Dimitri

by April Zyon

  He ran his large hands over my cooling body. I found bliss in those calming moments and sighed. It was surreal just how good it felt to have this man touching me like this, how good it felt to have Dimitri holding me close. If he knew who I was, I doubted that he would be doing this, but he didn’t, so I was allowed the illusion that he wanted me. “I want to see you again, sweet,” he told me.

  “I don’t know if that would be such a good idea.” Oh, hell no it wouldn’t be a good idea! I could never see him again. I wished that I could, but then it would blow the whole idea of Edlyn out of the water. “I will be leaving in two days anyway. I have a number of obligations between now and then. I’m sure you understand.” Oh, I was so going to hell. The lies seemed to pile one on top of one another, but I didn’t care. I couldn’t allow him to see anything. I couldn’t allow him to shake the mask of truth I was hiding behind.

  “You can surely give me five or ten minutes, can’t you?” he asked, reaching out to stroke a hand over my blonde hair. His thumbs moved over my cheeks, the silk hiding my face completely, all save for my eyes. He could see every inch of me, except for my face. I couldn’t allow him to see that, and I prayed it was enough to keep my secrets.

  “I’m afraid I can’t. All the time that I have I’ve given you tonight. All I have was tonight,” I told him honestly. That was all I could give him.

  “I will follow you to the ends of the Earth, my sweet one. It doesn’t matter where you go.” He kissed me, his body hot and hard against mine. God, it was so hard to let him go, especially when I felt him begin to harden inside of me again. How was that possible? I didn’t understand. I thought that once men came, they were out of the game for the night, so to speak. It seemed that Dimitri wasn’t that kind of man, though. Especially when he leaned in and kissed me softly, his lips ever so gentle against mine—and his words. Jesus, I wish I knew what he was saying to me. His words were so soft and gentle, even in the briskness that was the Russian language.

  “No need for dramatics like that.” I couldn’t have stopped the moan that escaped my mouth when he pushed in and pulled out of my body if I had wanted to. Dear God, this man knew how to create chaos. He knew how to work my body better than I had worked it in the years previously with my vibrator and fingers. This man seemed to be a part of my very heart and knew everything I needed before I needed it.

  “Then I guess I will just have to satisfy my needs now, won’t I?” he asked, then bit my shoulder. He marked me as his. Fucking hell, that was going to leave a bruise. “Are you too sore? If you are, tell me now, darling girl, or I’m not going to stop. My need for you seems to be growing more with each touch.” He moved just a bit harder, slamming his hips deep inside of me. “I’m taking you from behind next,” he told me without any of his earlier charm. This was the dangerous man that I knew he could be and would be. This was the man I had been waiting for to come out and play—the one I wanted to come out and play.

  Chapter Nine

  Dimitri

  Goddamn her beautiful fucking eyes! She gave me the sweetest fuck of my life and she thought to push me away? I was pissed. Beyond fucking pissed. She had submitted so sweetly to me, not even fucking realizing that I had fucked her without a goddamn condom on, something I had never done in all my forty-one years of life, and yet she thought to push me away? Yes, I was going to spank the fuck out of my woman.

  She had let me wrap my hands around her neck while I fucked her and close off her airway. She trusted me with that, yet she wasn’t going to let go of that fucking slip of silk so I could see her face? I knew who she was. I fucking knew who I was sleeping with, and yet she thought something as silly as a piece of silk and plastic over her face was going to hide her identity from me? Fuck no, it wouldn’t. I would always know who she was. Scarlett was part of my goddamn soul, and I would never let her go. She was fucking dreaming if she thought this was the only time I was going to be inside of her. Just the way she was acting made me so angry I could scarcely contain myself. I shifted so that she was under me and on her hands and fucking knees. If she wanted to be treated like a fucking whore, I would do just that. I began to smack her ass while I plowed into her from behind. I knew she wasn’t hurting, not if the fucking sobs of pleasure she was giving were anything to go by. No, she was fucking loving this.

