Kat
I stand under the spray of water, trembling. Stunned by the new information revealed by my captor.
This is revenge for Nadia. His sister.
Whom my father ruined.
Ruined how? I squeeze my eyes shut. I don’t think I want to know. Just like I don’t want to know for certain what happened to my mother. Whether she’s still out there somewhere or if my father ruined her, too.
I open the shower door and find Adrian’s still at his same post against the door. He’s dripping wet, his clothing soaked through, his dark hair sticking flat to his forehead.
“Do you want to come in?” My throat is scratchy from screaming. “The water is still warm.”
He shakes his head. “No. I shouldn’t have mixed things for us. It was wrong. It only makes things harder.”
I nod, suddenly deeply sad. It’s probably just the let down from last night’s ecstasy. My brain’s chemicals have to be completely out of whack.
“Stay in there as long as you like. We have nowhere to be today.”
Damn.
He’s…kind. As I’d suspected last night, under the rough, grumpy exterior is a worthy man.
I keep the shower door open but back into the spray of water. I don’t know if I’m trying to tempt him or just needing to stay connected. “Last night was a job?” I lift my hands to my hair, tracking Adrian’s gaze when it falls to my lifted breasts. “You had sex with me to keep me from having a bad trip. That’s all?”
“I didn’t have sex with you.”
“Yeah, keep telling yourself that. I had your dick in my mouth, and you had your tongue between my legs. That’s pretty damn sexual.”
He grasps the ends of the towel and pushes me against the wall. “I’m sorry, Kateryna. It was a mistake. It won’t happen again.”
He’s saying the wrong thing. I don’t want him to apologize and tell me it was a mistake. I want him to say it rocked his world the way it rocked mine. I want him to tell me he’s the guy I thought he was last night. The sexy grumpy bear capable of everything, fulfilling all my deepest, darkest sexual fantasies. The guy who explicitly asked for and waited for consent but then took charge in the most deliciously dommy world.
And because I’ve had three years of therapy, I also recognize that I’m being childish and needy. I’m trying to attach myself emotionally to a guy who kidnapped me to use me for bait against my father. Believing that I’m somehow going to form a lasting emotional bond with this guy is stupid and foolish.
But then stupid and foolish are kind of my middle names.
“So it wasn’t real?” I press. “You seduced me for my own good?” I let my disbelief show.
He turns stony, his dark glower returning. “For my own convenience,” he snaps. “Get dressed.”
I don’t believe him. He’s purposely putting distance between us. Part of me wants to get pissedwhich is what he wantsand let him. The other part wants to keep pushing. Seduce him the way I did last night. Because we both know I was the one coming onto him, not the other way around.
“I need clean clothes,” I assert. I got puke on my blouse this morning, and it smells now.
“You can wear my shirt,” Adrian grumbles, nudging me out of the bathroom and into the small, darkened apartment.
I think about making a run for the door, but I’m naked, and I doubt I’d make it. I felt Adrian’s muscles and show of strength last night. He’s in excellent shape. He brings me to where a suitcase lies on the floor and opens it with his toe.
“Grab something,” he orders.
I purposely drop my towel, holding his gaze for a moment before I slowly squat. The need to prove last night was more than convenience is strong.
Adrian’s nostrils flare, and the muscles around his jaw tighten.
Good.
I hope he suffers. I hope his balls turn blue while he watches me.
I rummage through the suitcase, looking for something hard I can hit him over the head with.
He’s onto me, though. “Take the one on the top,” he barks. “Stop fucking around.”
“This one?” I ask with mock innocence. I hook a finger in the neck of a soft, hunter green Henley and pick it up away from my body, so it hides nothing. “Do you have any panties for me?”
“Don’t play seductress,” Adrian says.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“You must want punishment.” Adrian’s voice is silky and deep.
I smile because he’s playing along. Either he’s playing, or he’s for real. I don’t care which it isI love this game. My nipples harden into tight beads.
Adrian’s gaze dips to them, then he snatches his shirt from my hands and pulls it over my head like I’m a doll-baby he has to dress. He shakes his head like he’s disgusted by me, but I know he’s full of shit.
“No panties for you.” He gives my ass a slap and captures both my wrists behind my back. My heart trips with excitement.
“Ooh, Spank me, Daddy.”
“No. Nyet.” He propels me forward, back to the bed. There’s genuine irritation in his voice now. I sort of love it. “I told you not to call me that.”
“Sorry, Master,” I say in a fake submissive voice.
He brings me to the side of the bed and pulls a fresh zip tie out of his pocket.
I fight him. “No more zip ties. Have you seen my wrists?” I demand.
He twists my wrists back in front of me and examines them. They are chafed and raw and even though his face doesn’t change, I somehow am sure he feels bad about it.
He pins my wrists with one hand and uses the other to retrieve the gag he had around my head this morning. He twists this around my wrists twice, then wraps the zip tie on top.
“Not so tight!” I interject as he starts to tighten it.
He pauses, slows down. Measures carefully then lets it out a touch.
I make a show out of wincing and sucking in my breath like it really hurts. I mean, it does hurtit’s tenderbut I’m definitely working it.
He backs it off another smidge. I keep an outward pressure on my wrists to hold them apart as he constrains them, and I don’t twist or turn to show I still have a little room. When he finishes, he pushes me backward to sit on the bed. “Hands above you, dietka.”
“No,” I say stubbornly.
