"It’s same thing."
"No. It's not."
"Yes." I loom over her, making her tilt her head back to maintain eye contact. "It is. You belong to me. Your safety. Your comfort. Your freedom. All of it is mine to give or take away. And that includes who gets to talk to you. Who gets to make you smile. Who gets to touch you."
It’s her turn to clench her jaw and glare up at me. That glimpse of fire in her makes me want to pick her up and set her on my desk, do all the things to her that we didn’t do in the library.
But I hold myself back, from that, at least. I can’t let that happen again. Just that touch, that taste, was enough to let me know I could get addicted to her. That there’s something about this infuriatingly sunshiny woman who was never meant to be here that could undo me entirely.
Too much is threatening to unravel around me for me to add anything else.
"That's not fair,” she whispers.
"I don't care about fair."
"This is crazy.” Her voice is so low I barely hear her. “You’re crazy. You can't just claim me like I'm property."
I can’t touch her. If I do, I won’t stop. “For now, you are,ptitsa. You are my property. So go back to your room, as I told you.Now.”
There’s a threat in my voice that I think she recognizes. One that says what will happen next if one of us doesn’t back down. A part of me wants her to fight back, so I can justify what I’ll do next… but instead her shoulders slump again, and she takes a step back, then another.
“Okay,” she whispers, and I feel a flood of disappointment at the loss of her so close to me. I’m hard, I realize, achingly so. Throbbing for her, the pressure in my groin painful, it’s so intense.
She goes to the door, opens it, and leaves. Just like that. I stand there, aching, staring at the closed door as I fight the urge to follow her.
She’s fucked me up. Turned me inside out. And I need to put this right before something worse happens.
I need to quell whatever her father is doing with Volkov and send her home.
My phone buzzes again. Viktor.
Viktor:Meeting in ten minutes. Kozlov situation is escalating. We need to discuss response.
Right.The meeting. The war. The actual problems that require my attention.
I run a hand through my hair and try to compose myself into something resembling the cold, calculatingpakhanmy men expect. It doesn't work as well as I hoped.
I can still taste her. I can still feel the ghost of her hands on my chest. I can still feel the way she clenched around my fingers as she came.
Fuck.I want to feel that on my cock.
I head to the meeting room. My men are already there, Viktor at the right-hand seat next to mine. They all stand when I enter and show respect, but I can see the questions and concerns in their eyes. The doubt.
"Sit," I say.
They do. Viktor spreads intelligence reports across the table. Photos of Volkov's men. Maps of territory, evidence of encroachment. "They hit two of our shipments yesterday," Viktor says. "Small stuff. They’re testing our response time. Seeing how we react."
"And how did we react?" I ask.
"We didn't. Per your orders to wait."
"The men are getting restless," Yuri says carefully. Across from him, I see Alexei sitting, thin-lipped but silent. His hand is bandaged where I put the car key through it last week. "They want to know when we're going to respond. When we're going to show strength."
"We show strength by choosing our moment instead of letting them choose it for us."
"With respect,pakhan," Mikhail says, "waiting looks like weakness. Especially when—" He stops and glances at the others.
"When what?" I ask quietly.
