I sighed and knew it was too late for me to try. She’d burrowed under my skin and crawled into my heart. I wanted her to cave and bend tomywill. I was desperate for her to be the first woman in my life to want me and to choose me, even though I acknowledged that she’d need to forfeit who she was before we’d met.
24
CLAIRE
Adeep, stabbing ache in my shoulder blade jarred me from sleep. Wincing as I came to, I tried to lift myself off the floor. I’d passed out after Mikhail came in me, his dick twitching as he filled me with his cum. That was twice now that he’d left me unconscious, fucking me until I passed out.
“Ow…” I whispered it in a low groan as I turned my head to see if he was gone.
The bedroom was empty, as I suspected it would be.
“Of course he isn’t here,” I muttered to myself before hissing again at the pain.
Falling asleep on the flat floor wasn’t the most comfortable position. Lying with my arms up, the way they’d fallen after I collapsed like a filthy, wanton whore on my hands and knees for that bossy criminal, wasn’t an ideal way to relax.
I hadn’t intended to pass out, though. I hadn’t intended to cave to him and this stupid desire he stoked in me, either.
“Of course, he’s not here,” I muttered again, pissed at myself at the fact that I had been betrayed again.
Not by him. Nope. Mikhail Orlov was nothing if not consistent. When he told me that he wouldn’t change, that he wouldn’t consider another way to rule as this leader he was, he meant it.
When he told me that I wanted him, calling me out on my lies, he meant it.
Blushing in shame and standing stiffly from how hard he’d taken me, I loathed myself for being so weak to want him at all.
I didn’t want to dissect and decipher what the hell was wrong with me anymore. I lusted for him alone. It was foolhardy to act like he didn’t turn me on like a forbidden fruit I shouldn’t crave.
I didn’t want to own up to how quickly my body would betray me sexually like that, compromising and submitting to his demands when I was well aware of how good he’d make me feel.
“Of course,” I muttered as I limped to the bathroom to shower. It wouldn’t improve the rug burn on my knees, but I wanted to wash away the evidence that I’d caved to him again.
“Of course I did.” Talking to myself didn’t help me to feel any better, but I couldn’t stand the silence as I turned on the water and showered. “Of course, I caved.”
He was too sexy, too tempting, too irresistible. He was too dangerously skilled, a master at making me explode in euphoria.
But it wouldn’t happen again. Weakening under his intense looks and sinister kisses like that would end now.
Because he doesn’t care. He doesn’t love me.
If he couldn’t even imagine changing for me, if he wasn’t at all open to adjusting how his life was for me, all for the sake of not setting me up to be a target for his enemies, then that was all the answer I needed.
He wanted me here as an asset. A resource. A tool. A thing.
A sex toy.
I sniffled at the ache in my heart.
He didn’t want to fight for me out of love. He wasn’t intent on keeping me here and possessing me because he imagined a future of cherishing me. Marrying me. Starting a family with me.
Those dreams had been lying dormant in me for so long while I focused on studying and my career. At twenty-eight, though, I wanted to find the conditions to shift that balance and go for the love and family I’d always imagined having.
With him?
Yeah, right.
Here, among all the violence?
No way.
