“Good.” He tilts his head to the side and his eyes ignite a blaze between my thighs. "How are you feeling?"
He stares at my mouth as if fixated by my lips. Lips I bite nervously in return. "I'm fine." A brow lifts wickedly, and I'm already wet. "I'm okay."
"Just okay? Let's see if we can fix that. " His mouth slams onto mine. It's better than I remember. So much better. Richer. Darker. Because it's laced with the anticipation of what comes next. Each swipe tugs at a tendril from last night. The trace of his fingers on my spine, the brush of his hair between my thighs, the way his mouth consumed my breast. Each ribbon of memory is braided into his kiss. Making it everything.
He lifts my shirt over my head. His bag-of-everything didn't contain a bra. An omission that seems purposeful as he licks his way down to my chest. I've always had a love hate relationship with my breasts. They blossomed too big, too soon. The cringe ofbeing dragged from store to store searching for the perfect fit for my young frame, only to have to do it again a few months later.
But now as he cups them,worships them, I arch into his mouth feeding him. He takes my hands and shapes them into a table to serve him properly. Guiding me to squeeze them together so he can feast on both at once. Damn, it feels good. I moan. My thighs clench to hold back an orgasm.I can't come like this, can I?
He alternate between nipples, switching between blowing, tugging, pinching. And yes. Shit. Yes, I can come like this. Right here in the middle of his hallway, with him pulling back to watch an embarrassing climax I can't hide and no clench can hold back.
His eyes are wild as he kneels before me. Stripping my pants off to capture my orgasm with his tongue, and using his fingers to coax more of my tremors.He works me one handed while he frantically strips his clothes off and I do my best to hold on to my sanity and help. Then he's inside, breaking through a gate he opened last night. Wrapping my ankle around his waist to anchor me as he pummels me against the wall. Something crashes. We don't stop. Can't stop. The train has flown wildly from the tracks and all we can do is hold on as we plummet.
I'm still trying to remember breathing when he carries me to the bathroom and sets me on the counter. Runs a bath I didn’t ask for. His hands are rough but his touch careful, and when the tub is full, he guides me in. The water is perfect. He kneels beside the porcelain, and washes my hair. His eyes brand mine. No blinking. Just him drinking my reactions.
It is the most intimate thing he’s done yet.
His fingers scrub slow circles against my scalp, gentler than I thought those hands capable of. He rinses with a cupped palm, water sliding down my neck in streams. He doesn’t speak. He watches the suds run through my curls. He pulls them straightthen watches fascinated as they spring back into their natural coils.
“You do good work,” I whisper.
His mouth twitches. “Be quiet, mysh.”
But he doesn’t stop. He conditions. He combs through the tangles with his fingers. He towels me dry afterward, wrapping me in its softness, and when he carries me to bed—still damp, still dizzy—I expect him to take me. To claim.
Instead, he tucks me beneath the sheets, climbs in behind me, and pulls my back against his chest. His arm bands around my waist. Possessive. Inescapable.
“Sleep,” he commands.
I do
My life has a new normal, if normal includes waking up in a Bratva enforcers’s bed to the sound of him ordering my breakfast in rapid Russian. Normal, if it means him pausing mid-phone call when I enter a room. He dominates the space without trying. He commands, and I find myself obeying—not out of fear, but out of a terrifying willingness to let him steer, guide. Let him teach. I'm learning more than I could have ever imagined about how to please a man—not just any man,him. But also how to please myself, as he never comes without me.
He teaches me to play chess. His rules. No mercy.
“You’re terrible at this,” he says, but there’s pride in it when I take his knight.
“You’re not letting me win.”
“Never.” He captures my queen. “If I let you win, you won’t learn.”
I stick my tongue out at him. He leans over, catches it between his teeth, kisses me until the board is forgotten, and he takes me on the couch. Laying my back on the pillow and placing myankles on his shoulders as he pumps into me, until we're both shouting obscenities.
Later he resets the pieces and makes me finish the game.
He wins. Of course.
I fall asleep at night with his heartbeat under my ear, his hand splayed possessively over my hip. I could get used to this. I could get used to the way he hoards me and feeds me and guards me from windows and delivery drivers and the world. The thought should terrify me.
It doesn’t.
***
Morning. He’s already up, already dressed—suit jacket on, the professional armor back in place. I pad out of the bedroom in one of his shirts, expecting coffee, expecting his eyes to darken with that look he gets when my bare legs are visible. Instead, he’s standing at the window with the phone at his ear.
His face changes while I’m still in the doorway. It closes off like a steel gate slamming shut. His shoulders square. His jaw sets. Eyes that had been open for two days—tentatively, incrementally, like a flower forcing through concrete—quietly, irrevocably shuts.
He ends the call.
