I would make him think I took notice, entice him to his room. It couldn’t be hard to get him on his back, kiss him, make him think I was interested… And then strike him with the hardest thing near us. I could steal his phone, perhaps tie him down, and call my father. I might not know where I was, but it wouldn’t take my father long to track me down after telling him what happened, whereabouts I was. I could also find Hadrien’s gun and keep him under my control until that happened. He clearly thought he was going to get my cooperation easy, but he had kidnapped me, and killed my fiancé. I wouldn’t wait for him to make his own moves.
I finished washing up my hair, my body. Hadrien had no feminine smelling washes, so I washed with one of his own. A clean body was a clean body either way, and he wouldn’t be able to say no to me when I started. I shut off the shower, pat my hair dry. The towel went around me, and I braced myself with a sigh. Before I pushed the door open, I plastered a smile on my face, channeling the charm that I learned and mastered throughout my younger years.
Hadrien was standing outside the bathroom door, leaning against the wall, scrolling on his phone. He’d never given me an opportunity to take it, but with any luck, it wouldn’t be hard for me to get a hold of it if everything went well tonight. I glanced down at the phone, and then up to him, giving him that smile.
“You finally done, Princess?” He looked up from his phone, to me, and paused at the look on my face. “You’re in a good mood,” he said, the suspicion evident in his voice.
My smile didn’t waver as I walked to him. I tilted my head, tossing my hair back. Just as I had run through in my head, I walked close to him, got in his space. My fingers brushed over his bare chest, and I tried not to let the nerves get the better of me or show in my voice.
“You can’t expect me to take short showers. It’s practically the only comfort out here in the middle of nowhere.” I hoped my voice was innocent enough, unwavering enough to pass for flirtatious. His head tilted, and his brow rose. He looked me up and down before he smirked.
“Plenty of comforts, but all you do is turn your nose up at them.”
I could feel the heat on my face, but I didn’t back away. I already decided to commit to this plan, and I was going to see it through long enough for me to get away from this man. I kept my eyes on him, looking him dead in his own, and trailed my hand down his body.
I had only ever seen such things in movies. Sultry women seducing the men of their dreams – or men they were trying to use. I let my finger hook in his waistband, and let the erratic beating in my heart be the driving force that moved me to do more. I tugged him there, insistent, sure my supposed intentions were clear. Shockingly, he put his hand over mine, and that smirk on his face never left.
“You sure you know what you’re doing, Princess?”
I didn’t answer him, because I was certain that if I did, my voice would crack and reveal that… no. I wasn’t sure of what I was doing. Instead I did the only thing I thought would give him incentive to stop asking so many questions and go along with my ploy.
I slid my hand down, lower, cupping his groin with more confidence than I thought I would be able to muster. My eyes never left his, and that seemed to be the trigger that he needed.
He leaned forward, his hand going into my hair, fingers tugging. He brought my face to his, and I couldn’t even register a ‘wait’ before he was kissing me, backing me insistently back to his room. There wasn’t much space between it and the bathroom, and I was honestly taken away by… how passionate he was, how hungry the kiss felt against my lips. The only person who had kissed me openly was Viktor, and he had been as inexperienced as I had been. But Hadrien had my mouth parting before I could think to make him fight for it, and all I could do was respond by allowing his tongue entrance to taste and I… found that I didn’t hate the way it made me feel, lighting warmth in the pit of my stomach.
He picked me up easily, and a shocked noise came from the back of my throat before I could stop it. I fell back to his bed and bounced a little before he was on me, and it didn’t take him long to be at my lips once more. This wasn’t how I had planned for things to go. I was supposed to be on the top, be able to get him caught unexpectedly. But I couldn’t move from him as he towered over me and kissed me again, and I couldn’t find the will to try.
My head swam. I was finding it harder and harder to concentrate, even more so as he pressed solidly between my legs. I gasped against his lips, feeling the hardness of his member against my own sex, which I realized with embarrassment was completely exposed against him.
