by Lana Sky
I flinch at what I see. The rage has drained from his system, leaving his eyes a steely shade of coal. I’m not sure which is worse in him: fire or ice?
My throat jerks to swallow. Spit and blood, according to the taste. Every inch of my body begs me to do it now. Say the damn phrase. As if to make it easier, Maxim’s thumb traces my lips, nudging them open.
“I will let you go now,” he promises. “If you ask.”
Ask. I only have to breathe out enough air to bring life to the words. I’m….
The seconds pass. Too long. His hand slips from my mouth, falling somewhere within the twisted sheets that drape my body. He must have done it, covered me.
Out of concern? I can’t tell as his gaze takes me in. He grabs my hand, unfurling the fingers, and raises a single digit to his mouth, running his tongue along the ruby smear coating the pad of it.
“I misused these tools, kotyonok,” he tells me, setting my hand aside to lift the leather belt for me to see. His jaw clenches when I flinch and he runs his free hand down my side, bringing bruises to life. “I’ve used them before you were ready. I’ve conditioned you to associate them with fear.” His searching hand fans out, stroking me from hip to navel. His eyes follow the motions of his fingers, his pupils swollen and hungry. “There is so much more to it than that.”
He manipulates me so that I’m on my back. I see white. My lips flutter apart. “I…I’m ha—”
“Relax,” he scolds, twisting his body so that he’s hovering above me, all I can see, all I can breathe. He drags the sheet away, revealing my bruised, battered skin.
I only catch glimpses of it before I settle my gaze on the ceiling instead. Dark, purple splotches. Angry, red welts. He fingers one and the sharp, burning pinch warns me that part of the mark is gaping. Open. Bleeding. I don’t know what I expect him to do…
Pet me isn’t it. His heavy palm explores the length of my battered skin. Touching. Claiming. Comforting?
I shiver, too weak to move. I suffer. The softer his touch becomes, the more featherlight brushes of pain I feel. It’s like being cut by a million razors all at once in the same damn spot. My thoughts grow fuzzy with every sweep of his fingertips, drugged on the agony he delivers. To my breasts. Between my legs.
I moan when he eases the tip of a finger inside.
“You had your chance to run. You didn’t,” he says, his voice thick with that lethal emotion I’ve come to dread: confusion. “So trust me.” It’s not a command. It’s a request: the most dangerous one he’s made so far.
My body shivers beneath the weight of it. Trust.
I won’t.
I can’t.
As if to prove me wrong, his fingers dance over broken skin, capturing my left breast and squeezing until my back bows. It’s like pouring sugar over wounds packed with salt. I still feel the pain—all over, everywhere. But he’s relentless, stroking and teasing my nipple until it has no choice but to react to him. My hips shift, captured beneath his palms as he moves lower, positioning me so that I’m flat beneath him. One of his big hands cups me beneath my legs, and I gasp, still sore. Still on fire.
“Look at me.” His eyes, dark and narrowed, capture mine, pinning me in place as his free hand finds his belt, cinching the leather. He lifts it, letting the very edge drag across the flesh of my stomach.
I go numb with fear. Paralyzed. But then his hand starts to move between my legs. Back and forth. Deeper. Harder.
I don’t feel the first pinching slap—not initially. It isn’t until I actually see him bring the end of the belt down, striking the flesh of my hip, that I connect the two sensations. I don’t even have the time to flinch before he slides a finger inside me, slowly, savoring the achingly tight fit.
“Fuck.” He breathes out between clenched teeth. “You’re hungry for me already.”
He flicks the belt again, letting it hit my hip almost gently as that searching finger curls to rub my inner walls.
Shit. My head swims. Thoughts splinter. He hits me again: softer, harder. Harder. Softer. The entire time, his thumb fingers my clit, grinding it into my flesh. It’s pain. It’s something else. Raw. Hot. Molten.
He strokes the reaction out of me, not even retaliating when my eyes drift shut, disobeying his command to watch. I just feel. He rocks into me with one hand. Teases my flesh with the other. Hard leather. Thick, beautiful callused skin.
