by Lana Sky
The entrance, by far, is the most breathtakingly elegant thing I’ve ever seen. It makes the front of his high-rise look like a shack, no better than mine. Stone columns frame a black door, its edges trimmed in gold. A path made of dark stone leads to it before forking into a massive circular driveway. Maxim stops the car in the center of it, and a man dressed in black comes from nowhere to take his keys and drive it off, presumably to park.
“Come.” When Maxim takes the length of my chain, I don’t have a choice but to follow him up to the front of the mansion and then inside.
Three adjectives march across my brain to describe what I see: Impressive. Breathtaking. Clean. Make that four, as a shiver dances down my spine and conjures up another term: Cold.
The entrance reminds me of him in every way, from the granite floors to the steel-gray walls. The design holds the same layer of icy intimidation. Three silver Xs placed above a curving archway across from the entrance don’t provide any clue as to what this place represents. Neither do the two other archways composing the rest of the circular space, each leading off into different directions. Left. Right. Forward. I can’t see much of either path: just darkness stretching on.
“This way.” Using my chain like a leash, Maxim leads me through the right one and into a room with an open floor plan.
I blink, taking in every inch. A long ebony-topped bar dominates one end, and an L-shaped stage divides the room in half on the other. Crowning the space is a row of floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking what seems to be the valley down below.
The decor reminds me of his suite: black leather with bright drops of blood-red accents. Circular tables cover a corner of the room, though the place seems mostly empty except for a few men milling about, dressed in dark-colored suits meant to blend into the shadows. My mind skips ahead, picturing this place once night falls. It would make for one hell of a club—the kind I certainly wouldn’t want to sneak into though.
“Come.” With a sigh, Maxim pads over to a table nearest the windows and sits, resting his head back against the top of a leather chair. “Sit, kotyonok.” He nods to his knee.
I mount him, facing the rest of the room, feeling unseen eyes on me. On him. Just by being here, this man commands the entire space. At the same time, he demands privacy and not one member of our audience is brave enough to break it. He’s almost like the sun: You know he’s there, though you know better than to look at him directly.
You’ll go fucking blind.
“Relax.” His thumb curls around the length of my chain before I even register tensing up, drawing me into him so that I feel the contours of his chest against my back. His breath tickles my shoulder, heavy and spiced. “I will not be long. I just have some business to attend to.” His tone doesn’t have the hard edge I’m used to.
So fuck it. I take a risk and lick my lips until I’m brave enough to spit out a question. “Is…is this where you work?”
“Work?” Another chuckle rumbles from his chest, jolting my body with the aftermath. “Kotyonok, this is where I play.”
As if on cue, someone new enters the room, briefcase in hand. Lucius. He’s wearing gray today, a shade that almost blends in perfectly with the floor. When he spots me on Maxim’s lap, he nods in greeting. “Sir. Ms. Marconi.”
Maxim waves his hand through the air, dismissing the pleasantries. “Do you have the reports?”
As he approaches the table, Lucius flips the briefcase open, pulling the contents out for Maxim’s inspection. Folders—a lot of them. “It’s as you suspected…” He trails off, his eyes flickering in my direction.
Maxim nods, though I sense it rather than see it. “Go on.”
“Someone’s tipping off the Xi syndicate to the distribution channels. They’re there at our every turn, destroying what little inventory they don’t steal. And that’s not all.” His breaks off again. “Perhaps it’s better if—”
“I said you can speak freely, Lucius.” The teasing pull on my collar becomes a violent tug. My head flies back, striking Maxim’s shoulder. I don’t even think he realizes how tightly he’s pulling. I wheeze. My eyes sting, forced to blink up at the ceiling from this angle.
“Levoi Malkov demanded an audience with you,” Lucius says flatly. “Tonight.”
All of a sudden, the pressure on my throat lets up and I nearly slide off Maxim’s lap as my lungs flood with oxygen. My hand flies to my neck, which is throbbing.
“That’s quite the word to use,” Maxim says, rubbing his chin. “Demanded.”
I can’t name the emotion lurking inside his tone. My nerves spark, my muscles tensing up in warning.