So much screamed in the back of my mind that I needed to stop this now. The plan wasn’t going the way it should. I was out of my element; I was gone too far into something that I didn’t know how to handle. But there was a fire in my body as his hands came to my towel and pulled it from around my breasts, exposing me further. I couldn’t help but tremble as Hadrien’s rough hands came to them, touching as he kissed me deeply and squeezed and felt my flesh. It wasn’t fear though, oddly. Perhaps that’s what truly kept me from stopping his actions. It wasn’t fear that coursed through me. It was curious, cautious excitement. Viktor had never touched me like this, and as Hadrien’s hands roamed over me, I found myself doing the same. I encouraged him in my reciprocations, and no thoughts of what I had intended to do when I tempted him in the first place. My hands went from his hair, tugging, to his shoulders, his chest. I wasn’t sure where I should put them, so they simply went everywhere.
“Skin hungry, aren’t you, Princess?”
I had no idea what that was supposed to mean, but I rolled my eyes at him, and bit at his lips.
“Don’t call me Princess,” I snapped.
“Ssh, Princess, and let me do what I want.”
There were no more protests from me as he covered my mouth once more. He took my wrists in his hand, pinning me, and I could feel him press harder against my sex, which fluttered hot and wet against him. It was such a foreign feeling, but not as much as the feeling of Hadrien’s fingers suddenly against me there, too.
I gasped. Not even with Viktor, in our many heated kisses had touched me with his fingers. We’d never been naked with each other. We vowed to wait. But Hadrien’s slipped inside me, and it felt so full, having them pressed deep. He seemed to know exactly where to touch, the pads of his fingers caressing a sweet bundle of pleasure inside me. My eyes popped open, starbursts twinkling in them, and my nails dug into his arms.
“Oh… ah…”
I had to know it was too far, much too far. But I still didn’t stop him, didn’t even try. I felt his grin against his lips as he worked his fingers in and out of me, and my legs stayed open and willingly spread for him. It didn’t even occur to me, in the heat of the moment, in the passions that flared, how wrong this was – this wasn’t a part of the plan. I just felt everything building and building within me. I didn’t know how to react to it or stop it.
It was the distraction of his fingers and the taste of his lips on mine that kept me from registering that he was wriggling himself out of his sleep pants. Thin cotton things, it wasn’t too hard. I was so close, so sweetly close to the build of pleasure within me bursting, his next actions nearly went unnoticed.
I felt him – it – nudge against my sex and his fingers still expertly strumming and stroking inside me. Hard and fleshy, hot. When it registered that he intended to take things farther than merely kissing and… touching inside me, it all came back to me what I had intended to do. Why I had intended to do it. It was an involuntary yelp that left me, and I wriggled away from the impending intrusion.
“No!”
It was the first denial I had given him since I thought of this endeavor, and it was a surprise that he actually listened to me. He paused, his member just outside me, and he pulled back a little to look down at me with a customary raised brow.
There was small comfort in the fact he didn’t look angry.
“No?” He seemed puzzled. I nodded, glancing away.
“No. I don’t want… You can’t… I’ve—”
For some reason I felt embarrassed to tell him I had never had sex before. That I had never done what I had attempted to do to him, and he had so easily turned it on me without even realizing. Even without my confession, however, he pieced it together easily. He laughed.
“You’re a virgin, aren’t you?” He even had the audacity to laugh before he pulled away completely, sitting naked with his legs crossed at the end of the bed. I sat up as well, gathering my discarded towel around my body. I had to be blushing furiously; my face was so hot. He didn’t bother to cover himself, either, and when I looked over to him next, his member was still up, and proudly so. I cleared my throat.
“Yes. Yes, I am. Is that a problem?”
“Hardly a problem, though I find it amusing you went and tried to get some and then copped out. What, already missing the idea of having your fiancé’s piece in you on your wedding night? Kinda desperate if you ask me.”
