I’ve forgotten how nice it is to travel with a powerful man. It’s not that I didn’t have money in my purse when I went back and forth between California and Moscow. But it wasn’t the same. I’ve been sheltered my whole life. My years at USC were off the charts fun—having freedom and developing friendships—but I was still just a college student. I had no power.
I didn’t know how to grease wheels or who to bribe. But maybe that’s only a secret club for men, anyway. Women rely on their beauty to get special favors. It’s always worked for me.
My minidress gets me plenty of attention. Honestly, it’s way more something I’d wear to go out dancing at a nightclub than something to travel in. Ditto on the platform sandals. I wore it to get under Maxim’s skin, still under the impression I’d be able to talk him out of dragging me to Chicago.
But here I am in the airport showing way too much skin. Oh well, I might as well own it. I toss my hair and cock a hip, pretending I’m a movie star, and that’s why we get to cut in line.
Maxim loops an arm around my waist and draws me closer to him. My breast brushes against his chest, my nipple puckering in my bra. My panties are still wet from his spanking in the car.
I arch a brow but don’t pull away. I was expecting a rebuke or the crankiness my father used to show when he thought I looked slutty. I like Maxim’s response quite a bit better. “Staking your claim?” I purr.
“Damn straight.” He looks around. “It’s either that or kill every man who looks at you, and I don’t think that would go over in an airport.” He gazes down, standing taller than me, even in the platform heels. “I seem to recall you have a streak of exhibitionism in you,” he says.
I blink, startled by the observation.
“So I figure I’d better accept it, or I’ll spend the rest of my life mopping blood from the floor.”
I’m even more surprised by his chosen response. Do I have a streak of exhibitionsim in me? My mother always said I was a show-off. My father told me to stop begging for attention.
But Maxim doesn’t say it like it’s a character flaw. He makes it sound like a kink. Something sexy and hot, not cloying and weak.
I fight to swallow, suddenly remembering why it was I fancied myself in love with Maxim when we were in Croatia. Because he actually sees me. He pays attention. He may be the only man in my life who looked past the red hair and pretty face. Even when I didn’t know who I was, he seemed to. I remember sitting on the deck, watching the dolphins play in the water as we played cards and listened to music together. While my father was smoking cigars with his men or screwing my mother in their cabin, Maxim was the only one who noticed my existence.
That was why I offered myself up on a platter for him.
Like an idiot.
“As long as everyone knows you’re with me, we have no problems, sugar.” He pulls me closer, angling my body into his, so his thigh comes between mine like we’re doing a sexy lambada on the dance floor. “You have it, you might as well flaunt it.” He gives me a wink, and I melt even more.
Damn him.
I squeeze my inner thighs together around his thicker limb. It would serve him right if I left a wet spot on his pant leg.
He doesn’t seem to mind a bit. His hand strays lower, rounding over my ass. “They can look all they want,” he murmurs. “And you can give them a show. Just as long as they don’t try to touch.”
The security officer calls us forward and checks our tickets and passport. Maxim keeps me tucked at his side. My skin tingles with the nearness of him, but more than that, a strange satisfaction filters through me. Knowing Maxim’s proud I’m with him is a new sensation. Granted, it’s just because I’m pretty arm candy—exactly what my mother was to my father—but I still like the feeling. There’s an intoxicating power to it. One I guess I’ve been seeking my whole life but rejected every chance of having because I refused to ever give myself to a man. I played the cock-tease, baiting the hook and then casting them back in the ocean.
Now, I have no choice. I belong to Maxim. And in this instance, he doesn’t seem sorry about that fact.
That doesn’t mean I’m going to lie back and spread my legs for him. It doesn’t mean I’m going to play nice or be sweet or any of the things my medieval father expected of me. But things could be worse.
My husband thinks I’m hot and will let me flaunt it.
Fabulous. Because that is the one thing I’ve always enjoyed and been good at.
Chapter 4
Maxim
“I’m not having sex with you,” Sasha declares again in Chicago after I lead her by the elbow, past my boss and his pregnant lover and the rest of my suite-mates into my bedroom.
She’s unimpressed by the grandeur of the Kremlin—the name the neighborhood gave to Ravil’s twenty-story building with a view of Lake Michigan. I don’t bring women home to my suite a lot, but they usually drool over the penthouse I share with the upper echelon of the brotherhood—the more than half a story made into our private bratva mansion.
“Worried you can’t satisfy me?” I toss at her.
For an instant, I see her confidence slip, like I poked a wound. Right—probably the one I left when I rejected her back on that yacht in Croatia. In a flash, though, she covers it with a sniff and a toss of her long red mane. “As if,” she throws back, going to stand by the wall of windows to look out at the lights of the boats out on the water. She’s been speaking English since we got on the plane, and apart from the light accent, she sounds exactly like an American college student.
Despite it all, despite what she did to me, I still feel protective of her. Maybe because I saw the way her father treated her. Saw the beautiful, hurt teenager desperate to be loved.
She may be an adult now, but I still see through her bravado.
I set her suitcase on my dresser and walk over. “I didn’t mean that, caxapok.” I lightly touch her upper arms, insinuating my body against her backside without quite making contact. Close enough, so I can feel her little intake of breath. See the goosebumps that raise on her neck. Relish the subtle heat from her body. “It’s my job to satisfy you.” I lower my head and brush my lips over her shoulder. “And believe me, doll, you would be satisfied.”
She stops breathing.
It’s not that I’m dying to consummate this marriage. Although Sasha is hot as fuck, and the chemistry between us is still explosive. I’m just thinking sex might take the edge off. Give us a place to start.
She hates that her father traded her like he was selling a thoroughbred horse. She hates that he picked me, the man who humiliated her right when she was coming into her own sexuality. She especially hates that I control her purse-strings now.
I’m not so thrilled with being saddled with her, myself. But Igor won my loyalty when he saved my life and took me under his wing as a young man, and that loyalty didn’t die when he banished me.
I’d love to park Sasha in some apartment and pretend she doesn’t exist, but I can’t. Her life’s in danger, and I’m responsible for keeping her safe. So like it or not, we’ll be in each other’s faces. Likely for the rest of our lives.