“I know.” Lucius sighs again and runs a hand over his bald head. “I’ve tried to explain that you are busy, but he insists—”
“He knows something,” Maxim says, clasping his big hands together, leaving me just a sliver of space to remain on his lap. “Three hits on my distribution in three days. That bastard knows something.”
Lucius nods. “And you can be sure that your grandfather is aware of every minor hiccup, as well.”
Maxim stands. I fall. My knees strike the floor as I scramble for balance. I know better than to move, even before I feel the solid, unmistakable nudge of his boot against my neck.
“Stay down,” he tells me, applying just enough pressure to make my hands shake as they struggle to support my weight.
Just when my wrists feel like they’re on the verge of giving out, he withdraws his foot, but doesn’t move. I can see the shape of him from the corner of my eye: rigid, hard. It’s like watching a tornado swirl to life right in front of my goddamn face.
“Where?”
I hear Lucius ruffle through loose papers. “I’m not sure—”
“Make it be here.” Maxim storms across the room like a living, breathing bolt of lightning, sending anyone and anything racing out of his path.
Lucius follows him, and seconds later, shouting echoes off the walls—Maxim—followed by softer, stern murmurs. They talk for what feels like hours while I just sit here, kneeling. My kneecaps throb. My toes feel smashed in their heels. I don’t know how much longer I can take this before Maxim finally returns.
“Come,” he says to me, reclaiming the seat he left behind. He flicks his fingers when I don’t move fast enough, and I scramble onto his lap. Lucius is gone, but Maxim takes his time flipping through the stacks of paperwork he brought. His sweet time. Hours. My eyelids are drooping by the time he finally nudges me with his elbow, prompting me to stand. “Come.”
I follow him across the room, limping as blood returns to my limbs. More people are here now, rushing about like workers, carrying trays, pouring drinks behind the counter. Around the bar is a hallway stretching back into what seems to be another section of the house. Closed doors line most of it from what I can tell. Maxim stops at one of them, pulling it open to reveal a small room with gray walls. A vanity sits at one end, beside a wooden wardrobe. Some sort of dressing room?
To strengthen that suspicion, Maxim leads me over to the vanity and makes me sit on a tiny black stool before the mirror. Then he heads for the closet, fishing out a length of scarlet material; a dress.
Silently, I pull my current outfit off and let him dress me. I expect the new gown to feel borrowed or loose—but it fits. Too well, and that’s not all. Unlike the clothing I found in the closet in my room, this dress has never been worn. As with my current outfit, there is no other scent—just mine.
“Look at me,” Maxim commands before I can focus too much on the implications of what that means. He runs his fingers through my hair, frowning. Then he unpins the curls altogether, letting them fall down to my shoulders. “You’re from Horn Hill,” he says, naming the notorious strip of the city. It’s not a question—he knows my address.
For whatever reason, he wants me to acknowledge as much out loud.
“Yes.”
“A slum,” he says, still adjusting my hair. He teases a single lock, twisting it around his finger. “Mayb
e that explains it.”
Again, his pause feels expectant. He’s waiting for me to fill in the blanks.
“Explains what?” I croak.
“Don’t pretend you don’t know.” With a calculated focus, he tucks that stray piece of hair behind my ear. “It explains your familiarity with violence. Such as why I beat a man half to death in front of you and yet—even days later—you haven’t asked me about it. Or why you ignore what I know you can sense about me.”
His suspicions conjure up a million examples. Like the day he attacked someone with a chisel for no apparent reason. Or the mystery around his name—such as why Benny seemed relieved that I’d never heard of it—and Lucius’s mention of a strict nondisclosure agreement.
I swallow hard but an icy dread continues to crawl up my throat. “D-Do you want me to?”
His jaw clenches. I’ve said the wrong thing. “I mean—”
“It is smart that you haven’t,” he says over me. “Almost too smart. Anyone else would have run by now. Look.”
