by SR Jones
Overwhelming feelings. Fear, desire, safety, even protectiveness. They all bloom within me when I’m around him.
If I leave, even if I’m safe, my world will revert to nothing but the impressionist smudges again.
If I don’t take this chance for escape, though? If I stay? Will Justina accept me? Will Allyov truly let me live? And most importantly of all, will Andrius one day get bored of me?
I saw the way he dismissed his fuck buddy at the club. What if he does that to me one day, not too far from now? Decides he has had enough of his vow to protect me?
Ethan sighs. “Look, here’s my card.” He takes his wallet out of his pocket and slides a card across the table to me. “You can call me anytime, day or night. Anytime, and if you want to get out of here, I’ll come and get you.”
“Why?”
I don’t trust this offer. What does he want from me?
“Firstly, it’s my job.” He smiles at me, and it changes his face so much. He looks younger, softer. “But … it’s more than that. Truthfully?”
I nod.
“You remind me so much of my wife, it’s scary. You could be her sister. Not only the way you look, but … the way you are. It’s fucking uncanny. It makes me feel protective over you. So if you ever need a place to stay, you’ve got one with us. I know Isla will feel the same way. In fact, she’ll probably want to meet you if I tell her about you.”
“Isla? Beautiful name.”
“She’s a beautiful girl,” he says, and it doesn’t sound corny or cheesy; it sounds sincere and full of love.
“Look.”
I wait for him to show me a photo on his phone, but instead, he pulls one out of his wallet. It’s so old-fashioned it makes me smile.
I look at the photo, and he’s right. We are alike. She’s fair, petite, but her eyes are stunning. A light, clear blue that remind me of the sky. We could be related, though, despite the different eye color.
“She’s lovely,” I tell him.
He grins that grin at me again and nods. Then he puts the photo away, and his face sobers. “Promise me; if you’re in trouble, you’ll call?”
I nod. “I promise.”
The front door opens, and the clacking of heels tells me it’s Justina.
I brace myself as she enters the kitchen, but when she sees me, she gives a cry of delight and runs to me, enveloping me in a hug and a cloud of sensual fragrance.
“I’m so sorry,” she says, and her words are choked.
With shock, I realize she’s crying into my hair.
“I hate myself. I panicked, and I lost it.”
I realize she hasn’t seen Ethan. I don’t want her to say anymore because if she says she’d asked Andrius to kill me, I get the feeling Ethan will take me with him whether I want him to or not.
I push her back and say quickly, “It’s okay, hon, I get it. We can talk about it later.”
Her expression turns puzzled, and I point behind her. “By the way, Andrius has organized us some extra security. Meet Ethan.”
My voice sounds as false as anything.
She whirls around and stares at Ethan. “Well, well, well, it’s the cavalry. Is Reece here?”
Ethan shakes his head. “Nope, he doesn’t know about this. He needs time to recover.”
“So you’re here to protect us?” Her tone is cool, skeptical.
“Yep.”
“Andrius does a pretty damn good job of it already.”
“Andrius can’t be here twenty-four seven,” Ethan shoots back.
“Does this mean everywhere I go, you go?”
He nods. “Me, Liam, or Luka.”
“I hope one of you likes shopping.”
On that note, she grabs a bottle of water out of the fridge and turns to leave the room. Pausing in the doorway, she turns to me. “Come find me later. We need to talk.”
“Sure, will do.” I’m livid at her, truth be told. She attacked me, and now she’s back to ordering me around as if it can be forgotten. Okay, she said sorry, but it was brief, and I get the impression she does truly feel bad, but it’s fleeting. Andrius, I think, is genuinely tortured by what happened. Justina … she’s a bit upset, but next week she’ll expect everything to go back to normal and for us to be shopping for handbags again.
There’s an uncomfortable silence between Ethan and I, and I avoid looking at him until the guys return a few minutes later.
