I wasn't a virgin, but I hadn't taken a lover in years. It never really seemed worth the hassle of pretending to be good enough, hoping my mother would approve, and praying they didn't see me as the same failure she did.
It was easier to accept being unlovable when there was no one there to love you.
"Answer me, Eleanor," he warned, and I flinched away from him.
"Anna," I corrected. Hearing the name Eleanor slip through his lips felt wrong. I may not have wanted to be in this room, and I may not have chosen this. But I still didn't want him to call me by that name.
If I were forced to be here, he could call me by the name I chose.
"What?"
"My name is Anna. Only my mother calls me Eleanor."
He hooked his knuckle under my chin and lifted it until I was looking into his eyes. "Has another man ever touched you, Anna?"
"I am not a virgin." I answered in the only way that felt truthful.
He looked at me for another moment, considering my answer, not allowing me to pull away.
"From this moment on, no one else will touch you. No one else will get to look at your body. You are mine."
"I am no—" He cut off my words with a kiss, devouring any objections I may have had.
With one quick movement, he snapped the clasp of my bra and pulled it from my body. His mouth was still on mine, his lips persistent, his tongue demanding until I opened to him.
Darius's kiss was...consuming, and I let it take me.
I didn't have the capacity to unpack what was happening, or what had happened. I couldn't even handle the way he looked at me and saw everything I had tried so desperately to hide.
So, I let my body take over. As my mind screamed in horror at what I was allowing to happen, my body reveled in it.
"Such a lovely littlesoloveyka," he murmured, and then said something else in Russian. His words were harsh, guttural, but they heated my blood all the same. "Are you going to behave for me?"
I didn't trust my voice, so I just nodded and looked away. Part of me hoped he would take it as disgust rather than a sad attempt to hide the heat just under the surface.
His thumb traced my cheek slowly, then traveled down my neck?—
The necklace.
The bomb pressed against my throat, cold and heavy, humming faintly. My breath caught, panic clawing up from my chest and across my collarbones.
Every place he touched flooded with electricity, but my pulse hammered against the metal at my throat, reminding me that he held my life in his hands. That one wrong move, one press of a button, and?—
When he palmed my breast, I couldn't breathe. Fire shot from his hand straight through to my core. No one had ever had that kind of effect on me.
"These tits are so pretty, and it seems they are just as sensitive," he breathed. "Tell me, do you like the way I touch you?"
I pinched my lips shut, refusing to answer.
A low chuckle came from somewhere deep in his chest, then he pinched my nipple hard enough that I cried out and my knees went weak. "I asked you a question."
"Yes," I said, the word barely audible.
"Yes…what?" he taunted.
"I like the way you touch me." My stomach rolled as I admitted something so shameful.
How could I like this? How could I want more?
