“It looks like my baby likes the pain,” he rasped in my ear.
His pillow muffled my reply as I buried my head in shame. “No. No, I don’t.”
“You’re lying to me again, and I can prove it.”
He rose on his haunches and teased my pussy with his fingers, then I felt something hard press against my asshole. I jerked. “No! Don’t!”
Despite my pleas, he pushed his thumb in deep. I was in agony. The humiliation hurt as much as the unwanted intrusion. He thrust his thumb in and out. I kicked my legs as I drove my fingernails into my palms.
“Admit you were a bad girl.”
With no hesitation, I did what he wanted, hoping it would end my torment. “I was a bad girl.”
“And what happens to bad girls?”
I sniffed. “They get punished.”
He pushed his thumb in deep as he thrust two fingers into my still-sore pussy. How could something so painful feel so good at the same time? I felt filled and dominated and overwhelmed. I just wanted to collapse at his feet and submit to whatever he wanted. The idea terrified me.
He pumped his fingers in and out of my pussy as he kept his thumb buried in my ass. His hard thighs kept me from twisting my hips or closing my legs. He then spanked me with his free hand.
“Are you going to disobey me again?”
“No,” I cried. I would have admitted to anything and told him anything in that moment.
“Tell me you’re mine.”
“Please, Vaska. I can’t. This is… it’s too much.”
He pulled on my hair, sending a sharp sting over my scalp and down my spine. “Tell me,” he ground out.
“I’m yours! I’m yours.” What was beyond sick and twisted, I wasn’t even lying. I was his completely in that moment. He owned me, body and soul.
My back bowed as he pulled his fingers free and pinched my clit.
Against my will, an orgasm was torn from my body like a scream.
It was the most intense, most extreme emotional and physical release of my life. And in that moment, I hated Vaska with a vengeance for forcing it on me. I didn’t want to feel anything this deeply, this completely. It was too much. A pane of glass shattered in my mind, the pieces never to be whole again. This. This right here is what I’d been worried about, what I feared about getting involved with a man like him. I knew, instinctively I knew, I would not survive intact. Even if I left this bedroom never to set eyes on him again, I would never be the same. No woman survived a man like this. He would devour me whole, leaving only a shell behind when he was finished with me. And I had just given him the power to destroy me by submitting to him.
In the aftermath, I shook violently; even my teeth rattled. I barely felt it when he released my wrists. He pulled a blanket over both of us and tried to pull me close to his body from behind.
I turned on him with nails bared. “Get off me! I hate you! I hate you!”
I clawed at his chest, drawing blood. He captured my wrists and pulled my arms over my head before pinning my body beneath the weight of his own. His mouth crashed down on mine, swallowing my protests. I tore my lips away, burying my face in his neck as I cried.
He let go of my wrists and cradled my head as he rolled to the side, holding me close. He whispered to me in Russian as he kissed my head and stroked my hair. “YA tak vinovat, krasotka. YA nikogda ne khotel, chtoby eto proizoshlo. YA ne mogu eto ob"yasnit’, no ya znayu, chto ne mogu otpustit’ tebya seychas.” Then remembering I didn’t speak his language, he repeated, “I’m so sorry. I never meant for this to happen. I don’t know how to explain it, but I know I can’t let you go now.”
I tried to push back, but his arms tightened around me. He reached up and cupped my face, brushing away my tears with his thumb. My lips trembled. “Yes, you can. You can let me go. We only just met. You know nothing about me.”
“I know enough to know I want to know more.”
“But why? Why me?”
He shook his head slowly. “I can’t explain it. There is an energy, a spark, about you that calls to me. I felt it the moment I first laid eyes on you.”
My eyes teared up again. “You’re going to break my heart, aren’t you?”
His lips thinned as his eyes hardened. Still, he answered with a raw honesty that shocked me. “Yes.”
I lifted my hands to touch his face as I pleaded, “Then why are you doing this to me? Why chase me down? Just let me walk away before this goes too far, before it’s too late for both of us.”
His warm palm settled over my hand and he looked deeply into my eyes. “Net.”
I didn’t have to speak Russian to know that was a no.
It was too late. I was already his.
Chapter 10
Mary
My phone rattled on the counter.
I ignored it.
I pulled the security system’s instruction manual closer. “It says here you need to press star and pound at the same time, then enter the number twenty, then enter the installer four-digit code, then press star ninety-nine.”
I looked over my shoulder at Emma who was standing in front of what we were now officially calling the motherboard. She threw her hands up in frustration. “You can’t be serious. Is that what it really says?”
I picked up the book and walked over to her. “Swear to God, see for yourself.”
We were both home trying to figure out our new security system. Emma told me how Dimitri had gotten a call early this morning and had to leave town suddenly on business. I didn’t mention to her I’d been in the car with Vaska when her boyfriend received that call.
Vaska had been taking me home after I spent the night with him. After my emotional outburst, he’d held me tight for the rest of the night.
It was strange. I had spent the night with a man before of course, but with Vaska it was different. It was hard to explain. The few and far between times in the past, it had been just sleeping next to someone. With Vaska, it was sleeping within his protective embrace. There wasn’t a single moment the entire night that I hadn’t been aware of his arm around my waist or his body next to mine. It was so warm and cozy it was hard not to feel safe and loved. And that was the most dangerous thing of all. I wasn’t safe with him and I sure as fuck wasn’t loved. Allowing myself to fall in love with Vaska was like Buffy falling for Spike. It was all kinds of fucked up wrong and everyone knew it wouldn’t end well. So why do it? Why does anyone fall for the bad boy? For the excitement of the fast ride, certainly not for the inevitable crash.
Vaska wasn’t just a romantic bad boy—he was a bad man. His phone conversation with some unknown man and then Dimitri this morning proved it. There was something about a delayed shipment of surface-to-air missiles and over five hundred cases of Winchester Magnum sniper rifles to Morocco. I didn’t know what was worse. The fact that Vaska felt comfortable enough to openly chat about whatever super illegal arms deal he was putting together right in front of me, or the fact that I didn’t seem to care. It was probably the casual business vibe to the entire conversation. There was no cloak and dagger, or threats of violence, or Godfather quotes about the heat being on them and owing favors. It was actually a pretty boring conversation about contract payments and shipping containers and papers for the port authority.