“So deep.”
“Yes.” The room is cool, yet our skins are slick, her body shaking as I push into her again and again. This feels like more than sex. More than a promise or a communion.
“You love me,” I grunt, my hips beginning to flex as I start to fuck her like I’m angry with her.
“Oh God!” she cries. “Yes!”
“And I love you. You believe it,” I demand.
“Yes. Yes.”
“Good, because I’m about to fuck you like I hate you.” Words die as I press her knees wider, the angle changing, my sense of control slipping as I hold her down and begin to thrust in earnest. Her spine arches, her frantic cries ringing through the room as she takes all I have to give. She gasps and calls my name, the rhythmic tightening of her pussy milking me for all I’m worth.
I screw my eyes tight, riding the wave with her, gritting my jaw against this pleasure thrumming through my veins.
“Again,” I grunt, tugging her upward by the bindings. My arm comes around her, and I roughly grasp her breast, my other hand diving between her legs. “Come for me again, Isla.” Grinding against her, I slide my fingers over her clit, making her buck against me, her cries tremulous. “Your pleasure is so sweet against my fingertips. Can you hear it?”
“No, Niko. Too much,” she complains with a carnal moan.
“For me, darling. One more time.” She nods. Biting her lip, she begins to hum, fucking hum, opening herself to me as my fingers work over her in tight, wet circles. It doesn’t take long, her body jolting as though struck by a live electricity line. My knees threaten to give out as her body pulsates tightly around my cock.
“Yes, that’s it. Give me one more, my love.”
“Love,” Isla pants, “I love. You.”
My vision begins to blur as my orgasm barrels down my spine. I love. She loves. She is mine. With a strangled grunt, I pitch forward, twisting to the side, and pull my whole world with me.
“Am I supposed to punch you or shake your hand?”
“Do what you must,” I answer, closing the car door behind me with a solid thunk. Alexander’s large gray mastiffs sniff around my knees until their master brings them to heel with a shrill whistle. “That’s a good trick. You should teach it to me.”
“It won’t do you any good with my sister”—I glance sharply at him— “my sister’s dog.” He sends me a withering look. “Fucking hothead,” he mutters, making a vague gesture behind me to where an overweight Labrador is sniffing around the front wheel. “Gertrude,” he adds by way of explanation or introduction.
“We’ve already met.” Dropping to my heels, I hold out my hand for her to sniff, which she does. “I’ve come to take you home, Gertie.”
“And where is home?”
I straighten and try not to smile at Alexander looking down his nose at me.
“I’d save it for the butler if I were you.”
“Fuck off,” he enunciates before adding, “I suppose you’d better come inside.”
The hallway is dim, the worn flagstones echoing beneath my feet as I follow Alexander down into the bowels of the house. A right, then a left, and we’re in a warm, light-filled library with aged tomes stacked from floor to ceiling along three walls.
“I feel like I’ve been sent to the headmaster’s office.” I pitch my voice lightly as it looks as though Alexander might be about to put the large antique desk between us.
He really does want to punch me. To be fair, I’d punch me if I were in his place.
“That sounds like a guilty conscience talking.” Dropping to the corner of the desk, he folds his arms across his chest.
“You know me better than that.”
“Because you don’t have a conscience. Your moral compass swings like a drunk pendulum.”
“Or points straight to hell, depending on who you ask.”
“Enough, Van. Tell me what the fuck is going on.”
“I told you. I’ve come to take Gertie home.”
“Home now, is it?” One brow arches like a question mark. “And where might that be? Kensington? Thornbeck? Saint fucking Petersburg!”
“Wherever Isla is. That’s my home now.”
He glares at me, unconvinced, before his gaze dips to the floor. “We’ve been friends for a long time.” His eyes rise slowly, his expression one I’ve never seen before. “I thought I knew you as well as anyone. I thought I could trust you, but that stunt you pulled last week, frightening the fuck out of me, then sending me on a wild goose chase to London? Was any of that even true?”
“That Isla was involved with the Russian mafia?” More than you’d care to know, I think but don’t say. “It happened. You can thank her ex-husband.”
“I will,” he grates out. “When I find where he’s hiding.”
“Not if I find him first.”
He masters a cold-looking smile as he asserts, “I thought you were the Russian mafia?” A shot in the dark.