Page 20 of Bought By Sin

It didn’t matter what I asked about her past. She remained closed-lipped and elusive. Her refusal to open up to me was frustrating, but I wouldn’t quit.

For a week, each day that I supervised her in the training assessments, I wondered what would make her crack. Every night that I escorted her back to the safehouse, I imagined what it would take to fully know her.

At the end of the first week of owning this magnificent and uncommunicative badass, my brother remarked on how stuck I seemed to be on her.

“You’re obsessed,” he commented at the training field as she ran laps as a warmup for yet another test of her endurance. Most of those things were designed to break weaker souls, but not her.

“Obsessed with what?” I asked, slow to tear my gaze off her ass as she ran by.

“With what?” He shot me a side-eye.

“I’m obsessed with figuring out what to do with her,” I told him.

He scoffed. “Sure, you are.”

I shrugged, leaning my forearms on the railing that bordered the track.

“You’re obsessed about training your new ‘acquisition’ purely for the sake of what contribution she can make to the family. Is that what you want me to believe?”

I nodded. She had a purpose, but I had yet to officially label what it might be. The idea of her purpose being in my bed, her pussy wrapped around my dick, was still lingering as my main goal.

Watching her slim arms pump as she ran and her confident stride carrying her fast, I sighed with the vision of her running to me. Of not looking at a vague spot on the horizon but targeting me as her destination. Fuck, I was obsessed. Even when I wasn’t here and supervising what she was doing through this trial period of an assessment like anyone else would go through, she was on my mind.

A week ago, I didn’t know she even existed.

Seven days ago, a woman wasn’t on my mind.

My dying uncle was. The return of Gregori was.

I stood up, smirking.

Now, with her taking up my head space, I hadn’t been dwelling on those messy parts of my life. I hadn’t expected that.

“You sure you know what you’re doing?” Alexei watched my profile, taunting me to face him. To face him with him calling me out on how hung up I was on Mila.

I lifted one shoulder and let it fall, dismissing him the best I could. Having this woman distract me and intrigue me for a little bit couldn’t be the worst thing that could happen.

“I know what I’m doing,” I lied. Gesturing at her running by, I shrugged. “I bought her and I’m trying to decide how she’ll be useful to me.”

Other than as a muse I hadn’t realized I wanted or needed to feel more in control with the unknowns looming so large in my life.

8

MILA

It didn’t matter how many mornings passed, when I first woke, I still paused in bed and waited for something to clue me in to a threat. For a signal that something had changed again.

I had my own bed. My own room. Shelter that I didn’t have to share with anyone else or worry about someone pushing me out of. Guards patrolled the Volkov properties, insinuating the obvious facts that both pissed me off and comforted me.

No one was leaving. Especially not me, and that didn’t bode well for my plans of freedom that I would only get through escape.

No one was coming in, either. Especially not any threats or trespassers. That went a long way toward giving me a false sense of security.

I wasn’t going to bed with the assumption that someone in the Cartel would come to my tent or hovel and rape me. I didn’t have to stress about animals or looters swiping my blanket or clothes.

Here as Lev Volkov’s slave, I was clothed, fed, and sheltered. I couldn’t understand why I was being treated like someone of a guest status versus a thing to stick out of sight.

What I did understand was that I was being put to the test. All of last week, I hadn’t been tasked with an assignment. No smuggling runs to accompany anyone on. No orders to make the men food and serve it in the compound. No instructions to retrieve money from gangsters in the city. Instead, it was clear that Lev wanted to evaluate all that I was capable of. How fast I could run, climb, or escape a scenario out in the desert. How long I could endure the challenge of holding weights to mimic a heavy bag, hiding well to go undetected, or picking the best way to go in a maze with a timer. If I could compare the experience to anything else, it was like a field day ordeal. A boot camp of some kind.