More. More. More. I don’t even know which one my body craves the most.
“Trust me, kotyonok.”
I feel his hand pull away. Something needy and broken rips from my throat: a moan.
“Greedy,” he scolds, his voice tight.
I feel the mattress shift beneath his weight as he nudges my thighs apart, far enough for his body to fit in between. Something larger than his fingers bats at my entrance as his breath bastes my throat.
“Open your eyes.”
My eyelids drift open until I see his face, inches from mine, while his fingers trace a path up my torso, gliding over my neglected breast, reaching for my throat. I’m still wearing the collar, and something about the way my neck must look makes him change tack.
“Hold your breath,” he tells me as his hips jerk, his cock sinking in. “Don’t let it out until I tell you to.”
My cheeks fill with air as my body becomes full of him. I fight to hold it in as he starts to thrust. Slow. Hard. Harder. Harder.
“Not yet,” he warns when I gasp, swiveling his hips, making me choke.
My head buzzes. My thoughts blur. My lungs are screaming. My body is on fire. Tightening. Clenching.
When his thumb returns to my clit with devastating strokes, my eyes roll back in my head. I see lightning. I feel it.
“Now.”
I gulp at the air while my body comes, riding his length as a million sensations hit me at once. And all the while, he just keeps thrusting.
“Fuck.”
My eyes flutter open the moment he throws his head back, blond hair streaming out behind him, his eyes heavy-lidded. His hips roll, grinding his cock into me. I’ll feel him for days. For weeks. Forever.
It seems like it will never end, but the next second, he collapses, pinning me flat with his weight. His mouth clamps down over my ear as my body rides the final wave of his release, delivering another dose of agony.
“This is pain, kotyonok,” he tells me gruffly, releasing the lobe. “This…is all I will ever give you. This?” He grinds his deflating cock into my clit, sparking off another scorching chain-reaction. “This is all you will ever need.”
At least the first part is the truth. I know that as my body screams the moment he rolls off me and moves to sit at the edge of the bed. This is pain. This is what I signed up for.
But it shouldn’t be what I want.
And it definitely shouldn’t be what I need.
Pain is the only thing I’m sure of when I regain consciousness—that and a featherlight touch against the back of my neck. A finger? No. Goosebumps prickle my skin in recognition of the callused, rough surface. His finger. My heart is already pounding against the wall of my rib cage by the time that guttural voice trickles into my ear.
“I know you are awake.”
I feel the heat from another body first, before I even sense the hulking shape stirring beside me. Maxim. In the dim lighting, he barely even looks human: just a beast glistening beneath blood and sweat.
I’m hypnotized by the predatory way he moves as he stands and approaches a doorway that I assume leads into his bathroom. I hear water running for a few minutes before he reappears with his entire torso bare.
Drool slips between my dry, cracked lips. What was that saying? Be careful what you wish for.
If, even for a second, I wanted to sneak a peek at what lies beneath Maxim’s shirts, I’ve learned my lesson. He’s grotesquely beautiful, adorned by countless scars that riddle his skin. Some look clean—surgical maybe, like Melanie’s C-section scars. The rest are jagged. Broken. Sloppy.
Lik
e mine.
The crowning jewel of his injuries is the circular stoma on his abdomen: a bright, beefy red. Maybe this is why he uses that color as an accent so much? Taken altogether, he is one giant contrast of red and silver—with those eyes filling in as the signature black.
Ignoring me, he approaches the ruined dresser and withdraws a clean plastic pouch that he secures around the stoma before wrapping another binder around his waist.
“More than twice,” he says, breaking the unnatural silence as he finally turns to face me.
“Y-yes?” The reply instinctively sputters out of me. Though, to be fair, I don’t know what he means at first. More than two times that he’s rendered me unconscious?
“I’ve never fucked the same woman more than twice.” His shadow flickers over the sheets as he advances on my side of the bed. When his face comes into view, he’s frowning. “Rarely more than once. Most void the contract by then. To them, the money isn’t worth the pain or inconvenience of staying with me.” He sits, and as the mattress dips beneath his weight, I register for the first time how heavy he actually is—like those blocks of stone he likes to beat the hell out of. “You’re bleeding.” Before I can react, his hand hooks beneath my thigh, flipping me onto my back.
