He went silent. All she could hear was the gentle waves of the ocean outside and his heartbeat under her ear. Had he read between the lines? Did he understand how she felt?
“You can show me in other ways,” he finally said.
She shrugged a shoulder. “I suppose.”
A moment later, he said, “Or you could tell me.”
Tell him? A lump lodged in her throat. She tried to swallow but it was hard to even breathe. Maybe if she blurted it out, it wouldn’t seem so stupid. Or maybe he’d say it back.
“Well,” she started, steeling her courage. “I think I love you.”
Silence again. Would he reject her? Would he laugh? Tears threatened to betray her when she was trying to be strong.
“You think you do?” he finally said.
“I’ve never been in love,” her voice broke, “so I can only guess this is how it feels.” Did he love her too? Had it been too soon to say so? “Do you . . .” It was too hard to say the words
—she couldn’t even force them out. She inhaled a shaky breath and wished she could disappear into the mattress.
“Yes, Varushka.” He squeezed her. “I love you.”
Her heart felt like it might burst. He loved her? Although her first instinct was not to believe him, she had to admit Konstantin always treated her like she was important. His actions, and the way he looked at her, all pointed to his words being true. When they’d first met, she’d wondered if things between them would work. She’d never guessed these deep feelings of affection would happen so fast. When he peered down at her with his dark eyes, full of wicked things, it made her all shivery inside. His eyes were dangerous but his smiles were all warm and his hands tender and sweet. Well, most of the time. When they weren’t, she liked that too.
He provided for her, protected her, listened to her, and now he loved her. She felt like the luckiest girl in the world.
She looked up at him. “So can we? I’m really ready.”
After a long sigh, he asked, “Are you sure it’s what you want? And you don’t feel pressured? You won’t cry tomorrow because you’re not a virgin anymore?”
“I’m sure,” she answered, feeling it right down to her soul.
His dark eyes glittered at her. “We’ll see. For now we will wait. I want you, but I saw how upset you were after you went to confession. I’m not interested in being the man who stands between you and your faith.”
The expression on his face was focused but unfathomable. She shivered, wishing she knew what he was thinking, but also loving that she had no idea.
He made her want to be bad.
For her entire life she’d been a good girl, other than the one time she’d borrowed her brother Vanya’s motorcycle without asking. Compared to how worldly most women her age were, she felt like a silly child. Even in Penza, where she’d gone to university, she’d been shunned by the other girls in her cohort, too innocent and backward to make friends easily. She’d spent her time there studying hard, trying to deserve the chance her rich American benefactor had given her. At the time she’s thought him nearly a saint, to hear his baba and the rest of the village speak of him. He’d done so much for so many.
The way he watched her now, though, as she lay naked in his bed, reminded her he was very much a sinner.
Varushka’s family had been ecstatic when Baba Nina had suggested the match, thinking a marriage to such a decent, wealthy man would be a wonderful opportunity for her. It was, but not in the way they thought. Maybe there was enough darkness in him to have done unscrupulous things in the past, but she didn’t believe that of him now. Papa wanted her to spy on him, and find out if he’d done immoral things to start off in his business, but she didn’t care. Now she just wanted him to take her and make her his own before anything he might have done in the past came to light. To hell with what Papa thought of him. Konstantin was kind and smart and dangerous and sexy—the kind of man she had never imagined she’d catch.
The ocean that separated her from her family was like magic. Here she was free to be a different Varushka—there was no chance that a cousin or neighbor from Nasva would stumble across them here. If she lay with Konstantin, no one would guess it from seeing her guilty face, except maybe for Everly and Kate, who would only hug and congratulate her. Being a good girl around him had a very different definition than what being a good girl meant while living in her papa’s house. She liked Konstantin’s version of good much better.
“Well, then,” she said primly, recklessly pulling down the sheet so he could see all of her. “If you can’t bring yourself to lie with me, I’ll have to fix my problems myself. Again.” She gave a half-shrug, willing her heartbeat to slow. Staring into his eyes, she cupped a breast in one hand and let the other hand slide down between her legs. He didn’t stir, damn him, so she made a show of parting her legs and settling a finger determinedly over her clit.
Konstantin sat up, the bed shaking with his movement. “Stop.”
She forced herself to smile at him slyly, even though she was filled with a mix of arousal and fear. What would he do if she disobeyed?
“But Master, when you said I couldn’t pleasure myself, surely you didn’t mean ever? If you won’t lie with me until we marry, you can’t expect me to wait all that time.”
His eyes narrowed, irritated yet aroused. Maybe teasing him was a foolish idea, but if she didn’t goad him he would just cuddle her all night while she was expected to go back to sleep. She didn’t want to go back to sleep. She wanted to know what all the fuss was about sex. She wanted her big, bad Master to make her scream with pleasure, and maybe with pain, too. He had linked pain and pleasure together in her head so many times that it was getting hard to pull them apart.
Although she’d thought the cane was awful, the memory of him standing over her, holding it and gazing down at her with his eyes alight made it more arousing than a kiss. There was something very intimate about choosing to let the man she loved punish her because he liked it. Knowing one word from her would make him stop was more power than she’d ever felt in her life. Except maybe when she’d made him grunt with pleasure when he came in her mouth.
The heat between her legs intensified, but all Konstantin had done was sit up on the bed.