by Raven Dark
He squats in front of me, turning my chin up to him. He’s not angry, but almost unsettlingly calm, as if he knows there’s no need for brute force. He has me.
“Do you know why I didn’t fuck your pussy just then, Aurora?” His voice is low as he strokes my lips with his thumb.
The urge to tell him it’s because he couldn’t handle me again rears up, but I quash it. My ass is sore enough, and insulting his masculinity would be as pointless as it is immature. We both know damn well he knows how to make a woman’s body his.
I remain silent, waiting for the answer I already know I’m going to hear.
He looks deep into my eyes. “You were so close to coming a minute ago, if I’d fucked you that way you might have gone over the edge. From this day forward, your pleasure is mine, just as your body is mine. You won’t come until I say so, and now is not the time for you.”
I look at my knees, humiliation rolling over me in waves. I’ve never felt so dirty, so used. Or so intensely aroused. “Are you finished now, Sir?” I grumble.
He shakes his head. “Roll over.”
What else the hell can he possibly do to me? I close my eyes and hot tears splash my cheeks, but I roll onto my stomach right there on the floor.
Expecting him to pound out another release inside me, I will myself not to shove him away and make things worse.
Michael kneels between my legs. He spreads my ass cheeks, but he doesn’t fuck me. Instead, he gently pulls the plug from my ass. It releases with a small pop. And a flare of pleasure so intense that I grind my teeth in effort not to come.
He disappears yet again. Water runs for a long time. He’s washing that wretched plug. Leaving me plenty of time to react, to get up on the bed, do something, anything, but I can’t make my body obey my brain. Besides, my legs are like jelly; I doubt that they’d hold me up if I tried to stand.
When Michael returns, my heart speeds up. Unsure what to expect from him now, I sit halfway up and look at him, but his expression gives away nothing, save a calm look of satisfaction. He doesn’t have the plug with him. If I never see that thing again, it’ll be too soon.
Michael pulls me to my feet by my elbow, helping me to sit on the bed. His cum is drying on my skin, sticky and thick, a mark of his ownership. “I need to wipe this shit off me,” I say, starting to get up.
He clamps his hand on my shoulder, holding me in place. “Don’t even think about it.” His tone is raw lust. When I glare at him, his eyes burn with satisfaction. “Leave it there. I like seeing your tits painted with my come.”
God, when will it end?
“Now are you finished, Sir?” I say to my knees.
“For now.” He cups my chin, tips it up, and brushes his mouth over mine, a slow, agonizingly possessive caress. When he draws back, his thumb once more sweeps over my lips. “I hope you’ve learned your lesson, Aurora.”
“And which lesson is that, Sir?”
I can think of plenty of lessons I’ve learned tonight. That he’s an ass I never hated enough as a child. That Katerina is a lot more dangerous and devious than I thought. And that he has no shortage of ways in which to tear me apart.
“That it’s true what I said before.” His eyes are ruthless, without pity, and filled with inescapable possession. “This is your life now. Learn to accept it, because I am all there is for you. You are never getting away, Aurora. Never.”
Without another word, Michael turns and leaves me, naked and shaking with rage.
The door closes with a soft click and a turn of the key in the lock.
It would have been easy for me to shatter then. To fall apart, to curl up and cry out my pain right there on the bed. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t tempted. As the prospect of a life in which I’m reduced to nothing more than an object for his use stretches before me unforgiving, I want to break into a million pieces, a woman so broken no one would be able to put me back together again. But I can’t. I won’t.
It’s bad enough that he sees me as a toy, without feelings to consider. It’s bad enough that he enjoys ruining me. It’s bad enough that Katerina’s lies won’t stop, and that she’ll delight in making my life a further hell whenever she can. But I will not let my life be thrown away, cast aside. I will not be that woman.
I will not be that weak.
Instead of crumbling, I let my hatred and my anger for Michael burn away my tears and fuel my determination until it blazes, white hot. My teeth grind as I glare across the room at the doors.