When he raises his brows with warning, I act petulant. “Why do they have to be over my head? It makes all the blood drain out of my hands. My shoulders and neck still ache.” I roll onto my side in a fetal position, holding my wrists in front of me. “Here,” I offer. “Find another place to attach me, so I can at least lie on my side.”
Adrian drags in a measured breath like he’s working to keep his patience, but as I suspected, the guy is a cinnamon roll under the tough guy act. He makes a daisy chain out of several zip ties and attaches one to the bed frame and one to my wrists.
When he stands, he peels off his wet shirt. The guy is gorgeous. On the wiry side and pale-skinned but built of solid muscle. When he turns away, I see he has a large, beautiful flame tattoo on his right shoulder blade with the Cyrillic letters that spell mest’ beneath it.
“What does mest’ mean?”
“Vengeance.” He turns and pins me with a brutal look, and my stomach flips.
“You burned someone in vengeance?”
He shakes his head, his lips turning down with bitterness. “Not yet.”
A shudder of recognition runs through me. This is about my father, I’m sure of it.
“You’re going to burn him?” I ask.
“Bratva tattoos are for crimes already complete,” he says, shucking his wet jeans.
I wet my lips with my tongue, unable to resist asking, yet not sure I want to hear the answer. “What did you burn?”
This time when he meets my gaze, there’s triumph flaming behind the dark promise of retribution. “I burned his factory down.” He walks toward the bathroom in his boxer briefs but stops and turns when he gets to the doorway. “Don’t make any sound,” he says. There’s a threat in his gaze.
“It’s not like anyone could hear me anyway,” I say, which is true because he still has the television turned up loud.
He disappears into the bathroom, and I hear the shower start.
Perfect. Time to make my getaway.
I twist and turn my wrists, pulling, pushing, wiggling.
Fuck.
It’s tighter than I hoped, but there’s still some room. I can do this. I can totally do this. It hurts, it’s too tight, but I just might be able to get it over my thumb if I…yes! I slip one hand out with a low moan of triumph. I’m free. I wrestle the other hand free and leap off the bed.
Where’s my backpack purse? I grab it, digging through for my phone. The water in the shower shuts off. Eek! I need clothes. I keep rummaging for my phone as I race over to the door where I’d kicked my heels off last night. I stuff one foot in.
“Where do you think you’re going?” A wet, angry Russian stalks toward me with a towel around his waist.
I freeze then throw open the door.
It’s too late.
He slams it shut before I get through it and catches me by the throat. “You’re in big trouble now.” He holds me pinned against the door. My purse drops to the floor.
He’s not out of breath like I am, nor does he seem particularly surprised or disappointed. I also note that he hasn’t squeezed the fingers around my throat. Not enough to choke me, anyway.
Of course, he needs me alive.
Or does he? A chill runs through me as I realize that he’s not holding me for ransom. Not really. He wants to kill my dad.
But this guy wouldn’t kill me unless he had to. I’m sure about that.
At least…I think I am. He did give me his full name, which could indicate he doesn’t plan to let me walk.
“Are you going to punish me, Daddy?” I taunt him, knowing he hates the name.
“Definitely.”
I shiver at the way he says it with no hesitation. Like he’d already planned to, even before I tried to twist this into a sex game.
“I’m going to spank you until you cry, little girl.”
Heat floods my pelvis, pouring down my inner thighs. I hate and love the threat at the same time.
I think about trying to knee him in the balls again, but he must read my mind because he spins me around to face the door and pins my hands to the door over my head. He pulls up the back of his shirt to bare my ass and smacks my ass on the right and left several times, hard.
My pussy clenches. It hurts, but it’s also sexy to me.
He is playing my game. There’s nothing harmful about the punishment. He’s just using his hand. It may sting and smart a bit, but I seriously doubt it could make me cry.
“Were you running out with no panties, dietka?” He delivers another flurry of spanks to my ass, alternating one side then the other.
I push my ass out because he’s definitely playing my game. He’s talking about going out without panties, not about me trying to escape. Not about tricking him into not securing me tight enough.
I don’t think he’s even mad.
I let out a soft whimper but try to stay in place, stay still. I like this far too much. All the fear and adrenaline from trying to escape is now morphing into white-hot lust. Adrian doesn’t hold backnot like he did last night. There’s no stopping and rubbing in between.
It is quickly too much. Still not cry-worthy or anything but burning and dance-around worthy. I gasp, my pussy dripping honey as he sets my ass on fire.
I’m a little light-headed when he stops abruptly. He grips my wet hair and tugs my head back. “Bad. Girl.”
I almost come. So close. I felt a tremor, a twinge.
He holds me there like that for a moment, my wrists pinned on the door by one of his hands, my hair pulled back with the other. My nipples are hard, burning points against his loose soft shirt. My pulse hammers.
We’re going to have sex now.
I hope he’s as rough in bed as he is out of it.
I’ll bet he is.
I tremble with excitement, with endorphins.
He pulls me away from the door and walks me back to the bed, still holding my wrists above my head and fisting my hair.
“Lie down,” he barks, releasing me and giving me a shove.
I don’t like that he let go of me. It feels wrong. But I climb on the bed, getting on my belly and spreading my legs, sort of wanting to keep the punish-y feel going.
Adrian zip ties my wrists togetherway too tightlyand fastens them to the headboard, stretching me into a backbend to keep them there.
I wince as I lean into them to get my knees under me and make myself more comfortable. Now my ass is out for him, ready.
And that’s when he walks away.