  I leaned over her, my chest to her back. “You are mine. I know you, every inch of you. We fit perfectly and I’m never fucking giving you up.” Then I let her know I knew who she was. I wasn’t letting her hide anymore. I released the knot at the back of her head and pressed my cheek to hers. “I knew the second I saw you at the Gala that you would be mine, Scarlett.” I pinched her nipples and heard her crying out.

  “Dimitri, you can’t.” She tried to hold the mask up, but I wouldn’t let her. I owned her. She was mine. She belonged to me. I’d come inside of her pussy and would again and again. No other man was ever going to know that goddamn pleasure beyond me.

  “Scarlett, baby, you will find that when it comes to you, I will and can do anything. You belong to me. You have belonged to me from the moment you allowed me inside of your body.” I reached down and pinched her clit again. I listened to her cries of pleasure and felt her buck back against me. Her juices coated my cock. “You fit me sweet, Letty. You feel it as much as I do, baby.”

  “No one calls me Letty.” At least she didn’t deny that she belonged to me, was all I could think as I plowed her pussy from behind. I worked her harder and faster.

  “I need for you to come. I want to feel your pussy juice on my cock again. I want to hear you screaming my name again.”

  “Put your hands on my throat again?” Oh shit, had I heard her whispered request correctly? Had she really asked me to choke her again? Fucking hell, this woman was perfection! I smacked her ass, felt her jolt and her pussy tighten around my cock. Then I moved my hand up her body. I went from spanking her ass to wrapping my hand around her neck. I held her to me by sheer force of muscle alone while I fucked her. Thankfully she had her hands braced on the sofa arm and I had a foot braced on the floor and the other on the sofa.

  I wrapped my large hand around her throat and squeezed gently, not enough to hurt her but enough to give her the thrill of the loss of air while we fucked. I eased my hand a bit, then squeezed, eased and squeezed over and over again. It didn’t take long before I was ready to fucking explode again, too. “Fuck, baby, I’m ready to blow again.” I leaned in and bit her shoulder. I had seen the way her eyes widened and her body tensed when I bit her earlier and knew she liked it.

  “Dimitri.” Fuck yes, she knew who I was.

  “That’s right, you know who took your virginity and you know who owns this body. Come for me, baby girl,” I told her with a smile and began to fuck her harder. She was killing me in the best way possible and I wanted more. Like it or not, Scarlett was mine and she would never be rid of me. “Let go and fly, lyubimaya moya.” I kissed the shell of her ear.

  There it was again. She was screaming my name. This time she knew that I knew who she was. This time there were no barriers between us, nothing to keep us apart. Her cunt squeezed my dick tightly and I spilled deep inside of her. My balls were tight, my dick practically hurting with just how hard I came. “Fuck, Scarlett.” I pulled her close to my body and kept humping against her. I couldn’t stop. My body was in control and I couldn’t have stopped if I had tried. This woman was my everything, and I had to mark her as my woman in every way I possibly could.

  When I finally pulled out of her body, I curled against her. I protected her body with mine, keeping her against the back of the couch, placing my body between the room and her. She didn’t know it yet, but she was protected by me already. She had been since the moment I saw her at the Gala, and now that I had made love with her, I was going to damn well double her guards. Now that I knew just how sweet her body was, I was never going to let anyone close enough to her to cause her any harm, mentally or physically.

  Stroking my hand over h
er body, I rubbed the sweat from her cooling skin and moved my lips over the curve of her shoulder. “You never have to hide, my Scarlett. Ever. I will always see you, the real you. I will always know you. You could wear a burlap sack and movie prosthetics and I would know you because you are mine.” I would never tell her that I was hers, though. I had to keep that part of myself separate. I couldn’t let her know that she owned me just as much as I owned her.

  “I hid from you because this will never work, Dimitri.” She turned in my arms and looked up at me. Damn her for turning that gaze up to me and looking so forlorn. I wanted to take that all away from her. I wanted to take every worry and every fear from her and make them all disappear, but I knew that perhaps this was something I needed her to work out on her own. She needed to see that we would work out. We would work out because we were meant to be together.