“Okay, so Ethan and I will see you tomorrow,” Liam is saying to Andrius.
“Luka really doesn’t need to stay while I’m here,” Andrius replies.
“Our way or we don’t do this.” Liam gives Andrius a hard stare.
He grits his teeth but gives a short jerk of his head toward the hallway. “Fine. Luka, feel free to make yourself at home and help yourself to anything you want from the kitchen. You can set up in the library.”
“Great.”
Luka heads off to the library and Liam and Ethan for the door. Ethan shoots me another one of those concerned looks as he passes me by. I took his card and put it in my pocket. The way life has been throwing curve balls at me left, right, and center, it’s good to know there’s someone I can call if I need to.
Suddenly, everyone is gone, and it’s simply Andrius and me, alone in the hallway. He’s staring at me, and there’s so many emotions moving across his beautiful face.
This isn’t the closed off, locked down Andrius. This is the Andrius who gives me a glimpse to the messy stuff inside. And boy, is it messy right at this moment.
“I want to touch you, but I feel like I lost the right,” he says.
“You should have lost the right, but I want you to take me upstairs and hold me. Nothing more, but a cuddle would be good.”
For some reason, now I’m back here, and things are back to the new normal I’d only just gotten used to. I’m starting to shake. It’s as if the horrific past few hours are catching up with me.
“Come on.” Andrius takes my hand and leads me upstairs.
He bypasses the guest room I’ve been staying in and takes me to his bedroom.
When he closes the door, he crosses to the dresser by the bed and slides open the drawer, taking out the picture I drew.
“You drew this? Of me?”
I nod.
“It’s good. Excellent. Is this … is this how you see me?”
‘Yes.”
“The man in this picture, he looks like a good man.”
“Yes.” I don’t know where he’s going with this.
He pulls me onto the bed, and I go easily, wanting to be near him as he sits by my side. “I don’t see this man when I look in the mirror.”
“You don’t always look like this.” My cheeks flame, but this is important, so I make myself go on. “A lot of the time you appear … closed off. Locked down, is how I suppose I might put it. But sometimes, sometimes you come alive. When you’re laughing at something, which you don’t do often enough, by the way. Or sometimes when you look at Justina. Sometimes … when you look at me.”
“I don’t think I look at Justina the way I am in this picture. I think this look is all for you.”
My stomach does the silly flip-flop he makes me feel so easily. I tell myself not to fall for it again, but I already am.
“I can’t think of a way to make it up to you; the way I treated you … it was awful.” He looks away.
“You were in shock, thought I was an enemy in your home.” I’m convincing myself as much as I am him. “And you probably did more damage to yourself than me.” I turn his hand over and look at the taped knuckles.
“I scared you.”
“You scare me most of the time,” I whisper.
“Maybe it’s only fair. Maybe you scare me a little too.”
“Why would I?”
“Because of how you make me feel.”
I’m almost afraid to ask. “How do I make you feel?”
“Insane half the time. Like, if another man so much as looked at you the wrong wa
y, I’d rip his head off. You know, despite what I do, despite my life, I’m not a violent man. Not in the sense of getting into fights and losing control. You make me feel like I’m going to lose control. I almost did when I found out who you were. I was in control at first, as I said what I did was wrong, but when I had you up against the wall, I had control; I wouldn’t have hurt you. When you spat in my face, though, I lost it. I fucking lost it, and it scares me, Violet, because I am not a man who loses it.”
As he’s been talking, I’ve been looking at him. Watching his beautiful lips move as he speaks. His mouth forms the stretched-out vowels and syllables of his accent, which I’m growing to love.
I want to touch him, to have him touch me. My reticence of before is gone, and I don’t examine why. I simply let myself feel the desire washing over me. The need to connect. To wash away the hurt we’ve caused one another, either consciously or not. Burn it all away with the fire of our touch.
It’s madness and insanity, and yeah, I think I desperately need therapy, but in this moment, all I want is him. Despite it all. I also need to let him know my new ground rules.
