AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The seconds ticked by, stretching into hours as I waited for him to stand, grab me by the scruff, and throw me out of his apartment—out of his life. I finally stole a glance in his direction, wondering what the fuck was taking him so long.
No surprise, I found him staring at me. I expected a look of disgust or anger but he looked remarkably calm, or at least indifferent.
At last, he cleared his throat and asked, “What does he want?”
“Me. He wants me. He won’t stop until I go back to him,” I replied with a laugh that bordered on sudden hysteria. Saying it out loud made me sound fucking nuts but it was the truth. All of it. And now the moment had arrived where Misha needed to decide who he was going to believe. Me, a fucking prostitute and low-level drug dealer? Or Ken, the Ivy League-educated politician with a squeaky-clean record?
“I won’t let him anywhere near you ever again,” Misha said softly but sternly. “Understood? He will never touch you. He will never speak to you. If he so much as looks at you, I’ll carve his eyes out of his skull.”
The sincerity in his voice, more than the actual words, made my heartbeat falter. He was fucking serious. That meant he believed me. Me! Even though I was relieved, I didn’t really feel any better.
“You can’t stop him, Misha. He’s an alderman. Before that, he was a lawyer. He’s connected.”
“No oneis that connected. For the sake of maintaining peace, he’ll get one warning to stay away from you. After that, he’ll learn that actions have consequences.”
“He’s not going to listen to you. He doesn’t care. He has a superiority complex bigger than Lake Michigan.”
Slipping his hand inside his suit jacket, Misha pulled out his cell phone. My heart hammered a little harder as his thumb moved over the screen. With the angle, I couldn’t tell if he was ordering a hit or a fucking pizza.
Finally, he turned the phone around and handed it to me.
I almost dropped it as soon as I saw what was on the screen. A black, bloated hand with blood all over the place stared up at me while I gaped back at it. “What the fuck is this?!”
Taking his phone, he returned it to his pocket and smiled softly. “What happened to the man who punched you the other week.”
Obviously, I heard him but I didn’t understand. I didn’t even know who that guy was! Some drunken idiot I’d mostly forgotten about, save for the fading bruise on my cheek. He wasn’t the first guy to punch me and he probably wouldn’t be the last.
“Why? Why would you do that?Howdid you do that?”
He raised his hand slowly, pausing when I glanced at it out of the corner of my eye, afraid it was on its way to hit me for being ungrateful. When I returned my gaze to his, his hand kept going, caressing the side of my face where the bruise happened to be. “You are under my protection. You have been since you came to work at Delirium. I would do this for any of my people. But you? The things I would do for you are unspeakable.”
I didn’t doubt it for a second. All of the warning bells in my head were quiet. No tiny voice screaming at me that he was lying, nothing. The truth was quiet, calm, absolutely sure of itself and the righteousness of its very existence—just like Misha.
Relief and gratitude propelled me forward. My lips crashed against his, trying to communicate every feeling I had but couldn’t find the words for. He groaned into my mouth, spurring me on to kiss him harder. When he broke away to gasp in a breath, I slipped off the couch and settled between his legs.
I’d no more than grabbed his belt buckle when his large hands came down on mine, stopping me.
“You don’t have to do that,” Misha said gently.
“No, it’s ok. I want to.”
“Because it’ll give you pleasure or because you think it’s what I want?”
It felt like a trick question and in the time it took me to even process it, he was on his feet, pulling me to mine.
“Have you ever experienced your own pleasure, or has it always been for someone else?” Misha asked, trailing his fingertips down the side of my face. His thumb brushed against my lower lip, pulling it down ever so slightly, ensnaring his gaze.
I didn’t know how to answer that either. I wasn’t even sure I could speak. Everything about him was so poised, so effortless, it was hypnotizing. In answer to his question, I thought I had. Didn’t an orgasm count? And until that moment, I would have said “Yes.” But the way he asked it, the way his gaze met mine, I had a feeling the answer was without a doubt “No.”
“Let me show you,” he whispered, his lips hovering over mine.
Still too awestruck to say anything, all I could do was nod.
One of his hands slipped around my waist while the other stroked the back of my head, holding onto the base of my neck and pulling me closer. His tongue swept over his bottom lip a moment before he slanted his mouth over mine.
It was just a kiss but it was so fucking sensual I almost melted into a boneless heap right there. Even when his tongue slipped between my parted lips, caressing mine, it wasn’t demanding or rushed. He kissed me like he had all the time in the world, like this was all he ever wanted to do. And by God, I’d let him.
The hand at my waist slipped under the hem of my shirt and grazed across my ribcage, up my back, curling me against him even tighter. All I felt was Misha—his arms surrounding me, his velvety tongue, his hard body pressing against mine. The scent of him, the sound of him—every part of him enveloped me. I should have felt trapped, caged in, suffocated. But I didn’t. Somehow, he made me feel safe.
