He closes his eyes tiredly. ‘Have you not enjoyed being my woman, little fish?’
I purse my lips. God, I am so conflicted, so confused. No man has ever made me feel this way. ‘Yes,’ I say truthfully, ‘but I hate that you made my sister and mother suffer.’
‘Deep in your gut have you not known that it was I who took your sister?’
A chill runs up my spine and I freeze. The very idea is revolting, shocking, ugly, but it is not unfamiliar. We are two wolves. Neither can hide from the other. In the wind, hidden to all but me, I have already sensed it. Yes, oh God, yes, I’ve always known, but I hid it from myself so I’d have an excuse to do the thing I was dying to do: submit to him.
Now that he has opened the door I never wanted to open there is something else to face up to before I can go forth. Something else I need to know. I have pretended to myself all this while, but no more. I can’t be an ostrich, my head buried in the sand if I am take control of my situation. I have to know the truth, and if it is what I suspect it may be, and he refuses to change then I can’t stay. No matter how much it hurts I will walk away. Clearing my throat I fumble for the words and will myself to say them. ‘Are you … involved in … people trafficking?’
‘No.’
I feel myself sag with relief.
‘But Daisy said that there were other girls there. They heard their voices.’
‘They came from a tape recorder. So it’d look real to authorities.’
‘I see.’ One more thing, Dahlia. Just one more last thing. ‘Are you in any way involved with child porn?’ I ask.
He looks disgusted. ‘Never. Not in a million years.’
I blink away the tears of pure joy that want to pour down my face. I could never be in a relationship with someone who could abuse children, or is in anyway involved in such a barbaric activity. That’s a deal breaker, a hard limit for me. Everything else I can work around.
My voice is soft. ‘I would have been yours if you had just asked me?’
He turns his head. ‘Be that now then.’
‘What do you mean?’ I whisper, watching him with hypnotized eyes.
A cruel glint comes into his eyes. ‘Show me that I own you … yield.’ His voice is soft and suggestive.
My heart starts beating hard. ‘How?’
His eyes begin to smolder and his voice is a sensual caress. ‘I want you to take off your clothes, sit in front of me, and brush your hair.’
I stare at him surprised and curious. Definitely curious. ‘Why?’
He remains deathly still. ‘Because I asked you to.’
My throat is so tight the words stick. ‘And after I have brushed my hair?’
‘What do you think comes after that?’
‘We fuck?’
His eyes are fierce and penetrating but his voice is so light it is almost playful. ‘Tsk, tsk, why so crude, rybka?’
There are so many ways I can do this. I can do it angrily, flirtations, carelessly, sexily, coldly, or even reluctantly, but I decide to own it. Why not? I love the thought of taking off my clothes and brushing my hair for him, then watching the lust come into his eyes, seeing his erection grow right before my eyes. I want to feel beautiful, desired, needed by him.
Why pretend he is forcing me when I desperately want to do it?
I kick off my shoes, grasp the edges of my sweatshirt, lift it upwards, and tug it over my head. Shivering in the chill of cold air touching my skin I let the sweatshirt fall to the ground. His eyes roam my exposed skin hungrily. The chill I felt goes away and a familiar warmth
I unzip my jeans, push them down my legs, and take off my socks. There are sock marks around my ankles, but he doesn’t seem to notice. I undo the clasp on my bra and let my breasts pop out of them. Unconsciously, I sigh with relief that the restrains are gone. I feel the lace scrape my skin as it travels down my arm. With a whisper it touches the ground.
I hook my fingers into the waistband of my panties and drag them down my legs. Then I am standing there naked, my back straight, my bare toes gripping the carpet and my breasts aching for him.
He takes his feet away from the table he has been resting them on.
‘Sit,’ he invites softly.
I draw in a shuddering breath and walk to the table. Going around it I sit facing him, my palms flat on either side of me, my knees close together. The glass is cold under my bottom and thighs and goose bumps scatter my skin.
I lift my head and look at him.
