“But unfortunately, we can’t stay like this all night. I don’t want you to get hurt.” His voice was firm.
Instead of fighting him on it, I just sighed as he expertly undid the ropes on my wrists and the cuffs around the spreader bar. After he gently pulled out the butt plug, he stared down at me for a beat, taking me in.
With a sigh, he pulled out of my drenched insides. White liquid spilled from my opening onto the sheets.
A reluctant sound exited my mouth at the loss of him. I clenched around the empty space, instantly missing the way he’d filled me.
A chill fell over me when he rolled off me. I missed more than just the physical warmth that radiated off him. The chills of the day re-surrounded me, threatening to overwhelm me with their chains of sorrow and anxiety.
“Will you hold me?” I asked quietly, hating the slight quaver in my voice.
“Kotenok,” he sighed, pulling me into his chest. “If you asked me to, I think I’d slit my own mother’s throat.”
I blinked and blurted out, “That’s kind of fucked up.”
Dmitri shrugged underneath me. “I’m a fucked up person.”
There was no apology in his tone, just unrepentant fact.
It reminded me of the gleam in his eyes as he’d tortured the man who’d attacked me in the alley. The sadism etched on his face when he’d murdered countless men.
And I realized…
I didn’t care.
Yeah, he was fucked up, but how could you not become that way living in our world? We had to kill to survive. Look into terrified faces, and snap their necks anyway.
No, there was no escaping our world without a few scars. Despite him being quite possibly the most terrifying person in the underworld, he didn’t scare me.
He was the only person I’d ever felt truly safe with.
“I’m kind of fucked up, too,” I whispered.
“Yeah,” he agreed with a shrug.
Even as I laughed at his brutal honesty something squeezed tight in my chest. “Do you wish you were with someone easier?”
As soon as the words left my mouth, I immediately regretted them. They spread across the room like lead, the conversation taking on an edge that I hated. With one word, Dmitri could shatter me harder than my own family ever had.
Dmitri was silent for a minute, brushing his hand through my hair.
“I remember the first time I noticed you. The moment those pretty blue eyes pleaded with me to kill you instead of Kiril, I knew you were going to be a problem.”
Rapid heartbeats thudded in my chest.
“Maybe it would’ve been easier, if I’d chosen someone else....” he mused while stroking my hair.
My stomach dropped like it was a chained up man in the East River with rocks attached to his feet.
“Ever since that night I killed your brother, your tear-filled eyes have haunted my dreams,” he said. “I tried to ignore you, but whenever you’d walk into a room, I’d search you out before I’d even realized it. Maybe I didn’t pursue you for so long, because I knew I wouldn’t want to let you go once I caught you.”
Dmitri laughed sharply, and I squirmed in his arms.
“But now I feel far more than I ever could’ve imagined. If you run from me, I’ll find you and fuck you until you remember who you belong to. If someone else makes you cry, I’ll stab their eyes out and blot out every inch of their existence from this world. And when you smile at me… I’m tempted to upend the world just so I can see a hint of it again.
“So yes, it would’ve been easier if I’d chosen someone else, because deep down I know no one else could make me feel even a tenth of that.”
Before I could process any of it, his lips were on mine and he was sealing the promise of those words with his tongue. Dominating the caverns of my mouth, gripping onto my hips hard enough to leave bruises. I groaned against him, savoring the way he marked me as his own.