He guides my gaze up to my reflection in the mirror and it’s easy to allow myself to be distracted. I don’t recognize the bitch staring back at me now. She looks like a doll—and not the flawless, porcelain kind. She looks like one of Ainsley’s after Eric has gotten his hands on them. Roughed up and glassy-eyed, wearing a pretty dress that doesn’t match.
“Beautiful,” Maxim says gruffly, one of his rare compliments, but his eyes are on my hands, scabbed-over and bruised.
When we reenter the main room, darkness has already consumed the horizon and blood-colored lights cast a disturbing glow over the black marble.
In less than an hour, it’s been transformed; now, the open space resembles a club more than anything. An exclusive one, tailored to the kind of people who aren’t surprised to find a man leading a woman around by a leash. Though, to be fair, Maxim could make any sin seem acceptable: wrath, lust, gluttony. As he strolls the floor with a predatory grace, it feels like he’s already mastered them all.
Chapter 12
Here, his cold smile looks different outside the confines of his suite—it doesn’t waver as much. He could almost pass for at ease. At least to those who aren’t close enough to feel just how much tension his grip contains.
Tension that cracks with every step I take in his shadow.
In the dim lighting, the other people in the room look like blurs decked out in fancy suits—the type of men and women who wouldn’t ever give me a second look outside of this place. Filthy fucking rich. And, I realize as my gaze falls over a few women wearing outfits no better than mine, filthy fucking filthy.
Maybe Maxim’s allure rubs off on me, because their eyes flicker in my direction more than once, as they toss him murmured greetings. Too much. With every inch they claim, Maxim’s grip on my chain tightens, drawing me to his side. Close. Closer. I don’t even think he realizes he’s doing it. Not until a guy dressed in black eyes me up and down, his gaze settling over my chest. He smiles at me, and out of habit, my lips flinch limply in return.
Shit. I know, even before I feel the telltale pressure on my throat, that I made a dangerous mistake.
“Look at the floor, kotyonok,” Maxim murmurs into my ear. “Now.”
I dart my gaze to my feet, eyeing the heels he picked for me, nothing else. No one else. Fear churns through my veins like poison—and something sharper. Something I can’t fucking name. I don’t want to.
Either way, my punishment comes swiftly; his free hand cups my breast, clawing at the fabric and opening the barely healed wounds. I shudder, hypnotized by the sight of his tanned flesh on blood-colored fabric. Stroking. Claiming. Even if I wanted to slap him away, I wouldn’t fucking dare. One by one, darker splotches seep through the silk around his touch. It’s almost like my body itself is desperate to please him. Even if I have to bleed to do it.
“Look. Only I can give you this.” His fingers clench, grinding tender flesh between them, and my gasp is drowned out by the sound he grunts in response. One almost too terrifying to classify: low, guttural. A growl.
“Only me, kotyonok,” he warns as his thumb tugs on the strap of the dress, letting it fall to reveal my nipple. Right in the middle of the room. In front of everyone. While I watch, Maxim’s hands tug at the other strap and in a slow dance of scarlet fabric the whole thing falls to pool at my feet, leaving me naked except for my black panties.
Vulnerable.
Utterly his.
To drill that point in, he makes me stand here, feeling several pairs of eyes on my bared skin. The sad part? There could be millions, but none would pack the punch his nearness does. His possession runs deeper than anything he could tether to my collar.
It’s the money.
“Come.” He yanks on my chain and I nearly stagger into him as he takes a seat at a leather booth near the stage, pulling me down beside him. On top of him. Pulsing, his erection stabs at my ass, barely restrained by the fabric of his pants or the flimsy lace of my panties.
It’s not my body that gets him off though. He’s thinking of his punishment. My punishment. I picture the knife and my thighs clamp tighter together.
Gradually, soft music plays and Maxim’s lap becomes a sensual, devastating cage. I have no choice but to either go insane from the isolation or stare from the bars of it.
Elegantly dressed women and men flicker past our table, preening for Maxim’s attention, though I avoid looking at any one person directly. The rest of the club seems like the safest bet, and it’s an odd mixture of vulgar elegance. Girls dressed in strips of black leather and lace carry wine on trays, circling through the crowd as the night wears on. Overall, it’s not a rowdy shithole like the kind I’m used to. It’s quiet. A low, dangerous hum seems to permeate everything beneath the casual murmurs and sparse bits of laughter.
