41. Viviana

His mouth slams against mine, forcing my jaw open wider so he can taste me. But his lips are soft, tender, teasing.

Like everything with Mikhail, it's a dichotomy I don't understand.

I press closer, sliding my tongue into his mouth to try to figure it out… before I remember I hate him.

Then I clamp my teeth down on his lower lip until the metallic tang of blood fills my mouth.

He growls and rears back. When he swipes his hand over his mouth, it leaves a trail of bright red blood on his skin. I want him to curse and rage and vent, but instead, he just sighs and asks, "Do you feel better?"

"Hand me the other lamp and we'll see."

He grins, but it's devilish. Dark. His blue eyes are almost black. There's a dangerous sheen in them I've never seen before.

"There are better ways to take out your anger, Viviana." He thrusts his hips against me. His erection is hard and hot against my stomach. "Want me to show you?"

"I want you to choke while I watch."

He bands his hand around my throat. "We can take turns."

Making death sound delightful—add it to the growing list of things about Mikhail that don't make sense.

Along with why seeing him with another woman only makes me want him more.

From the moment I saw Mikhail, I was drawn to him. Sucked into his orbit. Years later, I'm still out here spinning around him like horned-up space junk. It's not fair.

"Fine. You first." I lunge for his neck, but he shifts out of the way. I catch his cheek instead, leaving four red slashes across his face.

He snatches my arm out of the air and gathers it with the other one in his grip. He arches me back, the wood of the bed frame groaning under the pressure.

"Hurting me isn't going to make you feel better, Viviana." He presses his teeth into my neck and my collarbone. Then he chases the hurt with his lips.

I hold my breath and try my best to look unaffected even while every nerve ending in my body is buzzing.

"If you want to feel better, I can help."

"Fuck you," I growl.

It's unoriginal, but it's the only thing I can think of while his breath is hot on my skin and his knee is forcing my thighs apart.

He chuckles softly. "That was the idea."

He bites the collar of my shirt and pulls. The thin material shreds off of me. There's no hiding from his watchful eyes now.

My chest is heaving, my nipples pointed and aching against the lace of my bra. Mikhail circles his tongue there, scraping his teeth against my pebbled skin.

"You're fucking gorgeous," he breathes. "And all mine."

The words send a zing of pleasure through me, but it's vestigial. Some leftover remnant of whatever I felt for him this morning.

But now? After he lied to me and sent me upstairs to my room so he could talk things out with his fiancée?

I feel nothing for him.

This means nothing.

Hemeans nothing.

Which is why it's perfectly okay for me to take what I want. He told me not to fall in love with him when we got married.

Well, there's no chance of that happening anymore. So what's a little hate fuck in the meantime?

I tug against his hold on my wrists and find his mouth. It's a war of teeth and lips and tongues. The taste of iron blooms in my mouth. He's still bleeding.

Good.

Mikhail unzips my skirt for the second time today and palms me. Then his fist closes and he rips the lace of my panties off of my body. The fabric cuts into my hips and I cry out, but the sound is lost as he drives two fingers into my aching pussy.

"You're dripping." Mikhail bites my earlobe and I have no idea how to make sense of the pleasure and the pain of it all.

"Then get your fingers out of me and give me what I really want."

Mikhail curls his fingers inside of me until I whimper just to prove a point. Then he pulls his hand away, unzips his pants, and slams every inch of himself into me.

"Is that what you want?" he growls against my skin. His teeth drag over my neck with every word. "You want me to make you feel good?"

It feels so good. Which complicates everything.

"Even if it's good now," I pant, "it'll be hell later. This is the only thing you and I have ever been good at."

He drags in and out of me in slow, steady strokes. The friction makes my toes curl. My head lolls back against the wooden post.

Mikhail releases my wrists so he can grab onto me for better leverage. I claw my nails down his back and at his shoulder blades as I pull him closer.

"You know what would make me feel good? If you sucked at this." I moan as he fills me completely, my body spasming around him. "Maybe if this didn't feel good, I could forget about…"

He swirls his tongue over my nipple and palms my breasts. "Forget about what?"

I could forget about the future I've begun to imagine. The life we could all have—you, Dante, and me. Maybe if the sex was horrible, I'd be able to see clearly that despite whatever fantasy I have built up in my head of what a marriage to you could look like, it's just that: a fantasy. I need to let it go. You aren't right for me. You can't be. You'll never be.

Instead of saying any of that, I tear Mikhail's hand away from my chest and wrap his fingers around my throat. I stare into his icy blue eyes, challenging him.

He strokes in and out of me, his jaw flexing as he hits deeper and deeper places. "You want me to hurt you, Viviana?"

"You already have," I whisper, trying to hide the tremor in my voice. "You've ruined my life and fucked up my head. Might as well add my body to the list. How much worse could a few bruises be?"

He leaves his hand around my throat, but he doesn't tighten his fingers. He doesn't make any move to do anything except fill me again and again.

I'm stretched around him, aching and pulsing. I'll come like this if he keeps going, looking into his eyes as he pumps into me.

And that terrifying thought is enough for me to slap him across the face.

The sound echoes between us, but before I can even pull my hand away, Mikhail jerks out of me, flips me over, bends me on the end of the bed, and cracks his hand across my ass.

I yelp, but the sound is lost to another spank in the same exact place. I can feel each individual finger.

My skin is already tender and hot, but Mikhail hits me again.

It should hurt. I want it to hurt. And it does—but not in the way I want it to. It's a pain that demands more of the same. I find myself arching my back, seeking out his hand.

"You want me to leave bruises?" he growls, spanking me so fast that my body is rocking against the bed. The headboard is slapping against the wall, matching his steady rhythm. "I'll mark up your pretty skin, Viviana—but when you see the bruises later, you won't want to stay away from me. You'll want more."