  “What do you need from me?” I asked her instead of demanding like I normally would. I was used to simply demanding and knowing that my word was law. I knew that with Scarlett I had to take my time and she was worth it.

  “I need you to let me go.” Oh, I knew she didn’t mean that. I knew she didn’t mean it because of the tears that slid from her eyes and down her cheeks. I saw the way she bit her lower lip and tried to hide herself from me. I wouldn’t allow her to hide, however. No, I needed her to face this. If she wanted to ask for time from me, she had to look me in the face.

  “I don’t know if I will ever be able to fully let you go, little one. I might be able to give you time to adjust, but never ask me to let you go, especially when you don’t even mean it yourself.” I brushed at the tear that sped down her cheek and presented it to her. I pressed it to her lip and watched as her tongue took the salty drop into her mouth. Then I leaned in to kiss her. She thought she was leaving me, but I would never let her. I would never let her go, but I was willing to let her have a bit of room, for a short time.

  When we parted, she once more shook her head as if trying to clear it. “Dimitri, we won’t work. The two of us. Yes, the sex was beyond incredible, but that was all that we could be and only this one time. I can’t see you again. You know that, right?” I couldn’t believe her. She was trying to dump me. Oh, she had a lot to learn about me. I was not a man that gave up on anything I wanted. I wanted her, and I would have her.

  “I won’t be patient for very long, Letty.” I leaned in and kissed her again. I let her feel what she would be missing for the days that we would be parted, but when we leaned away from each other I traced my fingers over her lips. “I won’t be far. If you ever have need of me, you call me. Don’t call your brothers. Don’t call your father. If you ever feel as if you are in danger, you call me, no other.” She was going to say something, but I cut her off. “Scarlett, I’m more effective than the police. I will do everything to protect you. I will move mountains and part the fucking ocean for you if you ask it of me. If you don’t believe in anything else I tell you, I need for you to believe in that. I will put my phone number in your phone so that you have it, and I mean it, call me. If I find out there was any danger anywhere near you and you didn’t call me, I will spank your ass so hard that you will walk funny for a week, and I won’t allow you to orgasm from the pain either,” I assured her. I needed her to know just how serious I was.

  “I don’t like being ordered around, Dimitri. My parents learned that early and my brothers sure as shit learned it early on as well. You say you want something with me, then that’s something you need to understand. I hate being ordered around.”

  Oh, she was so adorable when she was pissed, and I could tell she was. God bless her, she had a metric shit ton to learn about me. This poor woman was under the delusion that she was going to be able to order me around. She was cute, but I would give her that illusion because I could. She would think that as much as she wanted to, as long as she was safe. “If you are safe, that’s what matters to me. Do that for me, please?” She had no idea how much it cost me to say that word to her, but I did it all the same because for her I would do anything. Scarlett was my everything. She simply didn’t understand that yet. One day she would, and when that day came, I prayed she didn’t question me too deeply, because I wasn’t certain I would be able to give her the answers she might want or need. When she ducked her head in submission to my request, I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding.

  For the first time in my life, I simply held a woman in my arms and the two of us talked. I listened to Scarlett as she told me about her time at college and found the things she had to say fascinating. It was odd, really. The woman was utterly brilliant. She had degrees in Political Science, Health and Human Services, English Lit, and, surprisingly enough, Law. My Scarlett was a contradiction to everything I thought that I would have as mine. She was a surprise from the skin out and one that intrigued me in ways I never dreamed I would feel. I always thought I would be frozen to the core for all time, but then Scarlett walked into my life, and that frozen core I’ve had since Siberia seemed to thaw, but only for her. I told her some of my childhood, the happier times, of course. I didn’t want to tell her the hard parts because I wanted to protect this woman from everything, including my past. She deserved only happiness, always.