Shit. That simple motion triggers an avalanche of pain. I gasp, but he doesn’t hesitate to take an ankle in each hand, baring every inch of me to him. My cheeks heat up at the thought of what I must look like.
As if reading my mind, he jerks his chin toward my splayed legs, his mouth slanted into one of those dangerous frowns. “Look.”
I crane my neck on command, gazing down at the dark curls between my legs and the slick wetness along my inner thighs. His seed. My blood. A deep, searing burn inside me warns that he was right.
Without taking his eyes off the mess he’s made, Maxim lets me go and rises to his full height. “Get up.”
I try to move—try being the operative word. My body is mush. I barely make it an inch before my brain forgets how to communicate with my muscles and I double over. My eyes stream, my nerves throb, but I’m not stupid enough to admit as much out loud.
“Come,” Maxim repeats. The warning in his tone is crystal fucking clear and every nerve in my body registers it: Get up.
I swing one of my legs out in a desperate bid for balance—and wind up on the floor. My knees smart, bitten by the carpet, but before I can move, a firm hand grabs my arm and hauls me upright. Off my feet, into his arms. Without a word, he carries me into the larger bathroom himself.
I shudder at the icy contrast as he sets me on the edge of the tub with my feet dangling inside it. Without saying a word, he runs the water, warm this time, and leaves me to grab a rag from the counter. As the water rises, he wets the cloth and swipes it across my shoulders and then down between my breasts. It’s such an intimate motion, but he doesn’t even ask for permission. Though why should he? I’m the bitch who signed the contract, after all; here, I’m just property, his to bathe as he sees fit.
His hands move slowly, carefully, brushing over every bruise, every single cut—taking stock of how much uninjured skin I have left. While he works, a smell floats up to tickle my nostrils: more of that rose-scented soap. It’s strange how much he seems to like that scent on me. Maybe it’s the combination: floral and blood.
Anticipation chokes me as he sets the rag aside and his fingers sink into my hair next. I wince, expecting him to grab and pull. Instead, he lathers. More rose scent scatters on the air as he guides my head back into the water in order to rinse, and then he works his fingers through the damp strands again. I don’t believe it until I feel the result slap against my shoulders a few minutes later—he braided it. Afterward, he drains the tub and dresses me in gray fabric. It’s too soft to be one of the day dresses and too light a shade to be one for evening. Another nightgown.
I’m in a daze as he leads me back into my room, sets me on the bed, and tucks me beneath the covers.
Lying there, I feel like one of Ainsley’s dolls again, rescued from my torment for a brief moment. The crayon and dirt have been scrubbed from my hair. My head is screwed on correctly again. But both my owner and I know the truth, even as he carefully puts me away: I’ll just get broken all over again tomorrow.
“Sleep, kotyonok,” Maxim tells me before leaving the room. His parting words drift back to me from the hall, both a promise and a threat. “You will need it.”
I wake up choking on a scream, but the image in my head isn’t one of Maxim, go figure: just an empty room. No razors. No pain.
Just silence.
Always.
“You’re in my suite,” a cold voice reminds me, jarring me back to reality.
My eyes fly open and I find Maxim in the doorway. Any fear lingering from the dream is instantly demolished by something stronger. Harsher.
Confronting his toys in the throes of a nightmare must be a normal occurrence for him, because he waits until I stop gasping for air before jerking his chin in a silent command. “Get up.”
I contort my sore, throbbing limbs so that I’m sitting upright by the time he reaches my side. He pushes the rest of the blankets back from me, hissing at the sight of the welts on my legs. His thumb grazes one, his eyes glowing brighter with every strangled cry I fight to swallow down. I’m starting to recognize his few, if signature, emotions: lust, rage, malice.
“Keep making those noises, kotyonok,” he says in a warning tone before I can hone in on which one he might be feeling now. “You will not…you will not make this quick.”
