And yet here I am, embracing my sexuality, embracing the effect I’m having on Artem.
“Yes,” I tell him. “I want to be in charge.”
A rumbling noise from the back of his throat, a savage’s snarl escapes him.
“Jesus,” he growls. “Why the fuck is that so attractive? Okay, my Bratva queen, you’re in charge. What do you want me to do?”
A thrill catapults through me.
I’m in charge.
But how should I play this?
Yesterday, Artem was in charge every step of the way.
Each time our bodies came together in sizzling lust, he was the one who led the dance, who bent me over and took me raw, or who guided me onto my back and pushed my breasts together as he hammered into me.
“Start cutting some peppers, please,” I say. “I feel like something spicy. I think we’ll make fajitas.”
“That wasn’t what I was expecting, I’ll admit.”
“I’m the head chef, remember?”
“Then your wish is my command. Now, where exactly would an esteemed, obedient gentleman like myself find peppers?”
I giggle, mind returning to last night again, when he was the furthest thing from esteemed and obedient as it’s possible to get.
I remember the second time we had sex, after we’d recovered from him bending me over, when he told me, “I need to see those luscious fucking tits, Anna. I’ll die if I don’t.”
I gasped when he tore down my shirt to reveal my breasts, and then my nipples started to tingle and dance with sensation as he dedicated himself to sucking them.
“What’s funny?” he asks.
“You,” I say. “Pretending to be a gentleman. You know what, Artem? Are you sure nobody’s going to interrupt us?”
“I’ve given strict orders,” he says. “And they tend to be obeyed.”
“Fine, then,” I say. “Then forget the fucking peppers. What I really want is for you to stand there fully clothed, but with your cock out, you know, between the zipper. I want you there handsome as fuck in your suit but stroking your cock at the same time. I want to be naked, just me, like I’m your plaything, like you’re so busy you don’t even have time to take your suit off. That’s what I want.”
I stop, breathless, ears burning red as embarrassment tries to niggle at me.
I’ve never allowed myself to explore my sexuality in such detail, even to myself.
I’m stunned by my own desire, by my capacity to outline it, to breathe life into it. I’m stunned by how badly I want to lose myself in this exploration, with him, only him, forever.
“Your wish …”
I hear the zzz of his zipper and then the fleshy sound of his palm against his manhood, and I know he must already be slick with precome if it’s making that sound.
My sex gets tight and hot as I wriggle out of my jeans and my panties, standing naked on the other side of the refrigerator door, glad for the cold now so that I don’t overheat under the weight of this moment.
“Are you doing it?” I whisper.
“Yes,” he snarls.
“Can you …”
I trail off.
“Don’t get shy on me now,” he says.
“Can you tell me?” I whisper. “Can you describe what you’re doing, what you’re thinking?”
“If it’s what you want, then yes, yes I fucking can. You’re a queen, Anna. Just because those idiots in high school never noticed it, just because the world was blind to it before I laid my eyes on you, never forget that.”
Thrill after thrill courses through me, combining with the lust to make an intoxicating combination.
“I’m thinking about treating you like my plaything, because even if you’re a queen, you’re still mine. I’m thinking about how tight and hot your pussy is. I’m thinking about how beautifully tangy it tastes. I’m thinking a thousand things and each of them involve you naked and gasping and squirting all over my fucking cock.”
“What do you want me to do?” I whisper. “I’m naked now.”
“Oh no,” he growls. “You said you wanted to be in charge, so I’m not letting you off the hook that easily. What do you want to do, my queen?”
I imagine approaching the version of me who blindly walked into that so-called interview a few weeks ago, thinking she was going to get a job, and then ended up in the back of a van with the certainty that she was going to die implanted like a virus in her mind.
I imagine telling that version of myself that, actually, it was the best thing that could ever happen to her. In the long run, it would lead her to the path that would actually make her happy, truly happy, for the first time in her – my – life.
Would I have believed it?
The answer is definitely no.
And yet it’s the truth.
“I want to be your plaything,” I whisper. “I want to do what you tell me to do. That’s the truth. But you have to keep the suit on.”
There’s something about the suit that drives me crazy.
It’s the power.
It’s the – the what? – the prestige.
It’s the symbolism of knowing that this man is more powerful and influential and more of a protector than every stupid, silly boy in high school combined. All those jocks who think they are God’s gift to women, they’d shiver like cowards standing in a meeting in front of my seven foot giant bear of a man, dressed in the armor of his suit.
He makes another rumbling noise, a volcano on the verge of a cataclysmic explosion.
Then he says, “Get out here, then. Now. I need to see you naked.”
I walk out from behind the door and then close it, standing under the stark yellow light and staring at my man, at the iron in his hair and the fire in his dark brown eyes.
His cock is so huge it strains the zipper, the teeth trying to snap free as he strokes it up and down, the only part of him revealed.
Everything else is kick-ass, take-names, try-me-motherfucker suited steel.
“Go and lie on the table there,” he growls, nodding at the sleek metal table, free of chopping boards and tools at the moment.
Empty.
Large.
Large enough for … for everything we want – need – to do.
“You know that’s sacrilege for an aspiring chef, right?”