“One thing.” I say it with a firmness to my tone I don’t feel.
“Yeah?” he asks.
“Don’t ever, I mean ever, put your hand on my throat in anything other than affection again.”
He looks serious as he nods and promises. “Secondly,” I go on. “I want to learn self-defense. Properly this time, so I can protect myself, and I want you to teach me to use a gun like you did Justina.”
“That’s a good idea,” he says, chewing on his lush bottom lip. “We can do that. I swear, though,” he goes on, “So far as any threat from me goes, I’ll never lose control again. And I am so fucking sorry.”
Him telling me he’ll help me learn ways to protect myself have only gotten me more hot for him.
“There are different ways to lose control,” I tell him. “You can exercise the feelings you’re having in other ways. Me too.”
“What ways might those be?” His eyes darken as he watches me, his gaze flickering from my eyes to my mouth and back again.
“Maybe you can show me how I make you feel?”
“I’m not sure it’s a good idea. I’ve been holding back. Being gentle.”
“Don’t be. I’m not some fragile, breakable ornament.”
I realize with a striking clarity I want it from him hard and rough. Want to give it back that way too. There’s too much between us now. Hurt, anger, mistrust … lust, desire, want.
So much want.
It thrums in the air between us, spitting fire as we stare at one another.
“You want it rough?”
I give him the most honest answer I have. “I want it … you.”
He groans, and then he’s pulling me to him.
He kisses me, and it’s hot, wet, and insistent. As he kisses me, his hands are already tearing at my clothes. And I mean tearing!
He’s half ripping my tank top off, and I don’t want it torn, so I lift my hands to his and steady him for a moment. “Let me.”
“Make it quick.”
Oh, bossy. And hot. Undeniably hot.
I take my top off, and I make it quick. He stands and pushes his jeans off, then his boxer-briefs. He’s hard and his top is hanging down so I can’t see his cock at all, but he lifts his arms and pulls his top over his head. Slowly.
It’s like a pay-per-view porn show just for me.
As the material rides up, it shows his heavy balls and thick thighs, then his flat stomach, erection pressed against it. Those divots he has running down his sides to his hips. My friend, Aliya, had a filthy name for them, but I can’t remember it.
Then his broad, powerful chest, and his big arms, the muscles bunching as the top comes off, and he throws it to one side.
He’s utterly glorious.
Feeling inadequate next to the glory of his naked, hard body, I push my jeans off and wiggle out of them, leaving only my panties on.
“Turn and face the headboard,” he tells me. “Hold onto it.”
I do as Andrius tells me to and turn and grab the headboard.
He smooths his hands down my hips and thighs as if soothing me. In one swift, sharp tug, he pulls my panties down around to mid-thigh.
“Don’t let go of the headboard,” he orders. His voice comes out rougher than usual, his accent heavier.
It makes me throb and ache in places now revealed to him.
His tongue flicks over my clit, and I cry out in shock at the sensation. He doesn’t pause or give me a moment to catch my breath, but he carries on flicking at me with his tongue, the sensation sharp but pleasurable all the same. After driving me wild with this amazing, but not quite enough, torture, he relents and sucks at me.
He devours me.
My legs are shaking, and I have to hold myself up by gripping the headboard hard. When I come, it washes over me like a wave, taking me under for a moment before I surface and find myself again.
Before I have the chance to compose myself, Andrius flips me over as if I weigh nothing, putting me on my back in the middle of the huge bed. He pulls my panties off roughly and pushes my legs apart. Using one arm, he lifts my right leg and wraps it around his hips, my ankle resting on his back.
Lining himself up, he gives me a smile, a new one, one I’ve not seen before. It’s almost cruel. I stiffen the moment his broad head nudges at my core. He’s big, and he isn’t going to go gentle.