Without saying a word he gets up, goes to the bathroom, and comes back with a hairbrush. He holds it out to me. I take it and he resumes his position on the sofa. I turn my head to the side and looking at a point on the curtain, drag the brush through my hair, the downward sweep slow and rhythmic. When all my hair swings straight and shiny I put the brush down on the table beside me and look up at him.
His eyes are veiled, but something raw throbs between us. His eyes slide down to the tips of my breasts. I feel his gaze like fingers, full of warmth and texture. The invisible fingers slide lower.
‘Spread your legs,’ he says, his voice thick.
I open my legs and expose my swollen wet sex to him.
‘Do you know your pussy is … quivering. It’s all soft and pink and ripe and quivering for me?’
I draw in a sharp breath as he reaches out a hand and lets his fingers slip into the opening between my legs. A finger rubs my swollen clit and I gasp.
‘Lean forward,’ he whispers.
I take a shuddering breath. I know what he wants me to do. He wants me to spread my sex on the glass.
‘Why do you want me to do these humiliating acts?’
‘I want to know that I have total control over you. If you can say no, then I am still not your master.’
To hunt the snake the eagle must fly into the undergrowth. I spread my legs and press my bare sex on the cold glass. My breasts hang forward.
He gets off the sofa and lies down under the table so he right under my spread open, slick flesh.
‘Now rub that naughty pussy until she comes,’ he says.
I close my eyes. Some part of me wants to obey. Wants to do these degrading things while he watches. So I allow him to lie under me while I shamelessly angle my dripping sex on the glass and rub myself on it until I climax. Even after I climax I don’t get up and walk away. I know its not over until his cock is buried deep inside me … and I am waiting for that.
He gets up off the floor and comes to stand in front of me. He doesn’t say a word, but his eyes are full of lust and triumph. My deviant hands immediately start unbuckling his belt. His cock is so hard it jumps out into my hand. He stuffs it into my mouth and I suck until an animal sound emanates from his throat and he explodes deep inside my throat.
I keep him inside my mouth. I don’t know what he will do next. Is he going to turn away again? For a moment we are both frozen in an act of master and sexual slave. Can he never love me back? Will my love remain forever hopeless and unreciprocated? Then he does this one thing. It’s an unconscious thing, and it is only a tiny thing and perhaps it will mean nothing to anybody else, but it is a big thing to me.
He strokes my hair.
Just once.
But it is enough for me. He cares. Maybe just a little, but he cares. My grandmother used to say, everyman, even the most hardened criminal, has a soft spot in his heart. Maybe, just maybe I can be that soft spot in this man’s heart.
I lift my feet up on the table and get into a crouching position. Reeking of sex I drag my breasts up along his body until my erect nipples brush his face and I am standing a head taller than him. Bracing my hands on the planes of his hard chest our faces loom, dangerously close, separately only by the cast iron bars of mutual distrust. His eyes, so radiant they are azure, stare back into mine.
Unnerving. Beautiful. What is he seeing, I wonder.
Feverishly, I cup his cheeks between my palms and press my mouth against his. A long trapped moan escapes. We kiss. Kiss? No, He
opens his mouth, our tongues entangle and we hold on tight, and fucking drink. So deeply it is as if we are desert nomads who have travelled for weeks to find a vein of cold water in the ground. Succulent. Succulent. He is.
We flood our senses with each other and the room disappears. The whole world stops spinning. Raw desire courses through every fiber in my body. It is madness. It is obsession. We fuse irrevocably and indisputably. Time passes in our singular state. Eventually, I raise my head breathing hard, and look into his eyes. They are impossibly dilated. My breath hitches.
‘Have you ever heard the story of the scorpion that asked a frog to help him across a river?’ he asks, his voice low and strange.
I stare into the crystalline eyes. They are inscrutable crystal worlds. Fabulously beautiful but inhospitable to carbon based creatures. Slowly, I shake my head and feel the strands of my hair brushing my bare shoulders.
