The Professional (21 page)

“Bend your will to mine.” The strain in his voice made my toes curl. He lashed me; he thrust into my clinging channel. He maddened me. “When I order you to come,
obey
.”

Thrust, thrust, thrust
to the staccato sounds of my whipping.

I sobbed from the intensity. Gone light-headed. Euphoric. “Sevastyan, oh, God,
please
.” A keening moan burst from my lungs.

“Ah, woman, your
sounds
! Come for me. Now.”

I plummeted over the edge. Core-deep contractions made me scream with abandon, made me jerk against the ties as my body spasmed.

Lost in the throes, I heard myself confessing things: how I dreamed of him fucking me. How much I hungered to take him with my mouth. How I’d masturbated to fantasies of him.

Each admission was punctuated by his ragged groans.

When the pleasure finally subsided—even more heart-stopping than the orgasm before—I was left senseless, struggling to catch my breath. To
process
what he’d just made me feel.

With a loving kiss against my thigh, he gently removed the handle, leaving me empty once more. Yet I realized I still wasn’t sated, that this need had only grown. Where would this insanity end? How could he make me into this mindless creature?

While he kept demonstrating such control, I was a slave to sensation. To
him
.

And hadn’t he told me he wanted to make me his slave?

I felt him untying my blindfold. “Look at yourself,” he commanded.

I blinked down. Didn’t recognize myself. This was a stranger’s body. Her pale skin was bright pink and slicked with sweat. Locks of stark red hair snaked over heavy breasts, coiling around lewdly protruding nipples. Her little clitoris was so swollen it jutted from her mons.

This stranger was a picture of wicked need. She looked like she’d been used. Just as Sevastyan had said.

Not a stranger.

Me
.

Revelation. The blindfold had come off—and
I
had been revealed, a new me that I hadn’t known could exist. I gazed at my abused nipples in wonderment, staring as if in a trance.

When his groan broke my stare, I twisted my head toward him.

He was revealed too. Just as my body had changed, so had his. His muscles were impossibly larger, corded with tension under his mist-slicked skin.

But nothing could compete with the view of his magnificent cock. His shaft was engorged, as if begging to be buried within hot flesh. In the firelight, moisture glistened atop the plum-colored head, making my mouth water.

He was . . . a
god
, with skin burnished by fire.

When I could drag my gaze from his body, I drank in the sight of his face. His lips were thinned, that scar a razor slash of white. His wet hair tangled over his lean, flushed cheeks. His noble face was filled with pain.

Pain earned while delivering my pleasure.

And in his smoldering eyes was his own madness. A bone-deep yearning that called to mine.

With his accent thick, he bit out one word:
“Obsessed.”

I didn’t know if he was talking about himself or me. Didn’t know if it was a question or an answer. Imagining it was the word foremost in his thoughts, I replied with the one foremost in mine:
“Revelation.”

His brows drew tight, and he hissed,
“Yes.”
 When he reached for the tie at my wrists, his cock slid across my sensitive belly and
streamed pre-cum from the tip. It was like a taunt, a reminder of what I’d been denied, stoking my lust even more. I was still sizzling inside, seething like him.

“And we’re not through,” he promised. He loosened the knot—enough for me to eventually free my hands?—then stepped away. Leaning back against the nearby wall, he began to masturbate his mouthwatering cock.

I was transfixed by the erotic sight: a god, thrumming with need, self-pleasuring.

Then I realized he meant to deprive me yet again. “No, stop!” Crazed for him, I struggled to free myself the rest of the way—while he watched me with golden eyes.

Always watching me.

As he slowly fucked his fist, a shining bead welled from the crown. My eyes followed it as it slid down to the edge of his hand, and I wanted to cry. I strained harder, panic making my hands clumsy. “Please stop!” I was ravenous for him. Wild with hunger. I bit down on my lip, trying to stave it off.

He didn’t stop, just continued torturing me with what I couldn’t have. To be this close to him, yet kept apart? It was
killing
me.

“Please wait for me!” I wasn’t merely stupid with lust, I was sick with it, fevered. “I
need
you!”

Then he spoke. “What you feel right now . . . I
always
feel. Since I first saw you.”

The way I felt right now?

How had he survived it for so long?

But we didn’t have to feel that way anymore. I clawed at the ties, freed my hands! Never gazing away from him, from his twisting fist and rippling muscles, I began to tear at the knots around my knees. “
Please
, wait . . .”

And then I was free.

Brows drawn tight, he groaned in anticipation, in . . . pain.

I could ease it.
Devour him. Drain him.
Ignoring the twinges in my muscles, I scrambled up.

A split second later I was on my knees before him, my nails embedded in his pecs, his length sucked deep into my throat.

His roar shook the room like thunder. As he continued yelling to the ceiling, I bathed his cock with my tongue, worshipping it. Impaled my throat with that broad head. Moaned with every hint of cum.

I raked my nails down his torso, then used one hand to clench his ass, the other to heft his heavy testicles.

He buried his fingers in my hair. In a voice so rough I barely recognized it, he murmured Russian to me.

Ordering me to keep milking him with my hungry little mouth.

Informing me that he would gladly do murder to possess me.

Declaring that my body belonged to him alone.

His unguarded words were about to send me over the edge when he grated, “You will wait for me . . . wait for my seed on your tongue.”

His dusky sac tightened in my palm as his body prepared for release. I didn’t think the meaty girth of his cock could get any thicker between my lips. Then it did. That swelling of semen was right below the crown.

“Look at me,
milaya
.”

I peered up to find him frozen, his face a mask of agony, his body captured in perfect strain. As I tongued him, our gazes locked. For what felt like eternity, we were held suspended.