When he pushes his way in, I expect a jolt of pain, but there is only pleasure. An incredible rightness, as if this is the way we are meant to be all the time. I sigh and my head falls back against the pillow as I let the sensations wash over me. The feel of him above me, his scent all around me. The sound of us moving together the only noise in the room. It all comes together to make a heady, sensual fog surrounding us in its unreal embrace.
I open my eyes, and he has one arm stretched out, holding onto the headboard to give himself leverage, and he’s looking at me, his eyes the darkest I’ve ever seen them.
“Hold onto me,” he commands.
I wrap my arms around him and do as he says.
Andrius slams into me, and I cry out at the pleasure of it. Holy hell, I’ve never felt anyone so deep inside me before. He takes me brutally, savagely.
This isn’t making love. This isn’t him being careful. There’s an edge of anger to it, and it’s okay because I hold my own anger too. Not at him but at the mess all around us, and so I let it loose and meet him thrust for thrust.
I’m not normally noisy during sex, but he knocks sounds out of me I’ve never made before. I don’t even worry about touching myself or coming. It’s all too raw, too elemental for me to worry about those things. All I can do is hold on for the ride.
It’s as if we are harnessing the energy living between us right from the start. The moment in the parking lot when he’d asked me why I hid my beauty; even back then, I’d partly wanted nothing more than to fall into him and the darkness he offered.
Now, I am. And in the falling, I’m finding my own darkness.
I claw at his back as he thrusts into me hard.
“Fuck, yes,” he groans. “Mark me up.”
Jesus, this is wrong, but I do it anyway. I let my nails rake his back. The anger and hurt over what’s happened to me bleeding out with every pounding of our bodies together.
It’s wild.
It’s cathartic.
It’s probably more than a little fucked up.
We’re so close now, we can’t slam into one another anymore. Our bodies are welded together, and we’re simply moving in perfect rhythm.
I’m shocked when I feel an orgasm building, and I cry out his name as I come, clinging to him as if he’s my life raft in the storm we’ve created.
“Violet.” He finds his own release on a whisper of my name.
Then it’s over. The storm subsiding and we’re left clinging to one another.
Shipwrecked on t
he shores of this madness between us.
We’re probably both going to drown in this.
Chapter Five
Andrius
We’re still wrapped around one another. She’s breathing heavily under me, I’m inside her, and our skin is slick with perspiration.
What the fuck was that?
I’ve done a lot of freakier things. This, though … the intensity of what happened between us was off the charts.
I swallow and brush a kiss over her lips. Part of me wants to hide. To leave her here and go take a shower, but it would be a fucking dick move. I might be scared of what’s happening between us, but she’s got to be more so. I can’t let my fears make me abandon her when she needs me most.
She was given to me, and I’m going to take care of her.
It’s as simple as that. Somehow, I believe it is meant to be me and her. As if from the start, from the very moment I first noticed her rushing about in the restaurant as dowdy as fuck, and as beautiful as a swan, our fates were on a collision course. I fucked up yesterday. The worst I’ve ever fucked up in my life, and now I’m on a mission to make it right.
So we’ll shower together.
I roll us so I’m on my back, and she’s sprawling over me. Her wildness shocked the shit out of me. She’s scratched my back up good and proper. I love it. Like having her marks on me. It’s as if she’s decided to claim me the way I’ve decided to keep her.
If I’m brutally honest, there’s another reason I’ve hired Liam and his men. It’s to keep her with me as well as to keep her safe. If I’m not here, and she gets one of her crazy whims and decides to leave, how will I ever find her? This way, she’ll have close protection twenty-four-seven. They’ll keep her safe from any of Kyrylo’s men or from Allyov, if he suddenly decides he wants her gone. They’ll also keep tabs on her. Be with her whenever I’m not.
Oh, sure, if she asked them to, those honorable bastards would help her. But it suits me too, because I know where they live. All of them. And I don’t think I’d stop at anything to get her back. The thought scares me again at the madness I’m falling into over her, so I push it away.