It would feel so good. He would make me feel good. He told me as much, back in the warehouse. A spoiled, pampered pet, given obscene pleasure in exchange for my willing servitude.
Maybe he's right. Maybe this is what I've always wanted. Maybe all my resistance, all my fighting, all my attempts to maintain my independence—maybe it was all just a defense against accepting what I really am.
Ilya carries me to the guest room when we get back to the penthouse, setting me on the edge of the sink as he starts to draw me a bath. I’m taken back to that night when he brought me here from the art gallery, and I watch as he moves fluidly through theroom, adding oils to the bath before he returns to me, standing between my legs.
“You were perfect,” he murmurs, brushing my hair away from my face as he kisses my forehead, my nose, my mouth. “My flawless diamond.”
He starts to undress me, and I don’t resist. The bath is calling to me like a siren, and I watch as it fills, realizing belatedly a moment later that, once Ilya has stripped me bare, he’s taking off his own clothes as well.
He lifts me from the counter and steps into the bath, bringing us both down into the hot, silky water, with my back pressed to his chest.
“I can be gentle,” he murmurs into my ear as he reaches for a cloth, soaping it and beginning to drag it over my breasts, my stomach, down to the tender flesh between my thighs as he cleans away the cum he left there. “I can take care of you in more ways than one, Mara. I can give youeverything.”
Everything except yourself,I think dimly as his hands move over me in a somnolent rhythm, lulling me into complacence in his arms. I can feel his cock stiffening against my back, but he makes no move to fuck me again, only washes me more tenderly than I’ve ever been touched before.
“You make me want to be gentle,” he breathes as his arm wraps around me. “You make me want to care for you,kotenok. To treat you like the precious jewel you are.”
I close my eyes, trying to grapple with how this all makes me feel. Even now, I can feel myself starting to grow aroused again, wishing he would pick me up and impale me on the thick length I feel pressed against my spine. And yet… I’m still terrified of him.
He’s a criminal—a powerful one. He’s violent and brutal. He’s a bloody man, a man who will kill others at a thought, a man who thinks holding a gun to my head is the way to extract truth from me.
And I still want him.
The admission makes me feel ashamed, because Ilya Sorokov is not the kind of man I should want. He's not the kind of man anyone should want.
He's a monster.
He's gotten me into this situation—made me a target, put me in danger, destroyed my life—and he feels no shame about it. None. Because it's gotten him everything he wants.
And I've been lying to myself, pretending that the gifts made me uncomfortable, that the attention was unwanted, that I didn't feel a dark thrill every time I found something new he'd left for me.
But the truth is that I've been drawn to this from the beginning. Drawn to him, to the darkness he represents, to the promise of being consumed by something bigger and more powerful than myself. The promise of being wanted so completely that it tips over the edge into obsession.
It's toxic. I know it's toxic. But it's also intoxicating.
“How are you feeling?” Ilya asks softly, , his voice neutral, and I can feel myself tense.
"Like I should hate you." The words come out before I can stop them.
"But you don't." His hand splays over my taut stomach, fingers pressed against my abdomen.
I shake my head, my eyes suddenly burning again. “No. I don’t. And I hate myself for it.”
"Don't." He turns to face me, and the intensity in his gaze makes my breath catch. "Don't hate yourself for wanting what you want. For being who you are."
"And who am I?" My voice sounds bitter. "Someone who gets turned on by being held at gunpoint? Someone who comes harder than she ever has while being claimed by a man who's destroyed her life?"
Ilya’s jaw tightens. “You’re a woman who craves more than what society tells you that you should. Who wants darkness and the arousal that comes with fear.” His hand cups my cheek. “Do you think I’ve never felt it, Mara?” He leans forward, leaning me back in the tub as he switches our positions, his cock suddenly pressed to my stomach as he looks down at me. “The first time I was held at gunpoint, I was terrified. But the rush…fuck, the rush turned me on. The knowledge I was walking the line between life and death. And when I turned it around on him, when it was my gun against his head, I was harder than I’ve ever been in my fucking life.”
My lips part, and he smiles, that dark, feral grin as he reaches down, angling his cock so he can slip into me. He doesn’t thrust, just holds himself inside of me, filling me with the perfect stretch of his cock. “I couldn’t even wait until I was back in the car to come,” he growls against my ear. “I opened my jeans and jerked off right there, one room away from the man I killed after he threatened my life. Fear is an aphrodisiac, Mara, and so is violence.”
His hand comes up to my throat, not squeezing, just holding it there. “Are you afraid of me, Mara?” he asks, his voice a rough whisper, and I nod.
“Are you aroused right now?”
I nod again, breathlessly, as I feel myself tighten around him.
“Could you come for me right now?”
