“I want you facedown.” I heard him stripping behind me.

He could have positioned me to receive him, but he seemed determined to make me participate, to submit at every opportunity. Did he assume my aching horniness would compel me to obey him?

If so, he was right.

Heart racing, I leaned forward to rest my forehead against the bed, leaving my ass up in the air. That vibrator came back on, making my h*ps roll.

“You always get what you want, don’t you? But I hadn’t given you your way in this.”

He pressed the backs of his hands against my inner thighs. “Spread your legs.”

My mind whispered, Step off the trestle, just as he commanded, “Submit to me, milaya.” I couldn’t resist both my will and his.

The anticipation of what he was about to do to me was maddening. The mere idea of this act . . . with him . . .

When I worked my knees wider, I felt the head of his c*ck brush along the back of one of my thighs, leaving a distinct trail of dampness. How badly he must want this!

“Do you trust me not to hurt you?”

I had to nod.

“Good.” He slapped my bottom again, but this time his palm was wet. With oil? He drizzled a line along my crevice.

When I felt drops trickling directly over his target, the gag muffled another moan. He grazed his forefinger up and down, scarcely making contact with that needy part of me.

Each pass of his finger, he applied a tiny bit more pressure. As the vibrator fired up again, continuing its slow assault on my clit, he pressed hard enough to breach me, just barely.

My groan of frustration made him hiss in a breath. “My greedy girl wants more?”

I nodded my head against the bed, arching my back. The vibrator stopped, and I wanted to cry. By this point, I would have begged him to f**k me there.

With one hand gripping my hip to hold me steady, he started to circle the pad of his finger over my opening, making me drool around the gag.

Waiting . . . waiting . . . Right when the vibrator came back on, he dipped inside to his knuckle.

At last! I moaned at the exquisite sensation. With the vibrator humming, he pumped his finger.

Against the gag, I cried, “More!”

“As you wish.” More oil. Deeper penetration. “You think I would hurt you like this? That I wouldn’t prepare you?” Another finger joined the first, wedging inside, stretching me.

For what felt like agonizing hours, he gave me shallow pumps. More oil. Deeper. More oil. Wider. Vibrator buzzing on and off.

I was glad of the gag when I began to babble and beg. Please, please, please. I was ready—couldn’t be more ready. By the time he removed his fingers, I was nearly insensible.

I heard him squirting more oil. To slather over his heavy length? I could all but see him oiling himself, gliding his big hands across the taut head, the thickened base, along those prominent veins.

I wanted so badly to stroke him, to lick him, anything, but I was helpless. Even without the gag, my mouth would’ve been ajar, starved for something to suck. Every inch of my body was empty and open, receptive to whatever he wanted to give me. . . .

When the crown kissed my hole, I shook from the jolt of sensation.

“Don’t fight me,” he groaned. “Let me in.” He pressed forward, entering me—just as the vibrator ramped up once more.

Once the entire oiled head was inside, I moaned because it was so good. Better than good.

He delved farther, his girth difficult to accept. Even still, pleasure suffused me the deeper he went.

Between gnashed teeth, he said, “Teper’ ti prenodlizhish mne vsetselo.” Now I’ve possessed you. Completely. He sounded as crazed as he’d looked earlier.

I twisted my head around and chanced a look back. His gaze was riveted to where our bodies joined. If eyes could incinerate . . .

Was he overwhelmed like me? How strange; I was bound, vulnerable, impaled—yet he seemed overpowered by this act taking place between us.

He withdrew a couple of inches. As I writhed, trying to adjust to him, I felt him drizzling more oil. “Relax, love. Surrender to me.”

I willed myself to relax as much as I could.

“Good girl.” Then he gave his first thrust into my ass, bellowing with satisfaction. The force of it rocked my body, pulling on my collar.

I could do nothing but cry his name against my gag—accepting the fact that I had leather strapped around my neck, that my arms were immobile, that I’d been wired to a device meant to drive me out of my mind.