He’s dead wrong. I am getting out of here. The very next opportunity that comes my way, I’m taking it. No matter what it takes, the first chance I get, I’m gone.
Chapter 13
Defying Sir
Sitting in Michael’s fabulous library, I look up from the tablet on my lap and glance out the window, unable to concentrate.
With a nearly limitless book selection at my disposal, sitting in a dream come true of a reading space, it would figure that I can’t hold a thought to save my life. I’ve read the same page five times, and I still have no idea what I’ve read.
It’s been two days since what transpired in my bedroom between Michael and me. When I woke the morning after that day, Michael had left on business. It’s going on five in the afternoon, and he still isn’t back. His absence should make me feel better. If he isn’t here, I don’t have to deal with him, and yet, something close to depression has long since settled over me like a cloud.
I sigh and lay my arm across the back of the lounge chair, resting my chin on it and staring out the window at the endless blanket of white that covers the back yard. I suppose being held captive is enough to send anyone into a funk. It’s not as if there’s a shortage of reminders as to my situation.
For one thing, since Adrian accompanied his boss on his trip, Michael has sent in another bodyguard to watch over me. He’s even more mono-syllabic than Adrian, he’s stuffier, and he hovers like an annoying buzzard, refusing to let me out of his sight. I can’t figure out if this is because Michael’s ordered him to stick to me like crazy glue after my snooping for a way off the property, or if, like a lot of the bodyguards my dad hired for me as a kid, he’s obsessive about his job.
For another thing, Michael hasn’t exactly left me alone for the entire time he’s been gone.
Both nights he was gone, he’s called me before I dropped off to sleep. He’s told me nothing about what he’s up to, calling for just long enough to check up on me. To make it clear he has access to the camera feed that looks into my room even while away, and that he often watches me. Pointing out how creepy that is does no good. He seems to delight in knowing he’s unsettling me.
Prick.
I wish I could say it was easy not to think about him, but it’s not. It’s not as if I miss him. Far from it. For two days, my ass stung every time I sat down unless I had a pillow under it. If he never came back to the lodge, I’d be thrilled. And yet, my mind drifts to him at the worst times. When I crawl into that huge bed at night. When I wake in the morning, alone. When I’m in the huge en suite shower in my room, remembering the way he made me come so hard on his fingers during my shower on the plane.
It’s as if with all that he’s done to me, he’s gotten into my blood and some part of my body craves him like a junky craves a drug. My mouth still waters when I remember the taste of his cock on my tongue. My pussy clenches when I think about his fingers stroking me there or imagine his mouth doing the work instead. He’s in my system, and I have no idea how to get him out.
To top it off, after that night in my room, he’d hardly said a word to me except when he’d called, which wasn’t until the next night. Somehow, the silent treatment he’d given me felt like I was being cast aside, serving as its own kind of punishment.
His absence has its bright sides. One, Katerina also went with him, which means I don’t have to put up with the woman’s manipulative mind-games. Two, he’d only locked me in my room for the first night and the following day, so now I can enjoy
the lodge without worrying about Michael ruining it, just like he ruins everything else.
If I’m lucky, he’s gone back to Russia, and can’t get back into the US. Maybe he’s stuck there and won’t be back for weeks while he sorts out whatever is keeping him there. Maybe he won’t return at all. Maybe I’ve gotten really lucky and he’s snowbound, freezing his gorgeous ass off in Siberia.
A girl can dream.
Whatever the case, it pisses me off that he won’t leave me alone even when he’s not here and not talking to me on the phone.
Once more, I try to concentrate on my reading, but I still can’t take a word in. I’d finished Trouble yesterday, which made me a little sad. Reading about big bad alpha bikers is nice, but Anne and Vicious’ story only reminds me how naïve I’d been to believe I’d ever end up in a relationship based on deep passion and love like theirs. It only reminds me of something that, thanks to Michael, I’ll never have. I’d saved myself for the perfect man, and it had all been for nothing.