He smirks, squeezing his manhood harder, an appetizing drop of precome sliding free and falling to the floor like warm rain.
“It wasn’t a question,” he snarls.
A sultry trembling sensation moves through me at the tone of his voice, my eyes fixated on his searing eyes and then the bulk of his cock.
I do as he says, sitting on the table and then lying back, the cool metal pricking my skin.
“Now open your legs and look at me between them.”
I place my feet on the edge of the table, wincing at the position, but the look Artem gives me makes it worth it. He stalks closer, his eyes fixated on my hole, his lips trembling as he drinks in the sight of me.
“Now stay there,” he says, abruptly turning away.
He goes to the refrigerator, opens it, and then reaches inside. When he reappears, he’s holding a can of whipped cream and has a devilish smirk on his face.
“You’ve got to be kidding me—”
Moving with the speed of a viper, he squirts the cream all over me, from my neck down to my sex, over my thighs, dripping down and coating me and already starting to melt against the lust-hot surface of my skin.
“This is what I want,” he snarls, leaning forward. “I want to taste you. Every fucking part of you. I want to clean you with my tongue.”
I gasp as he makes good on his promise, any thoughts of laughter forgotten. His lips suck at my neck and then move down my body, smearing the cream over my breasts as he pushes them together, one hand still stroking his cock, pumping madly now, a tight fist around the engorged mass of it.
He works his way down to my thighs and licks me from my soaked pussy to my knees and b
ack again, and then, with the cream smeared and layered lightly over me, he steps back, fist pumping, faster, harder.
“Now,” he growls, clearly struggling to get the words out. “Now, Anna, I want you to do something for me. I want you to cream and orgasm the second I shove my cock inside of you. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” I moan, hoping I can do it, my hole tingling in anticipation.
“Rub your clit,” he commands. “Get yourself ready for me.”
“Yes, sir,” I whisper.
“Sir,” he snarls. “I fucking like the sound of that.”
I reach down and touch my clit—
But then Artem loses control.
He pushes forward and, in one fluid motion, he slides his cock deep inside of me.
He pushes right up to his zipper, my suited giant staring down at me, his jaws tight, his eyes widening as he holds himself deep inside of me.
And then, unbelievably, I feel my pussy starting to flutter and open and close, and a swirling mass of pleasure whirls around my belly and then – and then …
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
He doesn’t move.
He doesn’t thrust.
And yet somehow just having him buried zipper-deep inside of me and staring up at him, at my handsome, devastating man in his sleek steel suit, it causes an overflowing tempest of lust to gush out of me, a creaming orgasm that whips down his cock and squirts all over his balls.
We both stare down as the cream starts to gush over the surface and drip over the edge.
Then he leans down and brings his lips to mine. We drink each other in as though we’ll die of thirst without each other’s taste. I feel him wilting inside of me as the last moments of my orgasm pulse out of me.
And then I smile through the kiss and I feel him smirking, our lips mirroring each other, and for long moments we just stay like that, floating in perfection.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Artem
“Okay, are we going to cook now?” Anna sasses as she dons her chef’s hat, having cleaned up now, aiming a glorious smile at me.
It’s the sort of smile I can easily imagine her aiming at our children, her whole face lighting up under its illumination. Her blue eyes sparkling as she struts over to the work surface in her full get-up.
The scent of our sex lingers in the air, and as I breathe it in deeply – savoring it, reliving the memory of her tightness and her eagerness and her beautiful confidence – I just know that she’s pregnant.
This was it.
I’ve put a baby in her.
The certainty is deafening inside of me.
“I’m at your command,” I say. “Just try to be a little less sexy, okay?”
She rolls her eyes, her cheeks shimmering nervous carmine for a moment.
“Jesus, do you have any idea how intoxicating that is, Anna?”
“What?” she says, glancing at me as she takes the chopping board and brings it front and center.
“The way you go from ready to take on the world one second to intensely human and vulnerable the next. There’s something so—Jesus, Anna. I’ve never been a wordsmith. I’ve used words as weapons. In business, words can crumple men just as easily as bullets. But this is not the same. I’m trying to appreciate something, somebody, you. Not tear something down. But it’s just so beautifully, amazingly human, this thing we have.”
“I agree,” she whispers. “And there you go, huh? I’m even less of a wordsmith than you. Now, please, you wild freaking caveman, will you pass me the peppers?”
I laugh darkly and fetch the peppers, my body feeling light and airy in a way it never has before.
There’s something swirling around inside of me, something …
Love.
For a moment, I just stand there, staring as Anna starts to lay out the peppers on the chopping board.
The notion that I could be in love is instinctively absurd to me.
I remember a small, broken boy huddling in the dark, gnawing on a piece of bread and wondering if tomorrow he’d even get that much. I remember a boy – a boy who would one day miraculously grow to seven feet tall – who knew that love was not for him, not ever.
He had to make himself hard.
He had to make himself cold.
But now, as I stare at Anna, I feel it flushing through me like a tonic.
“Anna,” I whisper.
“Hmm?” she says, half turning her head as she begins to chop the peppers, consumed with the subtle delicacy of her work.