That the man I loved had completely dominated me, and I was melting for him.

He drew his h*ps back, then rolled them forward, sending his c*ck even deeper. After another measured stroke, he f**ked harder, grunting with pleasure. His sweating body slapped the oiled curves of my ass—more punishment against flesh that had already been whipped into submission. Conquered.

But I reveled in the sound of our skin colliding, knowing he was about to make me come. And then he would follow. He’d told me he would fill me up with cum. . . .

Yet then he stilled. “Up on your knees.” He lifted me so I was kneeling with my back to his torso. He wrapped an arm across my chest, seizing my left breast in a possessive grip, trapping my bound arms between us.

His free hand trailed down my belly. With the heel of his palm, he cupped the humming vibrator tighter against my clit, then he stretched two fingers farther between my legs. He plunged them inside my hungry pu**y right as he bucked behind me—and it was . . .

Cataclysmic.

He wrenched an orgasm from my core, screams from my lungs. As the pleasure rolled on and on, fierce contractions overtook my lower body.

“I feel you!” With a savage bellow, he joined me, beginning to ejaculate. His fingertips dug into my curves, his h*ps jerking with each palpable shot of hot cum—one after another as he grated, “Never forget . . . who you belong to!”

Long after he’d emptied himself inside me, he kept thrusting, as if he didn’t want to relinquish his new prize.

Finally, he collapsed over me. In a hoarse rasp, he told me in Russian, “There is nothing left of me. . . .”

Chapter 43

Sevastyan freed me.

He hadn’t nuzzled my neck as he used to, hadn’t shown me his usual affection. He’d merely pulled out of me, leaving me limp on the bed, then started on buckles and straps.

Once he’d removed everything, my arms and jaw were sore. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do or say.

Without a word, he scooped me up and into the bathroom, turning on the shower. In the tangle of my mind, one thought stood out. Nothing has changed.

I was still stuck in this hopeless relationship, devoid of trust and sharing. Except that now, he seemed even more distanced.

There is nothing left of me. What had he meant by that? Did he mean that he’d come his brains out and was empty?

Or that this was all I’d ever get from him? Beyond sex, there was nothing?

I plumbed my emotions and recognized that I was feeling . . . despair.

He carried me into the shower, easing me to my feet to stand with him under the spray of hot water. He poured bath oil into his palms, washing me with his bare hands. “Let me tend to you,” he murmured as he laved my body with such familiarity, as if we’d been together for years.

As a husband would a wife. Like two people who trusted each other.

His detachment dwindled—he couldn’t seem to hold on to it—and soon soothing Russian endearments spilled from his lips. With zero hesitation, he saw to every inch of my body, inside and out, even my bottom.

I would be sore tomorrow, but he hadn’t hurt me. At least, not physically. My eyes pricked with tears.

Once he’d finished with me, he turned to soaping his own body, giving himself a cursory rubdown.

Tears kept forming. I didn’t cry often; God knew I was an ugly crier. I squeezed my eyes shut, resenting every drop that escaped, cursing the tremble in my bottom lip.

“Natalie?” His tone aghast, he demanded, “What is this?” He grasped my cheeks, lifting my face. “Why are you crying?”

I opened my eyes but said nothing. Let him see how it feels.

“I’ve . . . hurt you?” He looked furious with himself, releasing me to ball his fists. “It was too much.”

Tears continued to spill.

“Ah, God, milaya.” He dragged me against his chest, coiling his arm around my nape. Locking me against him, he launched his other fist against the marble. Again and again.

Trapped like this, I could do nothing but wait. Nothing but feel . . .

His muscles moving against me. His chest shuddering with breaths.

I sensed his need to punish, to deliver pain. And for the first time, I realized that the invisible enemy he wanted to strike . . . was himself.

I whispered, “Stop, Sevastyan.”

To my amazement, he did. “I would rather die than hurt you like this.”

