I slumped on my back and stared at the ceiling. Waking with immediate regret and relief was a lousy and conflicted start to the day, but that was what I felt.
I’d caved and surrendered to him last night when he put me on the spot and asked if I was loyal to him, in the present, or if I was clinging to the loyalty I’d always fostered as a daughter of the Cartel.
He hadn’t tried to dominate me, though. Instead, he’d applied just enough pressure to get me out of my head long enough to answer him. To show him. To appease him and let him see that I could be flexible. Giving up my past was too cruel of a request. Staying stuck between two worlds wasn’t any better.
How do I move forward, though?
Sitting up and hugging my knees, I let out a deep breath and wished an answer would just come to me and smack me in the face.
You’re not giving up who you were. Who youare.
If anything, showing him how loyal and faithful I could be—which at the time, seemed like a chance to go down on him—was nothing more than a strategy. A step in convincing him I wasn’t here with the same chip on my shoulder as I had when I arrived. Giving in and being able to pivot with him was a method of ensuring peace in our marriage.
And that was something I had witnessed in my childhood. My mother often explained that sometimes, arguments with my father were only discussions and differences of opinions. She also pointed out that occasionally, it became a matter of picking the hills she wanted to die on. To choose her priorities and disagreements with him wisely.
And that’s what we did. Maksim and I were not fighting.
He’d just been determined to pull me out of this funky mood that I’d been stuck in.
We vented out our mutual desire. Nothing more. It wasn’t as though he was “fixing” me through orgasms. He wasn’t transforming me into a new person when he ate me out and later pounded into me until I came so hard that I saw sunbursts behind my closed lids.
Nothing more.
I got up to get dressed for a visit to the gym. As soon as I stood, I winced at the soreness between my legs.
Nothing more than venting physical desire.
With force.
And so much need.
I shook my head, wishing he wouldn’t linger in my mind like this. But as I got dressed, and then during my workout, I found it impossible not to feel the remnants of his touch. Impossible not to recall the vivid details of him lapping up my juices or the growly sounds he made when he watched his dick slide into my pussy.
Even now, as I cooled down from my jog on the treadmill, arousal returned. The telltale throb of blood rushing south. The precise ache of my nipples going hard.
Merely from thinking about him.
He owned me, all right. My body was proof of it. Wanting him like this—all from the memories of last night—showed how horribly my body betrayed me and tricked me into wanting him again.
And again.
More and more.
I left the gym irritated with the possibility that I’dneverfeel like I’d gotten enough of Maksim Volkov.
Since there weren’t any meetings for me to attend, no smuggling run plans for me to review, and Maksim was out with Nikolai and Alexei to check on some businesses on the Strip, I figured today would be the most convenient day to take Elena up on her offer to get lunch together.
She’d invited me a couple of weeks ago, but I’d put it off until now. It wasn’t that I didn’t like her. I didn’t know her and I was dragging my feet to get more acquainted with her.
Most of the women I’d known at the Cartel compound were girlfriends and wives of the Cartel men who lived nearest the villa. All the upper-ranking men and soldiers and runners.
None of those women were truly friends, though, and I had never invested much time in getting to know them, either. When would I have had the downtime to play houseguest and have girl time when I was so busy cleaning up my brother’s messes and being his unofficial and underappreciated second-in-command?
I drove to the main mansion where Adrik and Elena called home. Dmitri did, too, but I wasn’t going to interfere with the old boss. Maksim explained that his father was dying. The story of the Volkov brothers and cousins learning about Dmitri’s cancer was a tragic one, but I couldn’t blame him for wanting to spare them the pain of knowing he was dying.
It was far better for it to be over quickly, wasn’t it?
To avoid the dragged-out agony of saying goodbye and feeling hopeless to stop fate?
