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Over and over in my head, as I drive, I keep hearing the sound of her voice telling the auburn-haired girl that she’d called Elina that she was pregnant. Pregnant withmychild. An unexpected accident, she’d said. Something that had alienated her from her family. The story had come more easily from her lips than I’d expected. And it made me feel things I hadn’t thought that I would.
I’ve never wanted children. Never even thought of them for myself. Children aren’t something that men like me can dream of–men who live lives steeped in violence and blood. Children, family–those are things that can be used against a man who lives the kind of life I do, used as a means to make him talk, to make him break, to make him do things he never would have otherwise.
I’ve learned that lesson all too well, once already. It’s the reason Natalia Obelensky sits beside me, stiff-backed and refusing to look at me, on the way to a fate that I’ve planned meticulously for her.
So why, then, if I know that lesson so well, did the thought of her round and glowing with my child make me feel as if I wanted nothing more than to throw it all away, to take her back to bed and keep her there, filling her again and again with my cock until it took root and her lie turned into the truth? Why did it make me want to protect her, instead of finishing what I’ve begun?
She and her family are responsible for the death of an innocent child. And who knows if he was the only one? So why would you want a child with such an evil, calculating bitch of a woman?
I can’t shake the possessiveness she makes me feel. The way I want to devour her, consume her, as if she’s a drug that I can’t break free of. She makes me feel things that no other woman has ever come close to, and I can’t understand it. I can’t make sense of any of it.
Finish this. And then it won’t matter.
The moment we’re back in the house, I grab her by the arm, the parcel with the clothes from the dance shop tucked beneath my other arm. “Come with me,” I tell her sharply, marching her in the direction of the left wing of the house, and Natalia lets out a sharp, delicate snort.
“As if I have a choice,” she snaps, tossing her hair back, but she follows me anyway, despite the acerbic bite of her tone.
Good. She’s beginning to realize that there’s no way out.
I take her into the formal dining room, a huge rectangular room with a sparking chandelier hanging from the ceiling and smooth, gleaming wood floors. I can feel the tension running through Natalia’s body as I lead her in, directing her to stand against the wall. “Don’t move,” I tell her sharply. “Don’t even think about it.”
Her face is very pale. I wonder if she has some inkling of what I’m going to demand of her. It wouldn’t surprise me–she’s not a stupid woman. I wonder if she appreciates the symmetry of it–that what we have together began with her dancing for me, and will end that way, too.
I won’t kill her tonight, of course. I still need to take her to Viktor, to finish what I started. But whatever it is that I feel for her, what she awakens in me, the things that I want to do to her and what I want to get out of her, that needs to end tonight. My skin prickles as I drag the furniture out of the dining room, leaving the space entirely bare and open for her, thinking of what I have planned. What I’ll do to her, the pleasure I’ll take in it.
Tonight is when I break Natalia Obelensky. And then, it will just be a matter of time before I take her back to New York, and put an end to all of this.
“Put on the outfit,” I tell her sharply, nodding at the parcel once the room is empty. Natalia is pressed flat against the wall, her blue eyes wide in her face, and I can tell that she’s afraid, although she’s doing her best to hide it. She has nerves of steel–it’s one of the many things that impressed me about her from the start, that drew me to her despite myself–but she’s still human, and I can see that she’s beginning to falter.
She’s beginning to break.
“I don’t want to do this.” She tips her chin up, looking at me with as much defiance as she can muster. “This isn’t–no. I can’t do this.”
I shrug, meeting her gaze steadily. “Then answer my questions. All of them. And believe me, I have plenty–about your family, your father, what he did, the people he did it to…we’ll be here for the rest of the day. And the minute you balk at one, we’ll go back tomyplan. Is that how you want to play this?”
“I don’t know what you think I know–but this isn’t–Mikhail, please.” She looks at me entreatingly, as if she could somehow talk me out of all of this. “I don’t know what it is that has made you think I have something to help you, whatever your goal is in all of this, but I don’t. And I don’t owe you answers foranything.” She swallows hard, narrowing her eyes in what must be one final burst of defiance. “You need to let me leave, now. This has gone far enough.”
I laugh. I can’t help it. To think that after all of this, after all that I’ve done, I would simply let her walk out of the door and go free, is beyond ludicrous. Her defiance both arouses and needles at me, and both of those feelings, in this present moment, I find irritating. Her effect on me has thrown me off from the beginning, and it angers me that even now, when all her defenses should be lost, she continues to get beneath my skin.
Casually, I slip my hand into my pocket, fishing out the knife I’d carried with me today, just in case I’d needed something other than a gun to assert my authority over the situation. I flick it open, not missing the slight tremor that goes through her at the sound, and keep my gaze on her as I slide the tip of it slowly beneath one fingernail, and then another.
“I think I’ve changed my mind,” I tell her casually, letting my gaze harden as I watch her try to keep herself still, not let me see the way she’s beginning to shake. “I’m tired of your defiance,kotenok, the way you argue and fight, as if I don’t have complete control over you. As if you are not here, inmyhouse, atmymercy. So.” I shrug, flicking the knife beneath another nail. “We will try this a different way. You will do as I asked, and put on the outfit, or I will ask you questions the way I ask questions of others.” The knife tip slides beneath another nail tip on my hand, sliding back and forth. “And then, I promise youkrasotka,youwillanswer.”
Her face is white as bone as she looks at me, her throat convulsing as she watches the knife slide against my flesh, pressing at the tip of my nail. Her blue eyes flick up to mine, and I can see the hint of fear in them.
More than that, I can see that she knows I’m telling the truth.
Finally, she nods, almost imperceptibly. “Fine,” she snaps, but her voice breaks a little at the end of the word.
“Good.” I close the knife, slipping it back into my pocket. “Smart girl. Dancing isn’t so bad, is it? Not compared to the pain I could inflict on you.” I nod towards the parcel. “Now put it on,Natalia.”
“I need to stretch first.” She licks her lips nervously. “I can’t just dance without warming up, not after spending nights sleeping in that cage.”
I shrug. “Fine. You’ll do it naked then.” My hand twitches towards my pocket, reminding her of the knife there. “Strip,kotenok.Quickly, before I run out of patience, and do what you need to do.”
I can think of few things more erotic than watching Natalia strip for me. From the very first moment that I saw her, I was captivated by it–by watching her on stage, her beauty and grace and sensuality. There’s little of that in the way she strips now, her gaze filled with resentful anger as she jerks the leather belt open, throwing it aside and snatching the silky fabric of the blue shift dress over her head. She’s clearly making an effort to be as unsexy as possible about it, but it would be impossible for me to not be aroused, no matter how quickly or erratically she removed her clothing.
The sight of her small, perfect breasts trembling as she raises her arms over her head to take off the dress makes me instantly hard, aching to touch her.Waiting to do so will be an exquisite torment,I think as I watch her push the thin fabric of her panties down her hips,but it will be worth it.At last, I’ll have what I want.