‘The frog said, ‘No. You could sting me while we are halfway across the river and I will die.” The scorpion said, “If I sting you I will die too.” That logic made sense to the frog so it said, “All right. Climb on my back and I’ll give you a ride.” Halfway across the river, the scorpion stung the frog. The frog cried out in mortal pain. “You stupid scorpion, now we are both going to die. Why did you do it?” And the scorpion replied, “What do you expect I’m a scorpion. That’s what I do.”’
I feel an eerie sense of calm permeate my whole body, perhaps even my soul. He doesn’t know it is too late to turn back.
‘The frog should have learned to fly. He should have taken the battle to the air where the scorpion would have been disorientated,’ I whisper, my jaw tight.
He smiles sadly. ‘You’d have made a good mafia general,’ he says.
‘Actually I got the idea from Olga,’ I say.
‘I take it back. You’re far too truthful to be one.’
‘I’ve told my share of lies. Ask my mother,’ I say lightly.
‘I’m a ruffian and a murderer, Dahlia.’
‘Difficult to tame, I know,’ I say softly, ‘but not impossible.’
He stands immobile and as tense and sprung as a fully stretched catapult, ‘I don’t want to break you.’
‘Don’t worry. I’ll bend.’
He lifts me off the table. I curl my thighs around his hips and he carries me to the bed and lays me on it. I lie on my back and look at him shedding his clothes and think, you are mine. You don’t know it yet, but you are mine. For ours is not a monkey love. It’s pure and beautiful. One day he will realize that jut having animal sex with me is not enough.
He lies down beside me.
‘I own you, Dahlia. I own every inch of you,’ he states possessively.
‘How can you say that if you are planning to give me away in less than a month’s time?’
‘I’m not giving you away, rybka.’
I squash the urge to grin like an idiot. I open my mouth to reply and he places a finger across my lips.
‘Don’t speak,’ he says, and his eyes are so desolate I feel frightened for him. What is it that this man hides? Why does he suffer so?
I stare up him mutely. He says nothing more and eventually I fall asleep inside the tight circle of his arm.
Three
Dahlia Fury
I wake up the next morning alone, touch the indent in the pillow, and sigh. I have no idea where he is or when I will see him again. My relationship with Zane reminds me of a falconer training a wild falcon. He brings the bird to ‘flying weight’. It is a euphemism for keeping the bird hungry. Only through small gifts of food will it recognize the falconer as a benevolent master and hunt for him. Like a falcon in training I feel underfed for his attention.
I get out of bed, use the bathroom, and going up to my own room get dressed before I go downstairs to the kitchen. Yuri is sitting at the counter. When he sees me he nods in acknowledgement, but his eyes slide away quickly.
‘Good morning,’ I say with as much dignity as I can muster. He saw me fall down the last few stairs yesterday. I turn towards Olga. She is standing on tiptoe putting something away in a top cupboard. She pops her head out from behind the door of the cupboard and smiles cheerfully. ‘Good morning.’
‘Can I please have a word with you, Olga?’
Yuri stands up and brushes crumbs off his clothes. ‘Right I’m off.’
I watch him leave and take the seat next to the one he just vacated. Olga closes the cupboard, goes to the coffee machine comes back with a mug of coffee that she puts in front of me.
‘Thanks Olga,’ I say and take a sip.
She sits opposite me. ‘So … how can Olga help?’
‘I wanted to ask you something.’
‘Hmmm …’
‘Last night you said that I have a chance of finding a way to Zane … well, Aleksandr’s heart.’
‘Yes, I said that.’
‘What made you say that?’
She tilts her head and regards me speculatively. ‘Because he looks at you as if he can’t believe his eyes. Like a boy looking into a shop window full of the toy he wants most in the world, but can’t have.’
I shake my head. ‘I’m starting to feel like a Japanese tourist here. Give me a map please.’
She smiles. ‘With all the others he was doing basically the same thing. Different positions with different bodies to vary the boredom. But what he does with you. This is beyond what he ever dreamed of.’
I blush. ‘Oh, you mean the sex.’
‘I’m sure that is very good but no, not that. How can I explain to you? It’s like you woke him up from a deep sleep.’