My pussy twinges as my eyes drift to the front of his pants. He’s straining already.
“Come.”
I limp after him into the adjacent bathroom and cling to the rim of the tub. This time, I’m allowed to wash myself while he watches, directing with his eyes as to which part of my body I should clean next. My arms. My stomach. Between my legs. There again. I can’t shake the feeling that he’s not just watching—he’s teaching. Making sure I’ll remember what he likes. How to scrub myself clean so that his scent always remains. For the next day, and the next, and the next.
When he seems satisfied, he takes the washcloth from me and sets it aside. My throat contracts instinctively as he unhooks his belt and lowers his pants. God, he’s steel already, jutting into the air. Before I can even mentally prepare myself, his fingers come to pry my jaw apart.
“Open.”
I hollow my cheeks around him and fight the urge to gag as he thrusts in. Once again, his sheer size catches me off guard. It doesn’t even seem possible that I can take him in all the way. So deep. Over and over.
With a grunt, he pulls out, sending drool down my chin. One of his hands captures mine and guides me to his shaft as I sputter, my eyes streaming. He’s rock hard and pulsing at the same damn time. My spit makes him slick and my grip moves easily as his fingers encircle my own, guiding just how hard I squeeze him with every stroke.
Once again, I’m learning more about him without trying. With this method, he likes it hard. He likes it slow. Within minutes, he’s pulsing against my closed fist, and only his grip keeps mine intact. Harder. Slower. Fast.
I don’t know what does it in the end—maybe the way I swallow hard as his stare reconnects with mine. The next second, his jaw clenches. His eyes flash. My only warning is a low groan before his cum spills onto my lap, dripping down between my spread thighs. One burning spurt. Another. Each lash feels like a blow from his belt. Violent. Painful. Addictive.
“Get dressed,” he tells me after he cleans himself off and returns to my bedroom. Once again, he picks every item for me to wear himself, handing me a white, lace pair of panties first. He doesn’t offer me the rag, and I’m not stupid enough to reach for it myself. Then again, in his eyes, I guess I’m clean.
“Put them on,” he prompts as if reading my mind.
I obey and pull the panties up, trapping part of his seed underneath. I don’t even question as he hands me a matching bra and then a simple wh
ite dress also made of flimsy lace. I just suffer his possession and push every other logical thought out but this. My shoes today are cream-colored heels. To complete the look, he unbraids my hair and arranges it into loose waves that drape my shoulders.
Finished, he beckons me down the hall and into the sculpture room, where he snatches a chisel and a hammer from the wall. I stand in the corner while he returns to the half-finished block of stone and channels his rage into something other than me—whatever still lurks within him since the other night. The edge of the blade gleams as he swipes it through the air. The hammer follows. It’s not long before he’s grunting with the effort, throwing his weight behind every single blow.
Wham!
Wham!
Wham!
The only time he stops is to enter the kitchen and prepare dinner while I watch: chicken, which he seasons before placing into the oven. Then he returns to the sculpture room. An hour later, the baking timer sounds just as the door to the suite opens from the outside.
“Who is it?” Maxim keeps a tight grip on the chisel as he storms to the doorway to meet the intruder. Lucius. The tight expression he wears chills me almost as much as the way Maxim stiffens at the sight of it does.
“It’s urgent,” he says.
“It can wait until after you explain,” Maxim counters.
Lucius squares his shoulders and faces him, sighing. “The east warehouse was torched. Everything lost. It appears that someone else in the syndicate felt the same way that Malkov did. The heads request a meeting with you. Now. And that’s not all.”
Maxim cocks his head, his eyes radiating fire. “Oh?”
“Anatoli is on his way back to the States,” Lucius says, frowning. “I tried to request a timeline, but I was blocked from every attempt at communication. However, I assume that he will want to meet with you the moment he arrives.”
“Will he now?” Maxim laughs: a broken, harsh sound that trickles out of him, softly at first. Then louder. Eventually, he throws his head back, bellowing out each chuckle. When the sound finally trails off, his teeth flash in a feral smile.
