3. Viviana

"Trofim didn't deserve this," he muses as he strokes the outer curve of my ass, discovering an erogenous zone I didn't know existed five seconds ago.

Didn't deserve me?

No, he must mean sex in general.

I tend to agree. For the sake of the human race and future generations, Trofim and his evil seed shouldn't be allowed near any vaginas.

"Trofim and I never… We didn't… It was part of the arrangement. He never even came to my apartment."

I don't know why I feel the need to explain, but I do.

As soon as Iakov Novikov informed his son he couldn't touch me until we were married, I expected Trofim to throw a temper tantrum. Our engagement was planned by our respective paternal overlords to be just over six months long. That kind of celibacy was a lot to ask, even for me. Not that I had any desire to do the dirty with Trofim.

But the only desire Trofim had was to knock me around.

"You were together for six months." Mikhail sounds confused. Like that math isn't even close to mathing. Six months with no sex? Impossible.

I can practically hear his thoughts now. What's the point of living if I can't rip off my shirt and ravage maidens on the daily?

To be fair, as a maiden about to be ravaged, I get it. The promise of seeing what's going on beneath Mikhail's shirt is the current singular focus of my life.

"I'm sure six months without sex is like a lifetime for you," I drawl.

"Only the last six months."

I don't have time to understand what that means before he strokes his thumb over the soaked front of my panties. He groans a single time. Just one deep sound, low in his throat, before he slips his thumb under the lace. He plays in my wetness, dragging it up and down until I'm covered in myself. When the calloused pad of his thumb brushes over my clit, I jerk off the bed.

Mikhail arches a brow like I'm an interesting puzzle and does it again.

I want him to say something. I want him to talk dirty. Tell me I'm beautiful. Hell, call me a dirty slut. Just give me something.

But he is the same stoic, detached Mikhail I've seen only in passing for the last six months. Except now, he's sliding his thick middle finger inside of me.

"Oh my God." I arch my back, my head lolling against the mattress.

Mikhail is working his finger into me with an aloof professionalism that I am not in any way matching. He's calm, cool, and collected—I'm an absolute fucking mess.

I moan, rolling my hips to take more of him. I need more. I reach down and grab his wrist. I'm prepared to fuck myself with his finger if I have to.

But before I can, he pulls out of me.

I start to sit up, my body pulsing helplessly around nothing, my mind whirring as I try to come up with the world's least-prepared, most-convincing argument for why he should always be inside of me, starting, like, rightfuckingnow. Then Mikhail takes my wrist and pins my arm to the mattress above my head.

Belatedly, I register that he has unzipped his pants. That's probably why he let go of my wrist. To get himself ready.

Then my logistical thoughts burn up like space junk entering the atmosphere as Mikhail enters me. He presses his cock to my throbbing pussy and slides in.

"Big," I gasp. Sometime in the last six months, I must have lost my filter. Sometime in the last six seconds, I lost the power of speech.

But I'm not wrong. Just the head of him feels like too much.

Also, weirdly, not enough.

His fingers dig into the soft curves of my hips as he braces me. He holds me still as he fills me in a relentless, heady stroke.

"Better than I imagined," he rasps, sliding deeper inside of me.

Somewhere in the distance, a record scratches. Mikhail imagined this? Me? Us?

I don't have the neurons to process that. Not when I'm already at the brink of physical overwhelm processing the way he's stretching me. The way I've never been this full. The way people write songs about sex like this and here I am, having it, with Mikhail Novikov.

The brother of the man I was supposed to marry.

This is not the way I thought tonight was going to go.

I lift my hips and we fall together at a new angle. I clamp down around him. And Mikhail grunts.

My vision is blurring, but I look up at him. He's over top of me, granite jaw clenched. His lower lip is curled between his teeth. His brow is furrowed.

Testing a theory, I tighten around Mikhail again.

He growls and drives into me harder. His hand is wrapped so tightly around my wrist that my fingers are going numb. I send a silent thanks out to the editors of Cosmo for being a girl's best friend and encouraging me to add in a few sets of Kegels after yoga. Then I do it again.

"Don't," he warns.

He's looking at me. The ice in his eyes is everywhere now. It's spreading. His entire expression is frigid despite how hot he is between my legs.

My body flutters around him. Seeing Mikhail Novikov hovering over top of me is almost enough to push me over the edge.

"Don't what?" I gasp.

He slams into me, his weight pressing against my clit. "Don't move."

"I'm not."

He fixes me with a look that says he knows better. He knows what I'm up to.

Mikhail is a man who likes to be in control. Color me shocked.

"You're the one who told me I shouldn't be anyone's pawn," I remind him. Then I clench around him again.

