungry, and if I eat anything else, I’ll probably throw up. If you really want to watch me do that, by all means force me to finish this.”
Rage clouds my vision, so I get up and walk away. I call the owner of the restaurant over and talk to him, making my wishes explicitly clear.
A waiter hurries up to us with a carafe of coffee. He sets coffee cups down and pours the coffee for us, and his hands are only shaking slightly, even though he’s terrified because he knows who I am and what I can do. Willow is avoiding my gaze. Her shoulders are hunched. She’s retreating into that shell that I push her into.
Thirty Days of Shame Page 9