Then to the sound of his anguished bellow, heat jetted against the back of my throat.

He began thrusting furiously. I gripped his ass with both my hands to feel his muscles flexing as he worked to spend every last drop inside me.

“You”—thrust—“are”—thrust—“
mine
.”

With his cum on my tongue—my permission—I dipped my fingers to my clit and gave one sensuous slippery stroke.

Orgasm. Exploding. Clenching bliss. Fingers drawing it out, wringing more spasms.
Fuck. Fuck!
 Tears streamed down my face as I swallowed him, drinking till he was emptied and shuddering, rubbing my pussy until I was too sensitive for more. . . .

Still gently sucking on him, I rested my cheek against his thigh. With infinite tenderness, he caressed my face.
Now
I was sated.

When his softening cock slipped out of my mouth, a drop of semen dribbled down my chin. He swiped it with his thumb. With an expression like awe on his face, he gave it back to my waiting tongue.

As I gazed up at him and sucked his thumb, his eyes darkened with possession.

Deep. Brutal. Never-ending.

He regarded me like I was a trapped thing, already his to enjoy.

Never-ending. Never-ending.
Never-ending
.

Dear God, what had I done?

A
s reality began to set in, I stood on unsteady legs.

I needed to get away from this man, who had more control over my emotions and desires than I’d ever had. This man who had altered me forever, showing me things I could never unsee.

Could never un
feel
.

I hadn’t
decided
to become a slave; he’d made me one.

I’d almost had sex with him. Almost slipped the ring on my finger. Yet I didn’t know him. I didn’t know about his past, his family, or even what he liked to do in his free time.

I didn’t know if we were compatible outside of sex.

“No, no, Natalie.” He reached for me. “Don’t wake up yet.”

Some shadowy part of me didn’t want to wake. I squeezed my forehead, torn. I was dizzy from the heat, from the life-altering pleasure.

When he grasped my hand and began leading me toward the small pool, I allowed it. He wrapped his arms around me, then dropped us in.

I shivered at the temperature, but I needed it, hadn’t realized
how overheated I was. He set me on my feet in the waist-high water, then leaned down to press his lips to mine.

I pushed against his chest, but he held me close, savoring my mouth with his, coaxing with his tongue to make me forget myself. . . .

Lost in bliss all over again, I was dimly aware that he was cleaning me, learning me. A big palm caressed between my legs. Another kneaded one of my breasts. Unhurried, as if he had all the time in the world.

Right when I was becoming chilled again, he carried me out. Before I could even formulate a protest, he was toweling me off. I wanted to tell him to stop, to leave me alone. To just let me process everything he’d done to me.

But I was distracted by his low growling sounds as he tended to me—drying my breasts, softly rubbing the curls between my legs. His shaft grew stiff again, swaying with his movements.

Were we about to start this all over again? Was I learning nothing? In all these interludes with Sevastyan, I hadn’t been Natalie. I’d been
Natalya
. And that brainless hussy didn’t seem to know better.

I stepped back from him, turned to search for my clothes. “I need to get dressed.
We
need to.”

“Don’t do this,” he murmured from behind me.

“Another command?” Snatching up a robe for myself, I tossed him a towel.

He must’ve sensed I was about to freak out, because he covered himself, wrapping it around those narrow hips. “You
regret
this?” His voice was filled with disbelief. “You can’t. I won’t
let
you.” As if he hadn’t shocked me enough today, he scooped me up in his arms.

“What are you doing?”

He sat on the bench, cradling me, cupping the back of my head in a protective embrace.

Only fair, since he’d shattered me today.

In the cloak of the steam, I nearly broke down. “How can you change me so much?” I whispered against his ear.
“How?”
At one point I’d thought I would lose my mind.

“I haven’t. I’ve just shown you a different facet of yourself.”

Clasping him tight, using him like a lifeline, I buried my face in the spot where his neck met his shoulder. “
Why
are you showing me these things?”

He said nothing.

I pulled back to meet his eyes, found it impossible not to kiss his face. My lips touched upon the askew bridge of his nose, his chin, then smoothed over the lean perfection of his cheeks. He squeezed me tighter against him, seeming to relish this attention, this affection from me.

Between kisses, I asked, “What do you want from me?”

Silence.

“Did you mean what you said about obsession?”

He turned his head away.

“Ugh!” I disentangled myself from him and scrambled to my feet, searching for my undergarments. “You infuriate me!” I found my panties near the fire, half dry from the heat. Dragged them on.

Bra. Where the hell was my—got it. I turned from him, shucked off my robe, then strapped on my bra.

“Damn it, Natalie, I don’t know what to say to you to ease the way you feel.”

“Of course you don’t.” I whirled around on him. “Because
we’re all but strangers! I don’t know you!” With difficulty, I pulled my damp pants up my legs.

“What do you want to know?”

I had so many questions. How to decide on a first? “Those tattoos on your knees—they mean you’ll kneel before no one, don’t they?” According to my research. “Which would indicate that you’re a
vor
yourself.”

“That doesn’t matter. I follow Kovalev.”

Sevastyan was as much of a criminal aristocrat as my father. Yet another detail I’d had no idea about. “That’s all you’re going to say about it?” When I spotted my blouse, I pounced on it.

“I don’t find it easy to talk about myself.”

My fingers paused on my buttons. “Well, it wasn’t easy for me to let you tie me up! But I trusted you in this.”

“Would you take that back? Undo this afternoon, if you could?” He collected his own clothes, beginning to dress.

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I don’t understand it, or you.” I shoved my wet hair back, knotting it at my nape. “You ignored me for weeks, then put on the full-court press today. Why now?”