18
SERGEI
Ihad thought that when Leo returned, I would handle it with patience and gentleness. After all, I knew the situation he was in. Sleeping with me might have been in my favor, but a man like Leo would have carried extreme guilt over being intimate with one of the men who helped cover up his husband’s death.
For that reason, when I received the notification from the surveillance camera that he had entered the house, I’d dropped the deliveries I was handling at the club, put Hazel in charge, and hightailed it out of there. During the drive, I’d decided to approach the situation delicately, something I wasn’t used to, but Leo wasn’t from my world. I had to meet him in his.
However, the moment he walked out of the bathroom, and I saw he was fine physically, rationality fled. A myriad of emotions rolled through me from relief, to anger, then to fear, before reverting to anger, although born out of fear. If hecould so easily leave and return, acting like nothing was out of the ordinary, what was to stop him from doing so again?
Seconds passed, and Leo didn’t respond to me. The silence stretched between us, thick and suffocating, and for a moment I thought I’d pushed too far. That I shouldn’t have shown him the cigarette burns on my body. To him, it looked horrifying. He probably thought I was psychotic, but I’d been enduring self-inflicted pain since my childhood. Most times the pain didn’t even register anymore.
He didn’t say anything for a long time until he sighed and nodded toward the bed. “Sit down.”
I didn’t move. Not because I didn’t want to, but because I didn’t understand what he wanted from me anymore. One second he was touching me like I mattered, the next he was slipping right through my fingers like I’d imagined it all.
“Sergei.” His voice dropped, edged with a firm and commanding tone that went straight down my spine. “Sit. And take off your pants.”
My body reacted before my pride could catch up.
I sat. Fast. Like a damn dog obeying its master.
Heat crawled up the back of my neck as I reached for my joggers, pushing them down my legs. My pulse picked up, anticipation settling low in my gut, coiling tight. He didn’t say anything else, just turned and walked back into the bathroom. I could hear him rummaging through the cabinets. Was he looking for lube?
I’d take him with just spit if that was what it came down to. It’d been two weeks since I’d felt him inside me.
I hooked my thumbs into my underwear and pushed those down too, kicking everything aside as I leaned back slightly, waiting for him to come back and finish what he’d started. I wanted him on top this time, flat on my back, so I could see his face when he was carving himself out inside of me.
The bathroom door opened, and I lifted my head?—
Leo stopped dead in his tracks. His gaze dropped to my naked frame, traveling from my face and down. I knew I had an excellent form. I saw the way some of the men at the gym where I had my membership eyed me up and down, and not necessarily with lust either. As a man in security, I took my job of being fit seriously so I could carry out my responsibilities better. And thank fuck I’d honed my body for Maxim’s protection because Leo could now enjoy it.
Color rose high in his cheeks when his eyes went to my semi, and my cock twitched. He snapped his gaze right back up to my face like he didn’t know where to look.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
I frowned slightly, confused. “You told me to take off my pants.”
His mouth opened, then closed, and he held up a small tube in his hand. “So I can put ointment on your wounds.”
Oh.
“Fuck,” I muttered, grabbing the nearest pillow and dragging it over my lap to cover myself. “You could’ve specified.”
He didn’t dignify that with a response because he actually had. I’d just heard what I wanted to because I craved his touch. Two weeks had passed, and I lived with every detail of what happened in that bathroom the day he left and the night before in his bed.
Leo walked toward me, calm, controlled, as if my nakedness wasn’t affecting him at all. Damn him. Why was he so cold to me one second and warm the next? He was wearing just a towel, and it took everything in me not to unravel it so I could see that specific part of him I wanted to feel inside of me.
“Let me see,” he said.
I shifted slightly, moving the pillow aside for him to inspect the fresh wound I’d just burned into my thigh. Ihadn’t really been thinking when I did it, but at least he’d shown some reaction to me then. The doctor in him didn’t want me to hurt, even if he hated me.
He stepped closer, close enough that I could feel the heat of him again, and for a second I almost forgot why we were here. My erection grew behind the pillow.
“Kiss me first,” I said, glancing up at him.
His eyes flicked to mine, unimpressed. “Behave.”
I huffed softly under my breath, the urge to push him stronger than it should’ve been. I hated how easily he shut me down, and how much I still wanted to obey him anyway.