I'm still holding tight when he jerks out of me. Before I can react or beg for forgiveness, Mikhail shoves my thighs wide and drops to his knees.

The moment his tongue delves into me, I realize the dangerous position I'm in. He could leave me like this, aching and needy. I'd probably go mad with wanting him. God, I bet he'd love that. Sick, cruel bastard.

"Is this your kink?" I rasp, grabbing a fistful of his hair. "Are you into edging until I combust?"

He doesn't respond. It's probably hard to talk with his lips wrapped around my clit, his tongue flicking at every sensitive part of me until I'm grinding against his mouth.

This sure doesn't feel like edging.

He drives a finger into me again and I cry out. "Mikhail!"

He growls in response and that vibration is all it takes. I explode in a mess of gushing tremors that I'm way too far gone to be embarrassed about. I pull on his hair and drive my heels into his back as an orgasm more powerful than anything I've ever felt tilts my planet off its axis.

His tongue slows, lapping at me as my legs tremble over his shoulders.

When he pulls back, his lips are slick. His hair is sticking up where I dug my fingers in. He is gloriously disheveled and I can't even bear to look at him.

I stare at the ceiling instead. "Was that my punishment?"

"No." He pushes my legs aside and they fall open around his waist. His erection pushes against my opening. "I wanted to know what you taste like before I fill you with my cum."

I'm drained. Spent. Used up and discarded.

Then he slides in me to the hilt and I'm back.

When he presses his thumb to my clit, I might as well be one of those emergency flashlights with the hand cranks. Every time Mikhail touches me, I light up. My lust could power a lighthouse. A beacon. One of those spotlights outside of the circus.

Come one and all, and witness never-before-seen heights of sexual arousal!

"This can't be real." I lift my arms over my head because I'm not sure what to do with them otherwise. I'm fully out of my body.

Until Mikhail uses his other hand to gather up my wrists. He holds them firmly while he fucks me.

"Please…" I whimper. I don't even know what I'm asking for.

He shakes his head. "Not yet."

Tears are forming in the corners of my eyes. I need to come right now. What could he possibly be waiting for? What could feel better than this?

I'm not sure if I said all of that out loud or if Mikhail is as deep in my head as he is my pussy, but he responds.

"I want to finish on your chest. Your stomach. Your ass. I want to paint you like you're mine." He growls again, slams home in me again and again. "But you're so fucking tight…"

I clench around him, the rumblings of another orgasm taking hold. I drag my hand down the flat plane of his stomach. "Later. Do it later. Next time."

We'll do this again, won't we? Several more times. We have to. This can't be it.

Even if this is it, I want what he promised. I want him to finish inside of me.

I don't want him to pull away.

He tips his head back, the long column of his throat strained as he drives in and out of me again and again.

I fist the front of his shirt. I'm lowkey dying a little bit at the fact that this is the best sex I've ever had in my life and he didn't even take off his shirt. "There, Mikhail. Right—Don't stop."

He looks down at me and for one fleeting second, I see him. The real him. The heat in his eyes. The fire burning beneath the surface.

The iceman has an inferno raging inside of him.

In a flash, it consumes us both.

I cry out as Mikhail roars, twitching out a release deep inside of me. Distantly, I recognize what he's saying. The name he's calling out again and again. My name.

Viviana.

We come down together, panting and slicked with sweat. Mikhail collapses on top of me, his heavy weight pressing me comfortably into the mattress. Then he rolls away, tucks himself back into his pants, and stares up at the ceiling.

I want to know if he's thinking the same things I am, but I actually don't know what I'm thinking. My mind is a mess.

Will Trofim come back for me?

Am I going to marry Mikhail?

If I do, will my father approve?I know far too well what happens when he doesn't.

Questions and possibilities chase each other around my head, circling until the warmth has leached out of my limbs and I'm shivering and sore.

I look over and Mikhail is still next to me, his eyes closed. His breathing is deep and even… sleeping.

Fuck knows he earned a nap.

So have I—but what happens when we wake up?

I hear Mikhail's voice in my head. You should leave while you still can.

Carefully, I slide off of the bed. Evidence of what we did is sticky between my legs, sliding down my inner thighs, as I tug on a pair of jeans.

There's no time to clean up. No time to make myself presentable.

If I want to go, I have to go now.

So why do I stop in the doorway and look back?

Mikhail's long legs are draped over the side of the bed. One hand is resting across his stomach. Regret pangs through me so painfully my breath catches.

This—this is the danger of Mikhail Novikov. There's a reason he lurks on the edges. There's a reason he shields himself with an icy, indifferent mask. He reveals nothing because all it takes is one tiny sliver of him… and you're hooked.

I close my eyes before I turn away.

Then, without looking back, I slip into the hallway and run like hell.