Though my hopeful musings nose-dived when he left with a parting word.
“Don’t ever fucking disobey me in front of my men again.”
kilig
(n.) the feeling of butterflies in one’s stomach
Inked fingers slid down my legs, and the roughness of his hands left goose bumps in their wake. My breath caught when he pushed my thighs apart. My skin was so sensitive, the lightest touch hummed below the surface. His mouth trailed down my neck, sucking and biting a path to my breasts. An emptiness pulsed in my core, begging for pressure and friction—
A thump snuffed out the flame inside of me like a candle.
My eyes shot open to see the noise was due to the book falling off my lap. I exhaled a ragged breath and, with a sense of disgust at the immoral daydream that sucked me under, I got up from the window seat to pace my room.
It was after eleven, but I couldn’t sleep. Every time I closed my eyes, a restlessness played beneath my skin, stretching my body thin. The pull of the moon was working its magic on my newly defiled state. I wished that was all it was, but my fantasies had nothing to do with carnal rituals and lesbian trysts in the woods.
I could still feel him all over me: my mouth, my neck, my mind. The persistent ache between my thighs. At the thought, my heartbeat slid to my core, my nipples hardening beneath my tank top.
I was losing my mind.
With rising frustration, I grabbed my book and padded down the hall. The house sat still and dark without Ronan’s presence. He left for Moscow shortly after Yulia finished stitching my wrist and hadn’t returned. I wondered if he was dining on Nadia at the moment; if he was fucking her how she needed it. The thought soured in my stomach, so I pushed it away.
I headed down the stairs, which gave a quiet creak under my weight. Moonlight cast the library in rays of silver that sparkled with particles of dust. I stretched to my toes to put The Grapes of Wrath back in its rightful place. And then the familiar smell of cigar smoke—spice and eucalyptus—filled my senses.
“Kotyonok.”
The book slipped from my fingers, and I spun around, my heartbeat shaking. Ronan sat behind his desk, a formidable shadow below a white cloud of smoke.
I put a hand on my chest. “God, you scared me.” It was at that moment I realized I no longer feared his presence and that the monster I once dreaded was now the one I was relieved to run into in the dark.
“If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were trying to seduce me,” he drawled, his dark gaze running down my bare thighs with a tingling glide of heat. “But we both know your efforts are more forward—and, shall we say, awkward—than that.”
He looked and sounded like a gentleman, but as he exhaled an indifferent breath of smoke, tendrils curled like horns above his head.
He was talking about the first time I kissed him—how I almost missed his mouth completely. The annoying comment should stamp down all lust inside, but it didn’t.
“It’s not as if your seduction efforts couldn’t use a little more tact,” I told him.
He watched me for a second. “Don’t worry about my efforts, kotyonok.”
I raised a brow. “Then don’t worry about mine.”
His eyes held mine, something darker than the shadows slithering through them. Silence settled in the air, putting pressure on my lungs. Trying to find my breath, I pulled my attention from him, picked up the book, and made sure I didn’t damage the spine before putting it back in its spot.
I felt his gaze trail down my back, over my ass, and to the backs of my thighs. The look seared—hot and cold, like the burn of an ice cube on skin. I skimmed my fingers across the old spines, unable to focus on anything besides his presence wrapping around my body like black silk.
The ibuprofen Yulia shoved at me every four hours kept the pain in my wrist down, but it did nothing to stop the throb between my legs. The heat inside rivaled the time I was pressed against a hotel door with Ronan’s thigh working me higher and higher.
My mind hit rewind, taking me back to that night in Moscow and my stay thereafter. Something clicked into place. The realization hit me in the chest, and my fingers slipped down the spines.
I turned to face him. “Why did you play with me for so long when you knew who my papa was from the beginning?”
Ronan’s eyes narrowed, but he didn’t say anything.
He didn’t need to.
I knew why he’d waited so long to follow through with his plan of revenge.
He liked me.