Feet shuffle outside the door to the library. Grigory, my bodyguard, probably stretching his legs again. I groan and push up from the lounge chair. Enough feeling sorry for myself. Who knows when Michael will come back? Thanks to Grigory’s unfaltering presence, I won’t be going anywhere interesting. So help me, I’m going to enjoy what time I have without Michael here.
The second I step out of the room, Grigory stands up from the chair he’d just sat in.
“Don’t trouble yourself,” I tell him, shutting the doors. “I’m just going to the kitchen.”
Without a word, he follows me down the hall, stalking a pace behind.
I turn to him, walking backwards. “Do you have to do that?” I snap. “Do you have to follow me every single place I go?”
“I have my orders, Miss Romano.”
So this is Michael’s doing, just as I figured.
“I’m going to eat. What does he think I’m going to do, off myself with a spatula?”
Even if I was desperate enough to end my life, there are locks on the drawers that hold anything sharp, and Joanne is almost always in there.
Grigory gives a bored shrug as if to tell me he doesn’t have a choice.
I shake my head and make my way to the kitchen. I should be used to having a tail all the time, I suppose, but I haven’t had a steady protector in almost eight years, since before college.
If I’m honest, setting Grigory on me isn’t an entirely misplaced notion. It’s not as if I haven’t been watching for the smallest opportunity to get out of here.
In the kitchen, Grigory seats himself on one of the island’s stools and starts reading a paper left on the counter. Joanne looks up at me from her cooking with a ready smile. The smell of shrimp makes my mouth water.
“Whatever that is, it smells fantastic.” I lean over the counter and inhale the buttery goodness. The shrimp is virtually swimming in it. Yum.
“It’s pan-fried garlic buttered shrimp.” She sprinkles more garlic powder on. “It’ll be served with fettuccini Alfredo.”
God, I love this woman.
“If you’re hungry, Miss Romano, it’ll have to wait.” She stirs the fine pasta boiling in the pot. “Dinner’s in a half an hour, as soon as Mr. Volkov arrives.”
I freeze in place. “Michael’s coming back today?”
She nods. “He just called. His flight from Vegas got in earlier this afternoon.”
“Oh.” My stomach clenches at the thought of what I’ll be in for when he returns. He hasn’t seen me in two days. Will he ignore me entirely as he did before he left, or will he demand my presence the minute he gets in? It pisses me off that I’m not sure which would be worse.
I lean on the counter, determined to savor what little time I have left without him.
“Wait, Vegas? What was he doing out there?”
Joanne gives me a half smile, but doesn’t answer.
It’s weird that I even asked. In my father’s house, it was standard procedure that you didn’t ask where he went or what he did while he was gone on his trips, since it was almost always Mafia related. Joanne wouldn’t be able to answer. I can guess what he’s doing out there. A lot of the business our fathers went on in the summer when we were kids had to do with casinos they dealt in. Or gun deliveries. It’s equally weird that it stings a little that he didn’t take me with him. I’m his prisoner, not his high-class girlfriend, left behind while he goes off and paints the town red in Sin City.
“You’d better start getting ready, dear.” Jo drains the pasta in the sink. “He’s had clothes left for you for dinner. I saw the dress, it’s gorgeous.”
I can just imagine. Everything Michael picks out for me is beautiful, and always sexy enough to make me feel like a prized jewel. I’d love it if I hadn’t known that the clothes were meant only for his pleasure and not mine.
Thoughts racing with what might await me when Michael arrives, I start out of the room, but turn back to her, forcing myself to ask something I’ve been trying to bring myself to ask her since I met her three days ago.
“Jo?” I wring my hands until she glances at me. “Can I ask you something?”
“Always.” She adds a little more spices to the shrimp.
I lean against the counter. “How…” I lick my lips. “How can you do this? How can you just accept… You know. What’s happening here.”
God help me, I don’t want to like this woman. I want to hate her as much as I despise Katerina. Am I scared that her answer will dispel my respect for her, or that it won’t?