“Do you think our childhoods ruined us at all?”
Cult, that’s the sound her knife makes on the chopping board. And then she lays it aside, facing me fully, her eyebrows knitted in concern.
“What do you mean?”
I move close to her and smooth a strand of shiny dark hair from her forehead, tucking it behind her ear. It feels physically impossible that it was only a week ago I laid eyes on this woman, and only yesterday that I declared that she’s mine.
It feels like a thousand years, an eternity.
The notion that I was ever without Anna seems like a twisted fucking joke. And I’m not laughing.
“I mean that other people, they seem to develop, I don’t know …”
“Feelings?” Anna says, eyebrow cocked in curiosity now. “The general tools that most people seem to have to handle human-to-human interactions?”
I smirk. “Yeah, exactly.”
She moves close and places her hands on my shoulders.
“I used to think that. When I was a little girl, I was so used to being abandoned. My parents died shortly after I was born. Nobody seemed to care about me. When I was really young, I played this game, the ghost game, where I’d see how long I could go without anybody looking at me or speaking to me. Where can love fit into a world like that, right? But …”
“But what?” I ask, when she trails off, eyes becoming glassy.
“But then I met you,” she whispers, a note of shyness in her voice. “I met you and everything changed. I know it sounds crazy, Artem. Or maybe it won’t to you. But to other people it would. People who don’t feel what we feel. But the second you said you were claiming me, I felt it. I felt like all my life had been leading up to that moment. And it just clicked into place. So what if you bought me? So what if we are about as unconventional as it’s possible to get? I knew right then that I could give my childhood a big fat middle finger, that it didn’t have to rule over me anymore. Now, are you going to help me with these peppers or am I going to give more lofty speeches in my frankly ridiculous getup?”
“I think you look—”
She raises her finger to my lips, pressing softly.
“Nah uh, beast man,” she says. “You’re not allowed to tell me how I look until after dinner now. Because I know how last time turned out.”
I bare my teeth in a wolf’s grin and pick up a knife of my own. “Fair enough, princess.”
Side by side, my woman and I chop the peppers. I’m not much of a chef, but there’s something peaceful in the steady movements.
More than that, there’s something special about watching Anna as she goes about preparing the meal. There’s a simple joy in her eyes that fills me with warmth and hope for our future.
I watch as she handles the chicken, such a simple thing, and yet as I stare with my love-filled eyes my mind mentally fills the room with an entire staff, all at her command. I imagine her cheeks blustery and red from the heat of a busy kitchen, the sounds of the restaurant coming in through the door as waiters come and go.
I imagine my Bratva queen shouting orders.
I hear the urgency in her voice, the same urgency she’ll bring to motherhood, a she-bear ready to defend her brood by any means necessary.
“What are you thinking about?” she asks, tossing me a wink. “And it better not be anything about how absolutely stupid I look in this outfit. Because I’m actually starting to like it. Ignore what I said before. It’s not ridiculous. It’s magnificent.”
“It’s actually the opposite,” I tell her, chuckling. “I think it suits you perfectly.”
Say it.
Say it, man. You’ve faced down countless men. You’ve fought. You’ve led a rebellion out of the most fucked-up cult imaginable.
“I was thinking of you running your own restaurant. I was imagining how powerful you’d look.”
“Powerful, hmm? I think I like the sound of that.”
“Powerful,” I growl. “And Anna.”
“Yes?” she whimpers.
Her eyes grow wider and I can tell she knows I’m about to say something important, maybe something foolish.
But I don’t care.
I’ve spent too many of my forty-two years denying my feelings, hardening myself so that I can handle the business that’s necessary in my line of work. In the early days, it was fists and grit and strength. Now, there are other means, but that doesn’t change the fact that with Anna, for the first time in my life, I can finally fucking feel.
“I need to tell you something and—”
Suddenly, my cell phone blares from my pocket.
I’d ignore it except it’s the ringtone I use specifically for my network of guards.
“Shit,” I mutter. “Sorry, Anna.”
“It’s fine,” she says. “Really.”
I sigh and take out my cell phone, answering it and hoping that it’s something quick.
“Yes?”
“Hello, Artem,” a male voice says, sounding extremely pleased with himself, his voice a gleeful sadist’s tenor. “You won’t guess who I’m with right now.”
It’s Emilio’s voice, Emilio’s goddamned voice. My rival. The leader of the Italian mafia. The bastard who got offended because I wouldn’t hang around at a slave auction and pretend to be his best friend.
I tighten my grip on the phone, my sigh a feral tremble.
Then I check the screen display and see that he’s calling from Gavrie’s cellphone.
“Is my second alive?” I ask, keeping my voice calm even as anxiety hammers through me.
Anna looks up, her lips suddenly pursed, her expression pensive.
“Oh, yes,” Emilio says. “Unfortunately, we couldn’t get our hands on any of your men. They’re very well insulated. Getting my hands on his phone was another matter, though, because he fucking dropped it. Imagine that? Dropping your phone in his position. It’s lucky we’re having him tailed.”
Sold To The Bratva Boss: An Instalove Older Man Younger Woman Possessive Romance (A Man Who Knows What He Wants Book 193) Page 6