“None of your business.” I’m beyond humiliated now.
“Maybe not.” Alik returns his attention to me. He’s still struggling to restrain himself, the heat in his eyes even moreintense than before. But there’s an openness in his expression that makes my heart squeeze in a way that has nothing to do with how horny I am. “But anything that happens between us is.”
He draws in a ragged breath, raw desire straining his expression. “I shouldn’t want you, Sera.Can'twant you. This thing between us, whatever the hell it is, is fucking with my head. Fucking with everything I need to be doing but can’t because all I can think about is how gorgeous you looked touching yourself.Fuck, that little performance of yours… Do you have any idea how much I wanted it to be my fingers between your thighs? How much I wanted to pull those needy nipples into my mouth and suck on them until you screamed? Holy shit. Watching you touch yourself like that, torment me like that—I’ve never been so hard in my life, and I’d just finished jacking off to fantasies of you.”
Alik’s face is millimeters from mine. This close together, there’s no way he can’t see into my soul. No way he can miss how his confession affects me.
“But,” he says, “no matter how much I want you,moya voitelnitsa, I can’t let myself have you.”
But… “Why?” I hate how plaintive I sound, how desperate.
“Because.” His voice licks across my skin. “Once I have you, once I take you, I won’t be able to give you back. You are a warrior, Sera, a woman who can bring me to my knees, and neither of us can afford for me to be distracted. The men I came to Chicago to find, to kill?—”
“My uncle?”
“Yes, him. But there are others, too. Men who are still out there, who are still a threat to you. Who have earned a brutal death for what they want to do to you. For what they already did to my…” He shakes his head, leaving the sentence unfinished. “I can’t let them get away, Sera. I won’t. I refuse to let anything distract me from hunting them down. Not even you.”
His rejection is a slap in the face, and I hate that it makes me want to cry. Hate that I can’t stop myself from saying, “But then what am I supposed to do?”
“What do you mean?”
I can’t believe I have to say this. Can’t believe I’m even considering saying this, but if I don’t, I think I’m going to scream. “I need...to…umm.”Shit!“I can’t, you know, umm, without…”
“Tell me.” Alik is strung tight, sexual energy pouring off him in waves, but his voice—that goddamn voice of his sneaks into all my broken places and promises it’s going to be okay.
I close my eyes, pray that it is. “I need to come.”
A statement that’s met with dead silence.
I bite my bottom lip, try again. “Come. Like, orgasm. I need to, you know…do that.”
Alik must’ve been holding his breath because it coasts across my face in a rush. “Jesus Fucking Christ, Sera. Are you trying to kill me?”
“No, no.” I peek at him through cracked eyelids, cheeks on fire. “What I’m trying to say…oh, God.” I cover my face with my hands. I can’t do this. “Never mind. Forget it. It doesn’t matter.”
I duck, about to dive under one of Alik’s arms when he slips a finger under my chin. One touch and I’m riveted in place. “Just tell me,moya voitelnitsa. Whatever it is, you can tell me.”
“I need to come but I can’t.” I stare at his shoulder, my desperation and embarrassment spewing out at a rapid rate. “I was close, really close when we were kissing, and again when I was doing that thing for the cameras after I sawyoudoing that thing you did, um, with yourself…but then when I tried to finish in my room, I couldn’t, and I’m so frustrated, and I haven’t been horny in so long and now I am, but nothing is working, and I can’t get anywhere close except when I’m with you and now, after what you just said about wanting me, wanting to touch me, I think I could be really close again, but if you leave I might not be able to…um, you know…”
We stare at each other, each second stretching longer and longer. I swear Alik’s voice is an octave lower when he finally says, “You know—what?”
God, he’s going to make me say it.
Fine. He’s right. I am a virgin. My experience with sex and orgasms is limited to a few awkward gropes with high school crushes and what I used to be able to do with my own hand. I don’t have the decades of experience he probably does. I don’t have a stockpile of memories to tap into. I don’t even have a favorite toy to play with. But I do have fight and an itch that needs to be scratched very, very badly. I’m not letting potentially fatal levels of humiliation come between me and what I want.
Straightening my spine, I lock eyes with the man practically on top of me and say, “I need you to help me come.”
17
SERA
Alik groans, the erotic sound dragged from the depths of his chest. I love that sound. Want to make him do it again.
Time stops as he looks at me. The room collapses into our tiny sphere of water, and bodies, and humid air. His hands are back on the pool’s ledge. I’m caged in by a body radiating a predatory level of intent. “And how,moya voitelnitsa, can I help you come?”
I want to hide my face again but don’t. “I don’t know.”
Alik’s attention drops to my mouth. He licks his lips. “How about…” He touches my arm where it’s lifeless in the pool, holding it only long enough to place my own fingers on my lips before returning his hands to the ledge. “I dream about that mouth of yours,” he says. “How it tasted when I kissed you.”