The atmosphere makes me feel like I’m in a giant fucking jack-in-the-box. Any second, the ominous music will wind down and something will explode. Maybe Maxim’s cock? His fingers find my open wounds again. Every time I flinch, he grows thicker, harder, prodding my lower back. It’s a struggle to focus on the rest of the room: silvery spotlights over a brilliant black stage dominated by a single stool. When a woman prances toward it wearing nothing but two piercings through each of her nipples, no one bats an eyelash.
Not even when a larger man with a matching set of piercings climbs onto the stage after her and grabs her hips, positioning her over the black stool in the center of the spotlight. He palms his cock, veiny and throbbing. Aims it between her legs. Thrusts in deep while she howls out a breathy moan.
It’s nearly a full minute before my mind accepts what I’m seeing: sex. Violent sex.
“You’re uncomfortable,” Maxim remarks, his voice low beneath the pulse of the music and the moans of the performers. He doesn’t sound concerned. If anything, I’ve learned to fear the raspy edge to his voice. “Out of everything I’ve put you through, this unsettles you?”
Slowly, his fingers slide from my breast and blaze a trail to my hip, dipping beneath my panties. Rough and assured, he finds my entrance and circles it once. I only manage to suck in a single breath before he plunges inside. “Or curious,” he grates into my ear, thrusting what feels like a thumb in and out. “Are you, kotyonok? Though I don’t have to fuck you in such a way for the world to know that you are mine. Do I?”
His free hand gestures to the crowd around us, all of whom ignore our corner of the room. Even as I gasp. The power he holds over people—over me—is an entirely new kind of pain, more potent than the brief hits I’m used to. He proposes humiliation, and my body begs for clarity.
“Not that I would be opposed to it.”
My mouth goes dry at the mental image: Maxim fucking me senseless in front of everyone. No amount of money in the world would be worth that.
It wouldn’t.
“Give me a reason to,” he commands against my throat. “One reason.”
I know better than to say anything. So I just watch th
rough blurred vision, tortured by the man beneath me. The two actors don’t slow down as more people approach the stage and sip their wine as they climb into booths. If anything, they amp up their actions, their grunts and groans competing with the music. They don’t care that people are watching—in fact, the audience seems to turn them on more.
Which is fucking disgusting. Disgusting.
And I don’t think I take my eyes off them once.
Excitement and fear mingle in my blood as Maxim keeps a mocking pace, matching every thrust. Every brutal fuck. Hard. Fast. Rough. My thoughts swim, impossible to decipher, as fire trickles through my veins. Shit. My eyes flutter, my breath catching in my throat, as I find myself writhing against his hand.
It’s sick. God, I wish they’d move faster.
“You’re early tonight.” The unfamiliar voice counters the ache building in my body.
Just like that, I’m slammed back to Earth, slumping against the table. I blink and find a man standing at one end of the booth, casting a shadow that obscures most of his face. He’s tall, I know that much before I turn away to eye the wall of the booth. Dark-brown hair gleams in the glow of the lights, matching the color of his elegant suit.
I feel Maxim shrug, his fingers withdrawing, and I risk his wrath to peek out of the corner of my eye.
“I’m angry tonight,” he says, his teeth flashing in a beautiful, heart-stopping smile.
The man matches the expression, and even though I can’t see his face clearly, I can tell his grin is just as chilling. “I can see that,” he says, the hint of an accent giving his words a musical edge. British? “I gather your friend is aware of our policy?” He inclines his head to me.
Maxim twists his wet fingers through my chain again, just enough to make it harder for me to breathe. “Of course. What about yours?”
The man glances over his shoulder, toward a woman standing a few feet away. She looks younger than I am, but not by much. She’s slender, with blond, curled hair, pale-blue eyes, and full lips. Her beauty doesn’t erase the darkness in her eyes, highlighted by the black dress clinging to her frame. I guess she’s seen as much evil as I have.