I fumed, and chucked the only thing within my vicinity at him, which happened to be a pillow. He easily batted it away, and continued to laugh.
“For your information,” I said angrily, “I was going to seduce you and then incapacitate you so I could call my father and get out of this hell hole, and let Vladimir deal with you for killing his son! Stupid man, you fell for it, too, thinking I wanted to have sex with you just because I bat my eyelashes at you. Typical.”
“Aw, Princess, you wound me. I figured you were up to something but I can tell you it wasn’t the batted eyelashes that had me thinking you wanted to have sex with me.” He held up his fingers, glistening still with my wetness, and I watched with renewed, extravagant embarrassment as he licked them clean in front of me. He was like a cat with milk, even going as far to lick his lips when he was done. “It was definitely how soaked you got when I started to touch you. Though I can tell why now. Did little Viktor never touch you like that? I wouldn’t have pegged a bombshell like you for a proper prude, but I guess daddy couldn’t sell you if you weren’t, ah, intact, huh?”
My fists clenched in their grip on my towel.
“How dare you,” I said. “You… you violated me, and you think it’s funny? You killed my fiancé, and you dare to insult my father! I wasn’t sold, I was doing my duty, and you ruined that, and I hope when my father finds you, he kills you just like you did Viktor!”
I had expected some sort of… proper reaction out of Hadrien. Anger to match my own might have been nice. It’d have meant that I, too, go under his skin. But he gave me no such reaction. He laughed, as carefree as he always did.
“And your daddy kills people just like Viktor, just like Viktor’s daddy kills people just like Viktor. Don’t be all high and mighty, Princess, just because you have your name under your belt, and don’t get uppity because I’m right. That sweet little thing was about as much of a bargaining chip as me taking contracts is, don’t act like that’s not where your value is to your daddy. Duty and servitude ain’t really all that different, cupcake.”
I didn’t know what to say. His words… infuriated me to the point of silence. But they also stung me with their implications, with what he assumed. I didn’t know what to say, so I clenched my jaw, and turned my face away from him.
“I want to go to bed.”
“You sure? I dunno about you, but there’s a mighty ache I’d like to get rid of before I go to sleep.”
My face snapped back towards his.
“I would never willingly have sex with you, you complete ass.”
Again, he laughed.
“Tell that to the mess between your legs.”
Chapter 4
Hadrien didn’t give me another chance to spring a surprise on him, and given the fact my initial attempt to seduce my escape out of him had failed, I doubted I’d have gotten away with it, anyway. That didn’t stop him from teasing me, however, nor did it stop his insinuations that eventually, at some point, I would come to him willingly.
The thought, of course, was absurd. Why would I sleep with him, simply because he had touched me, and my body had reacted? What did he expect of me, to be a frigid woman, with no feelings, just because I’d never slept with a man before? And what, was I supposed to just… fall into his arms because he happened to do something right? Of course not. Never.
That being said…
Still I couldn’t deny that… there was a curiosity. One that would, under no circumstances, be indulged, but a curiosity nonetheless, for the feeling of it. I would remember the fire that lit in me the moment his fingers had touched me, entered me, and then I would remember his words about how that was where my value had lain for my father, the place between my legs, untouched and therefore worth something.
In the days that followed the incident, remaining locked up in Hadrien’s spare room when he had ‘work’ to do, those were the things that were on my mind. My father loved me, didn’t he? More than just for what I could give my husband. Certainly that love wouldn’t run dry if I’d not remained… untouched. It wasn’t the only thing that made me a worthy wife for the man he had chosen – the man Hadrien had killed. I was a good person. I was kind. I was thoughtful.
Loyal.
And yet despite all of that, I most hours left alone, I couldn’t stop my hand from wondering as much as my mind did, and I couldn’t stop the dissatisfaction in knowing that bringing myself pleasure didn’t feel as good as Hadrien’s hands, and that perhaps Hadrien was right about my father.