I believed him. “I’m not h-hurt.” Tears continued to spill, belying my words. “You didn’t hurt my body.”

“Then I scared you. I’ve made you cry. Tell me how to fix this, and I’ll do it. Anything except letting you go. That I can never do.”

“No, you won’t fix this. You had chances to, but nothing has changed.” I pushed away from him. “Just leave me alone.”

Of course he wouldn’t. He took my wrist, drawing me out of the shower. Reaching for a towel, he began drying off my shoulders and arms, my belly. He knelt, rubbing my legs as if I was the most precious thing in the world. With a kiss against my hip, he said, “It’s been decades since I’ve felt shame like this.”

Shame is more painful than blows. That only made me cry harder.

He rested his forehead against my belly. “You are gutting me, love. You want to leave—you have reason to—but I can’t let you go any more than I can quit breathing.”

Now what was I going to do? Nothing has changed.

I twisted from him, then grabbed my robe, donning it on my way out of the bathroom. I was heading for my closet when he took my hands and gently urged me toward the bed. As he drew back the cover for me, my shoulders slumped with exhaustion.

Maybe I should take a breather for a minute or two. I didn’t remember eating today, and all the emotions I’d experienced over the last several hours had drained me.

What he’d done to me had drained me.

Yet when I acquiesced and climbed into the bed, I felt like a failure, crying even harder.

He drew his pants back on—to be less threatening to me?—then paced at the foot of the bed. “I don’t know what to do with this.” Back and forth, he paced. “I have no idea what to do, Natalie. I need you to help me figure this out.”

He moved to sit next to me, but my watery glare stopped him. He backed up to sit on the end of the bed. “Talk to me.”

“That’s all we ever do. I talk to you. I’m laid bare. You go unscathed, sharing nothing of yourself. Do you know how messed up it is that I didn’t know you have a living family?”

“I should have told you. I see that now.”

“Too little, too late. You expect us to be in this relationship, but we’re not—”

“Yes, we are.”

“Then you don’t know the meaning of the word. If we’d started as a normal couple—regular girl meets regular guy—maybe things could have been different. We would have gotten to know each other, revealing details of our lives on an equal playing field. But it wasn’t like that. You knew everything about me, and I knew nothing about you. Nothing except lies. Our dynamic was ruined from day one.”

His breaths shallowed. “You’re talking like this is done, over beyond salvaging.”

I sobbed, “Because—it—is!”

He swiped his palm over his haggard face. I’d never seen him so shaken. Not even when Paxán died in front of us. “I . . . don’t accept that.”

“I thought that if I gave you my trust, you’d return it. But you won’t. You never will.”

“What if I did? Could I fix this?”

“No. Because if this is what I have to go through to get a crumb of information out of you, I’ll pass. It’s too exhausting! Besides, you warned me of this. You told me point-blank that I expected too much from you. You told me earlier today that trust might never come for us, and that you couldn’t give me things I needed. I’m such an idiot. I know better than this. I know that when a man tells you he’s no good for you, then you listen to him.”

Stupid, Nat, falling in love with an emotionally unavailable man.

When my tears quickened, Sevastyan looked like I’d slapped him. Which just made me madder. There were emotions inside of him—he wasn’t deadened—he’d just decided to keep them from me at all costs.

“If it’s my fate to chase you, then I will. I will do anything to keep you.” He put his head in his hands and rocked back and forward. “After you ran . . . imagining my existence without you . . . I realize . . .”

“What?”

He raised his head to me. “Concerns beyond you no longer matter. You’re at the center of my life”—he frowned—“no, you are my life.”

“Then why don’t you treat me like it? I didn’t even know your real name!” In a cutting tone, I said, “Isn’t that something a fiancée should know?”

“Aleksandr was my grandfather’s name. I cast off my first name when young. Maksim calls me Roman to goad me.”

“Why did you tell him we were engaged?”

“Already there is troubling interest in you as an heiress. You’ll be safer if it gets out that you’re marrying a man who can protect you.”