How?How can I feel this—this sick, dark attraction—in his sitting room while my son is God knows where? My son is in acar, or a basement, or a cage, and I am standing here vibrating under the touch of the man who started it all.
Focus on Theo,I tell myself, digging my nails into my palms until the pain clears the fog for a second.Use him. Don’t let him see you break.
“Razvan,” I breathe, and even my voice sounds like it’s betraying me. “Please.”
A low, deep throb starts up between my legs, an insistent pulse that makes my inner muscles clench around nothing.
I’m wearing jeans and the rough denim is suddenly an unbearable friction against my swollen lips. I feel them, puffy and hot, and I know if I were to look, my panties would be soaked through.
The self-loathing of it is enormous and does absolutely nothing to fix the problem. My nipples are hard, tight little points that rub against the soft cotton of my bra with every shallow breath I take. They feel heavy, too. A familiar, deep fullness begins to radiate from the center of my breasts, a telltale sign I’ve come to dread and, in secret moments, crave.
His hand moves. Down from my throat, slow and deliberate, tracing my collarbone. His fingers are calloused, rough against my skin, and the contrast is electric. They skim the top of my shoulder and then lower, barely grazing the side of my breast through my thin shirt, and I arch forward without permission.
My body just does it, closes the distance toward his hand like it has a separate agenda entirely, and a soft, choked sound leaves me that I swallow half of but not the other half. The sound is pure need. My tits are so sensitive. The casual brush of his knuckles sends a shockwave of sensation straight to my core,and I feel a fresh gush of wetness seep out, coating my inner thighs.
He growls. Low and close to my ear, his mouth almost touching it. “Five years,” he says, and his voice has dropped into something rough that I feel in my spine, a vibration that travels straight to my clit. “And you still do that.”
Stop.I turn my face away from his mouth.Stop stop stop, this is not why you are here.
I put both hands on his chest and push.
He steps back. Easily, like he was already deciding to, and I hate that too, hate that he goes when he wants to go and not because I moved him.
I drag a breath in and press the back of my wrist against my mouth and make myself focus.
Theo. My son. That’s why I’m here. That’s the only thing.
“I will do anything,” I say, and my voice only shakes slightly. “Whatever you want. Whatever it costs. If you help me get him back, I will do anything you ask.” I make myself look at him directly. “Anything.”
Something moves in his expression. He looks at me for a long moment. “When did you have a son?”
I go rigid. “That’s not relevant.”
“It is if you want my help.”
“His age is not relevant to?—”
“When.” His voice doesn’t rise. Doesn’t have to.
“Four years ago,” I say, because fighting him on this is time I don’t have. “He’s four. He’ll be five next month and he is somewhere with men who took him from school and I need?—”
“Where is his father?”
The question hits me in the chest and I look away, at the window, at the floor, anywhere that isn’t his face right now. “There is no father,” I say. “He’s not in the picture.”
The room goes very quiet.
I make the mistake of looking back at him.
His eyes have gone pitch black.
He moves toward me again, slower this time, a deliberate, agonizing crawl. He doesn’t touch me, just leans in until his mouth is inches from my ear. I am pinned flat against the cool wall, my heart hammering so hard I’m surprised it hasn’t bruised my ribs.
His breath is warm, stirring the fine hairs on my neck. The musky scent of him floods my senses. My mouth actually waters. I have the absurd, sickeningly traitorous urge to turn my head just an inch and lick the sharp, clean line of his jaw.
“There’s no father,” he repeats, very quietly. Something in his voice that isn’t quite a question and isn’t quite satisfaction but lives somewhere between them. His breath fans my skin. “That’s better for everyone,zayka. Because if there was a father, I would kill the bastard myself.”
A fresh, hot pulse of pure unadulterated lust punches through my belly. It’s violent. It’s shameful. My body clenches, empty and desperate, and I am so wet I can feel the slickness spreading, a warm, shameful secret.
