Now, here he is, like I summoned him from some lust-soaked level of hell.
Head reeling, I can’t move. He’s half on the bed in jeans and a black tshirt. It should diminish him somehow, like the beautiful suits he wears give him a gloss of dark elegance and appeal, but no. They don’t. They’re just icing.
This rougher version is hotter, harder, with a feral edge. Tattoos snake down his arms, and with seemingly no effort, he pins both my hands behind my head, taking hold of my face to turn it to him.
“Your orgasms are mine.” The words are harsh and quiet, the flatness in their center is pure steel. “They belong to me, just like you do. You get off when I say you can.”
I sneer, almost gathering the nerve to spit in his face. “Go to hell.”
His gaze sweeps my mouth. “You’re a special kind of hell, wrapped in a veneer of heaven.”
“You disgust me.”
“I really don’t.” Nikolai slides a denim covered leg over mine, and his hand travels down to capture my breast, playing and twisting my sensitive, hardened nipple.
After a moment, he moves lower, slowly, eyes not moving from mine, and even though I try and hide it, my breathing hitches. It comes in short, erratic sips as he slides his hand lower, my belly fluttering. He’s hard against my hipbone; his cock is big and stiff, pressing into me through the confines of his jeans. “Tell me you weren’t fantasizing about me.”
“You-” I stop. “You disgust me!”
He doesn’t look away as his fingers slide over my pussy, and I moan. I can’t stop myself. I’m slick, soaked, and he knows it. As he touches me, fingertips whispering against my swollen flesh, he smiles. It’s brief, but its there. We both know the truth.
There’s something wrong with me, in me, how I’m made. There has to be. I want him. I shouldn’t. I can’t, and yet I do. Maybe I’m a monster, too.
“I definitely don’t disgust you when I do this, do I?” He pushes a finger inside, gliding easily through my wetness, and I cry out, hips raising, trying to catch some, any friction. Ripping my face from his hold, I scream, pushing at him, hitting him to let me go.
Laughing, he rolls away. “Fuck, you’re a baby kitten, Rose. Spitting, mewling, eyes barely open. Claws so small they can’t even begin to hurt.” His laughter fades as he hauls me up to sit, coming up close. “The only thing is, they annoy me, and you do not want to annoy me.”
I shove at him, white hot ice pouring down my spine, and I jump up as he leans back on his hands. It’s a warning, him sitting there, seemingly relaxed. A small part of me knows that but right then, I don’t care. I want to scream the place down. I want to make him crumble into a million pieces.
“Why me?”
His eyebrows furrow. “Why you what?”
“Why take me? I know you’re a bad man.”
His face contorts, like I said something utterly ridiculous. “I never once denied that, Rose. Stop acting like a child.”
“Compared to your great age, I am!” I’m yelling at him now, trying to keep hysteria from my voice. “What are you? Nearly fifty?”
His eyebrows rise-not the reaction I want. It’s like I need him to spit fire back at me, give me something, anything, so I can lose my shit.
The man doesn’t look fifty; maybe mid-thirties, but my point stands. He’s older, he should know better-than… than what? He’s a kidnapping psychopath who likes to sexually torture me and deny my orgasms.
The thought tumbles through me like a shock. Am I mad over that? No. I’m confused. I’ve tried to keep it together as a prisoner, forced to do all sorts of things, and I’m over it. “You’re watching me, you sick fuck.”
He smirks, something akin to pleasure at my anger rising on his face.
“An old, sick fuck, Rose?”
“It’s not funny.”
“I’m not fifty, but if that fantasy floats your little boat, then…” His eyes suddenly narrow as the mood shifts, changes, and the laconic dark humor is gone. “You’re pushing me and someday, very soon, it’s going to work. You’ll cross a line and when you do, I’m going to make you fucking regret it.”
“Let me go.” Even I can hear the wavering in my voice, like I don’t really mean it.
He laughs at my weak attempt at begging. “No. You’re mine. Your orgasms, your body, your autonomy. That is, until I get my ransom.”
My breath catches. There are too may threads I’m trying to catch here.
“You have a camera.”
“I have cameras everywhere.”
“What do you want from me?” I hiss the words at him as tears push hot and burning at my eyes.
“I told you. Revenge.”
“But I don’t know you,” I say, holding my hands out like he’s got a softer side to him. “I haven’t ever done anything to you. So-”
He shakes his head, his smile widening. “Not you. I really don’t care either way about you. Apart from parentage, of course. That damns you. But no. You’re collateral damage, remember? I’m after your father.”
“I don’t have a father,” I say. For all intents and purposes, it’s true. Just because someone donated his sperm, his DNA, doesn’t make him a father. “You killed the only man close to being a father to me.”
“Rose,” he says with a cruel laugh. “You’re so fucking naive. He didn’t give a shit about you. He was doing his job. I’m pretty sure he was crooked
-”
“Is that what you tell yourself to sleep?” I say, glaring. “To ease your guilt over the murder of an innocent man?”
He laughs again, still cruel and biting. “Oh, fuck me, Rose. If you’re trying to get at my guilt, forget it. I don’t have a conscience. I sleep fine, little brat.” His gaze slides over me again, and it makes me feel sick. “Look at you, probing for weakness, something to use. You’re definitely your father’s kid.”
I shake my head. “I can’t help who made me. I didn’t choose.”
“No, but it shaped you. It’s in your blood. He’s in your blood.”
I decide to play his game; maybe I can catch him in a logical fallacy. Anything to get the upper hand, as slight as it is. “So is my mother.”
“She turned evidence on him, on others, turned her back while people died. That makes her just like him, Rosalind. You’re all theirs. I’m just
sorry I didn’t get to kill her in front of your old man.” A horrified gasp escapes me.
“Honestly, it’s a wonder you’ve lived so long, in your dark little hole of willful denial.”
Something inside me snaps at his taunts. Before I know it, I swing my hand at his face, and it connects with his cheek in a resounding crack. My stomach goes haywire as soon as I do it, immediately horrified at what I’ve done.
The handprint burns red against his lean cheek. He’s going to kill me.