I think of the way the gentle stroke on my hair that escaped out of his iron mask last night.
‘You’re the only one he wants, little fish,’ Olga says softly.
After a breakfast ruined with confusing thoughts I step out through the French doors into the garden. There is no one about and it is so quiet and tranquil I can’t even hear the faint sound of traffic from here. I take a deep lungful of the fresh, cold morning air and it kinda starts to clear the cobwebs in my head. Maybe I should spend a little time alone in nature.
I drift around the side of the house. My destination is the Japanese garden that I saw from Zane’s study window. Leaving the springy grass I step onto a stony path and follow it until it opens out to a secluded stone garden.
I stand by a rock and look at the meticulously exact garden. There is no grass just a rectangular plot full of stones that have been so carefully raked the lines are as straight as a ruler. I guess it is beautiful the way a brand new chrome coffee machine is beautiful. In a cold, modern, flawless and functional way.
Me, I like a garden with flowers, weeds, bees, birds, worms, the occasional frog, a messy dog running through my flower beds, digging things up, barking, and the sound of children playing.
I rub my cold face with my hands.
Still, I guess this is Zane. This is the world he is trying to create inside and outside him. A flawless, exact, cold world where cascading water is represented by carefully placed stones. Something moves in my peripheral vision and I half-turn in that direction. It is in the window of Zane’s study.
Sunlight makes the glass glint so I have to lift my hand to shade my eyes in order to see into it. To my surprise I see him standing there watching me. For a few seconds we simply look at each other. Static starts up on my skin and I feel as if I am drowning in his gaze and all these crazy emotions swirling inside me.
As if pulled by a magnet I start walking towards him.
I reach the window and place my palm on the glass. The glass is freezing. Slowly, like a man in a dream he lifts his hand and places it on the other side of glass facing my hand. I smile at him and a ghost of a smile tugs the corners of his mouth. Behind him, I see the door open and slimy Lenny enters the room and waits by the door. I bring my gaze back to Zane and watch him change right before my eyes.
First his smile dissolves.
A distant and wholly profession
al smile takes its place. Then his eyes become cold and forbidding. Fascinated and transfixed I watch his chest lift and fall heavily before he takes his hand away from the glass. Then he turns away from me and faces the world with his mask firmly in its place. I retract my hand and walk back in the direction I came from, my mind’s eye replaying his transformation.
As I reach the swing, my phone rings. I hit accept and Stella starts shrieking into my ear. It is a long and melodramatic screech and I begin to laugh. When she runs out of breath, she takes a quick snatch of air, and carries on all full speed.
I sit on the swing. ‘Stop it,’ I tell her with a laugh.
‘I want to, but I can’t,’ she says and keeps up the shrill sound.
It is so infectious I almost want to join her. We’ve done it before. Both of us shrieking away. It’s actually quite fun, but if I start I’ll probably have all Zane’s staff out here in a second. ‘So you like them then?’ I ask instead.
‘Like them? Like them?’ she screams in my ear. ‘I’m fucking in love with them. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I thought I was seeing things.’ She pauses suddenly and in a far more, by far more, sober voice asks, ‘They’re not knock-offs from China, are they?’
‘No, they’re real,’ I say reassuringly and put the swing into motion.
‘Oh Jesus! I nearly gave myself a small heart attack there!’ she exhales with relief. Then she is back into gush mode. ‘Oh my God, Dahlia. They are fabulous. It’s the best freaking present ever. I couldn’t believe it when I opened the door and postman goes, ‘Been shopping have ya? I was half-asleep and I thought you had sent me the shoes from that woman with the Hong Kong connection, which of course, I would have been over the moon with, but bloody hell! Jimmy fucking Choos! I thought I’d died and gone to heaven.’
‘Have you got them on now?’ I ask with a smile.
‘Don’t be daft. I’ve made an altar in my bedroom and placed them there.’
I laugh, feeling the cold wind in my face as the swing rocks me. ‘Do they fit?’
You Don't Own Me: A Bad Boy Mafia Romance (The Russian Don Book 2) Page 2