“So, what did you see in that Russian guy, anyway?”
We were seated at the dinner table. I had begun to lose track of the days, knowing only that the daily routine had begun to set in, and it had been a few weeks since Hadrien had taken me. Hadrien would wake, make breakfast. He would allow me about the house, mostly because he kept everything bolted up, but I had already accepted that running wasn’t the smartest idea, and I wasn’t going to attempt another… round of seduction. He often spent a lot of time in his office, where he would take calls. I had listened in, sometimes, and picked up the fact that he was a hired gun, yes, but seemed to be in a charge of a larger group of people, and coordinated them. It made me wonder how on earth he had been the one to take a faulty hit, but that was less my concern at the moment. He had yet to do anything about getting me back to my father, which I had thought was his intention in the first place, with keeping me alive.
I looked over to him from my plate. I had already eaten more than him, but he was a shockingly good cook, and the steak, pasta, and vegetables on my plate were more appealing than trying to ignore the fact that he was, once more, shirtless, and for some reason that made me ache between my legs.
Deliberately, I took another bite before I answered him.
“What does that matter to you?”
He shrugged – a common gesture for him, I was finding – and sat back in his chair.
“It doesn’t really, I was just curious. Didn’t seem like your type.”
I raised my brow. “And what is that supposed to mean?”
“Well I mean did you even pick the guy out?” he asked. “I can’t imagine so.”
“I thought you already drew your own conclusions about my fiancé and how I got him,” I said, setting my fork down. “Given the way you’ve treated me I don’t think I feel like being made fun of anymore about it.” I went to stand, intent on leaving him. I might have had my own private handling of Hadrien, but face-to-face I refused to deal with such abuse. He waved me down, though, shaking his head.
“Look,” he started. “I’m an asshole. I get that. I popped your man full of holes and then I put my dirty, lecherous hands all over you. I get it, you don’t like me.” He grinned, as if this didn’t bother him a bit. “But I am curious. Yeah, I drew my own conclusions, but honestly I have no idea how a girl like you went along with all that. Give me some, ah, perspective, yeah?”
My look, certainly, was skeptical, but he appeared to at least… genuinely want to get to
know about what he’d asked. I eyed him suspiciously, nevertheless, but sat back down.
“My father,” I said cordially, “chose Viktor. He and Vladimir have been friends for a while. When Vlad moved back to Russia some years back, they kept in touch. When Vlad came back, my father welcomed him with open arms. Given I was twenty-one already, and Viktor was twenty-five, they decided it was a good time to settle their children down, and being good friends, it was natural that we would get married.”
“Just like that?” Hadrien questioned.
“Just like that.”
He was surprisingly quiet for a moment, and I thought that the conversation was over. It was not.
“And what did you think about that?”
“What did I think about it?”
“Yeah,” he said. “What, did your father just pop up to your room one day, say ‘hey, Corella, you’re going to marry this guy,’ and you were just like ‘okay, daddy, whatever you say.’”
I frowned at his mocking tone, and steeled myself, imagining where this conversation was heading.
“My father let me know that he was considering arranging my marriage, and when he and Vladimir talked it over, everything was set. I was honored to be given the chance to marry Viktor, and carry on my family’s legacy –”
“You mean you were honored to be a bargaining chip.”
My hands slammed down on the table.
“Again with this bargaining chip thing! What does it even matter to you? As the only child of my father, it is my duty to my father and my Don to carry on the legacy as he sees fit! What is wrong with that?!”
“Did you ever even want to marry Viktor?”
“I don’t have to—”
“Princess, did you ever want to marry Viktor. If you and Vicky had just met on the street like normal people one day, and had gotten to know each other, would you have wanted to marry him anyway?”
“Why does it matter—”
He held his hand up, and stood.
The Beast In The Castle Page 119