I know he's right. It's not even over yet and I want more.

More of him. More of this.

As if he can read my mind, Mikhail grips my hips and slams home in me.

"Fuck!" I fist the sheets and try to crawl away from him.

This was obviously a mistake. The more of Mikhail I get, the more I want. Falling apart around his cock isn't going to fix anything; it's going to make everything worse.

"Don't run. You asked for this," he growls, tightening an arm around my body. He hauls me against him, sliding deeper. "Now, you can't take it?"

His hand crawls up my stomach to my neck, bending me so my back is flush against his chest. Every stroke of his cock lights me up and I can't fight back another moan.

"I hate you," I pant, even as I slam my hips back to take more of him. "You're a fucking monster."

His other hand slips between my thighs, circling my soaked clit. He digs his teeth into my neck and I cry out.

"I'm your monster," he snarls in my ear. "And you love it."

Mikhail drives himself deep inside of me again and he's everywhere. His warmth and touch and smell are all around me and I can't resist him. My resolve splinters and then shatters.

I cry out again and again, waves of release I've never experienced before crashing over me until I can't breathe.

Mikhail groans as I clamp down around him. He throws me on the bed and digs his fingers into my hips. He thrusts into me harder and harder and harder before he finally just stays there, buried in me and roaring through his own release.

I feel his heat explode inside of me.

He stays there for a long time. When he slides out at last, I assume he's going to leave. I wait for the door to slam and for the room to go quiet.

What we just did terrifies me. Sex has never been like that with anyone—so rough… so good. Every time Mikhail and I venture into a vulnerable place like this, he pulls away.

He's going to leave me here, bruised and spent and used.

And I'm right. His footsteps recede. A door opens, then closes. The room goes quiet.

And then… the door opens again?

More footsteps, growing closer. I can barely summon the energy to look over my shoulder, but when I do, I see Mikhail come out of the bathroom with a damp washcloth. He pulls me closer to the edge of the bed and sets to work cleaning me up. He trails his gentle touch over the tender skin he spanked not even ten minutes ago. He wipes the soaked inside of my thighs, the mess he made of my pussy, dabbing away all the evidence he left behind with one careful stroke after the next.

Then he settles me under the blankets and slides in beside me, his hand finding the curve of my waist under the sheet.

"Do you feel better?" he rasps quietly, the first words either of us have spoken in several long minutes.

I see the options floating in front of me—yes; no; maybe; better than I've ever felt in my life—but I can't circle just one. I'm feeling everything at once. Way too much to sort through.

So I settle on the truth instead. "I hate that you're engaged to that woman. That you've been with her and?—"

"I've never touched her. Marrying Helen was only ever going to be a business deal."

I frown. "That's what this is, though, isn't it? A business deal?"

What we just did doesn't feel like business. The way I want to curl against Mikhail's chest and let him hold me until the sun comes up definitely doesn't feel like business.

Mikhail must not know what to call it, either, because he doesn't say anything. He just folds his arm behind his head and stares up at the ceiling. "There are no more secrets, Viviana. I've told you everything."

There's so much I haven't told him—what happened to Matteo, how I wanted Mikhail the first time I saw him, how I still want him. There's even more I can't ever tell him.

Mikhail is coming clean with me and I can't promise him the same.

Maybe that's why I settle on something I can tell him.

"When I was twelve, I got kidnapped."

Mikhail turns to me, his brow pinched together. "What are you?—"

"It was only for twelve hours. Maybe less." I chuckle humorlessly. "Barely a kidnapping in a lot of ways. But for those twelve hours… they kept me in a trunk."

Each time I blink, I'm back there. I can feel the dark pressing in, my lungs growing tight.

Mikhail's hand slides down my arm to my wrist. He draws circles there with his thumb, reminding me he's next to me. Grounding me.

After everything that just happened, that shouldn't be a comfort. But it is.

"That's why you were crying the other day," he infers. "That's what your nightmares are about."

I nod. "It was a long time ago. I should be grateful that all they did was lock me in a trunk. It could have been so much worse." I wrap my arms around myself and tug the blanket up to my chin. "Maybe if it was worse, my father would have killed them. Maybe that would have helped me find some closure—get over it, as my father liked to say."

"They're still alive?"

Mikhail is shocked. Of course he is. He would never let someone hurt his family and live to tell the tale. It's one of the many ways that he is a better man than my father will ever be.

"I think. Or I mean, I assume. I have no idea who they were. I should have asked, but… I wasn't in my right mind at the time. I was just grateful to be alive," I admit. "Whoever they were, my father paid them off and they let me go. It's clean as far as ransom situations go, but I still can't be in a tight space. When it's dark and the walls are closing in around me, I'm back in that trunk."

"You were only a child," Mikhail growls. "If those men had a problem with your father, they should have taken it up with your father, not you." His hand shakes with rage.

"I think you're more upset about this than my father was." I'm trying to lighten the mood, but Mikhail still looks murderous. I curl my hand over the bleeding scratches I left on his cheek. "I don't like to feel trapped—in a space or… a relationship."

He goes rigid. "You've said a lot of things tonight, Viviana. But comparing me to the men who kidnapped you is the worst of it."

"I'm not—That's not what I mean." I release a shuddery breath. "I just want you to understand how it feels for me. It's why I fought so hard to get away from this whole world. I wanted to be able to choose what happened to me and I never wanted anyone to hurt me or Dante the way I was hurt as a little girl."

Mikhail studies my face, tracing every inch of me for so long that I don't think he's going to say anything. "The only time you'll be hurt, Viviana," he says in a soft rumble, "is when you beg me for it."

For the first time since he came crashing back into my life…

I believe every word he's saying.