Jo squeezes my hand. “He’ll be home any minute. You’ve better get started.”
I sigh, but nod. I know too much about Mafia life to blame her for not taking action. When you work for a kingpin, loyalty is paramount, because the only other alternative is one no one wants. My father’s reaction to my reporting that kidnapping serves as a perfect reminder of what happens when you don’t accept what they do.
Before leaving, I paint on a smile, snatch a piece of shrimp from the pan and pop it into my mouth. If I have to be a prisoner, I can at least try to keep my spirits up for as long as possible.
Jo flashes me a smile, but for some reason, her eyes look a little sad.
A half hour later, Grigory escorts me to the lodge’s large dining room. Jo was absolutely right, the dress Michael picked out is a gorgeous black cocktail dress, strapless with a sweetheart neckline and a short, hip-hugging skirt. The material is also thin and stretchy, giving him the kind of access that makes my skin hum at the thought.
Michael’s already waiting there, standing at the end of a long table. He’s dressed in a charcoal suit that hugs his frame just right. The crimson tie he wears stands out against his white silk shirt, drawing attention to his enormous height and breadth. His gaze traces the line of my dress, drinking in every inch of me with possessive approval that makes my belly flutter.
“You look ravishing, kravitsa.” He gestures for me to take the seat to the right of him.
My cheeks heat. Hearing his accent after two days of being away from him is like hearing an angel speak. I’ve heard him on the phone, but it’s not the same.
“You’re back already?” I say, burying my attraction with irritation. “Did you run out of babies to kill, Michael?”
His grin is huge. As soon as I’m at the chair he indicated, he breaks the space between us in one stride and hauls me against him.
“And she comes out swinging.” He presses a heated kiss to my forehead, running his fingertips down my bare arm. “Did you miss me, Aurora?”
“Not a bit.”
He chuckles and pulls out my chair. Once I’m seated, he drops a kiss on my shoulder. My skin tingles with delight. “Too bad. I missed you.”
“Good for you.”
Raising a brow, he takes his seat. “In a sour mood, are we?”
I glower at my plate. If I wasn’t, I am now.
“How’s your ass today, Aurora?” he adds pointedly. He pours himself some wine from a bo
ttle of Pinot Grigio on the table. “If you need a reminder in respect, I’d be more than happy to turn it red again.”
“No thank you, Sir.”
He pours me a glass of wine without asking if I want it. It’s irritating to realize, I’ll probably drink it. I need something to help me relax around him.
I spare the room a glance, then immediately wish I hadn’t. It’s as beautiful as it is huge, with a large tiered crystal chandelier hanging from the high vaulted ceiling, cherry wood paneling on the walls. Red roses sit in the middle of the table, along with candles that give the room a romantic glow. I glance at the full, mullioned windows that take up the back wall. Thick red drapes are tied back from glass doors, leaving a perfect view of the outside. Fat snowflakes drift down, making the yard look like a winter wonderland. It’s as if not only Michael and his staff have conspired to make everything look like the perfect date, but the universe is in on it too.
I glance at him. “Sir, is this a joke?”
“Is what a joke?”
“This.” I gesture to the table’s obvious romantic décor. “Since you can’t be legitimately trying to seduce me, I can only assume you’re mocking me by ordering this dinner to be set up to look like a date.”
He eyes the table with a scowl. “I had nothing to do with that, Aurora. Jo probably did it.” His tone carries a bite of irritation that leaves no doubt he’s telling the truth.
Joanne is trying to play matchmaker between us? Why? She can’t think the night can lead anywhere except to my wishing Michael had never laid eyes on me.
The aforementioned cook comes through a side door that leads from the kitchen and sets a silver platter down. When she catches my eye, I flick my eyes to the table.
She clears her throat and removes the platter lid to reveal two plates of the shrimp and Alfredo dinner she was cooking up earlier. She sets one plate down in front of me, the other in front of Michael. “Enjoy, sir.” She disappears without a further word, and without looking at either of us.