  I told her about Susan and how there was nothing between us. I ensured that Scarlett knew I had never slept with the woman, that she was simply a piece that I wore like a suit to the society functions I was forced to attend because of my money. Thankfully, she understood that and she told me why she had given me the cold shoulder that night. It made perfect sense to me now. She thought I was with Susan and had been trying to get another woman on the side. No wonder the woman thought I was a player. Granted I wasn’t going to tell her that I’d been one, until her.

  Finally, I heard the chimes striking two a.m. and felt her jerk in my arms. “Oh shit, is it really two?” she asked me in complete shock, and when I nodded, she practically jumped over my body, barely missing my balls with her knees. Damn, the woman was fast when she wanted something.

  I shifted so I could sit on the sofa and watched her as she quickly pulled her dress on. I saw her looking for her panties, but she wasn’t going to get those. I had those hidden for myself and she wasn’t ever getting them back. “Why the hurry, Letty?” I wanted to know why she was trying to race the chimes on the clock. Hell, she looked even more terrified than some of the men I had beaten the shit out of. What the fuck was wrong with her?

  “I have to get out of here. I must meet my double at my place at two thirty, or I’m going to get found out. My mother is like damn clock work and will be in my room at three a.m. and I can’t let her know that, I can’t.”

  I couldn’t believe my fucking ears. She was worried she was going to get found out? She had just had the best fuck of her life, and yet she was worried about being found out? No, that wasn’t going to work for me. I reached out and grabbed her hand. Pulling her now-dressed body close to my naked one, I let my heat rub against her. “And when she does find out that you were here with me? When she finds out that you lost your virginity on a sofa of all things? My darling woman, you need to know you are mine.”

  “I told you, Dimitri, I’m not yours.” Oh, that darling girl had so much to learn. “I have to go. It’s not just me, but it’s Alissa I have to protect as well.” Ah, well that made sense. Of course she would want to protect her best friend.

  “Moya lyubov, I will protect you and keep you safe, now and for all time. My protection will extend to your friends as well. Both Alissa and Edlyn, the woman you pretended to be.” I stroked my hand over my lover’s cheek and smiled, reminding her of the farce that had her ending up in my arms. “I will see you and her both back to your place. My guards are most likely still with your friend. I can only hope she isn’t ready to have my men’s balls because they wouldn’t allow her to play the field and have sex. Then again, they will be grumpy as well because they had hoped to bag a woman or two while here as well. We have heard a number of things about the pa
rties thrown here, however had never been invited because your friend’s parents are afraid of me.” I laughed, as well they should be. I pretty much owned the business the family ran because of the gambling that Alissa’s father seemed to be addicted to.

  “What does that mean?” Scarlett asked me suddenly, stopping at the door and slipping her shoes on. “Moya lyubov. What does that mean?”

  “I will tell you when you are ready to know, darling, but not today. Today let’s get you and Alissa home before your family learns of your subterfuge.” Before I allowed her out the door, I pulled her to me and kissed her hard. I wanted Scarlett to fucking remember me when she went to sleep tonight and when she woke up in the morning. She damn well needed to because I was going to see her. Very soon.

  Chapter Ten

  Scarlett

  Two months after the ball

  The night of the masquerade ball had been intense and insane. It had been the most amazing experience of my life. I had also nearly gotten caught when Al and I slipped into my bedroom window. I fully blamed Dimitri and, of all people, Alissa and the big bodyguard that the slut seemed to be glued to. Not that I blamed her, because holy shit he was hot, but he wasn’t Dimitri. I had to admit I was biased, and I was still trying to figure out why he made me feel the way he did even now, two months later.

  Al and I hadn’t had a lot of time to get together and that depressed the shit out of me. Instead I had been relegated to shopping with Mom and spending time with Vince. God save me if I had to listen to him on the phone with one of his military buddies and hear him telling them all about me. I wasn’t fucking interested. I wished that he would take a fucking hint, but he wouldn’t and he was driving me nuts. I loved my brother, but he was as dense as a tree—well, at least when it came to me and it seemed Edlyn. Idiot brother of mine.