Chapter 9
With a vicious curse, Sevastyan tossed me aside and exited the bed as if it were aflame, while I scrambled to the headboard.
What had just happened??
As he yanked up his pants, I pulled the sheet over me. Unless I was still dreaming, I was pretty sure I'd just been grinding this man's face while deep-throating him.
Who the hell am I tonight? When Sevastyan hissed as he tucked that beautiful semihard shaft back in his pants, my traitorous mind thought: Whoever she is, I can't wait to be her again.
I braced for a flood of anxiety. Instead, my body purred with satisfaction.
"That shouldn't have happened." He looked disgusted again--but this time with himself.
There were myriad emotions he should be feeling right now. Confusion, wonder, awe. Not disgust.
I was dazed, but in a good way, like I'd just defeated a fever and had come out stronger for it. I was different. I knew all about sex, but I'd never felt the power of it--the power of knowing that a man who obviously worshipped control hadn't been able to control his reactions to me. Just as my own had been uncontrollable.
He searched my face, studying my expression. For what? Disgust to match his? Regret?
The fear he'd faltered to deliver?
The worse he appeared to feel about this, the more comfortable I grew. I guessed I was contrary like that. Joke him if he couldn't take a fuck.
"So is this the part where you get mad and tell me to cover myself?" For good measure, I let the sheet drop as I stretched my arms above my head. To remind him of the breasts he'd just sucked and the nipples he wanted to pierce.
He swiped a palm over his face. "This was a mistake."
"Of course it wasn't. What we did was amazing." In this bed, my dream man had just rocked my world, making me come harder than ever before--three times--and my blow job hadn't been too shabby either. I was beginning to think I was a born fellatrix.
Out the window, I spied a glorious sight. The moon shone over the ocean. The ocean! My vacation was off to a promising start.
He sat on the edge of the bed, elbows on his knees. "It made you happy, to be used by me?"
Perhaps not so promising. I raised my brows with amusement. "I orgasmed three times; you did once. Who's using whom, Siberian?"
His lips parted in surprise. Well, that shut him up.
Tonight I'd realized something. I'd always thought that when I lost my virginity, I would be ceding something. Now I comprehended that with a man like Sevastyan, I'd be gaining something.
Pleasure to boggle my brain and memories to last my lifetime.
My entire mind-set about the deed was evolving. Insight: if a guy I had sex with ever carved a notch into his bedpost, I'd tell him to carve one into mine too--and then to go make me a fucking sammich.
Sevastyan said, "This was an indiscretion that must never be repeated."
"Because I'm taboo?" I frowned as a thought struck me. "Tonight wouldn't, like, get you killed by Kovalev or anything. Right?"
"Of course not. He's not a murderous tyrant."
"Then what is it?"
"I took advantage of his daughter. I can scarcely believe I've touched you." In the moonlight, I could see color tinting his cheekbones as he muttered, "Struck you."
"I ended up loving every second of what we did." I, Natalie Porter, had gotten my rocks off while being spanked. And I was going to roll with it.
I felt like a phone that had downloaded a new platform, but never been reset. When I'd orgasmed with him, I'd blipped, I'd blinked, and now I was ramped up.
He'd reset me, tweaking how I would feel about sex for the rest of my life. "Sevastyan, don't turn a positive into a negative." Joke him, joke him . . .
He faced me with a suspicious expression. "You were tight. Very much so. Surely you're not a virgin."
With a defiant look, I shrugged. "Guess you didn't find out everything about me."
He bit out a dumbfounded "Blyad'!" The word meant whore, but Russians said it like we might say Oh, fuck!
"This is not a big deal." It wasn't like I still had an intact hymen. My arsenal had taken care of that.
"Then why in the hell are you on birth control?"
So he'd seen the patch on my hip? "Various reasons." Mainly, I used it to regulate my periods.
But he wasn't listening to me. "It's bad enough to do this to a woman of experience." He shot to his feet, prowling the suite from one wall to the other. "It's another to despoil a girl who's never been touched!"
"Despoil? You didn't just say that archaic word! Well, it's only to be expected since we didn't have a chaperone and your manroot is so virile."
He scowled. "I might not look at it in such an 'archaic' way, but I don't know how others will react."
"Others? Like my father?"
Brusque nod.
"I thought you knew him so well. Well enough to tell me how great my new life is going to be."
"I do know him well. But he's never had a daughter before. I have no idea how he would take this."
"And what if I weren't his daughter?"
"You are." He stabbed his fingers through his thick hair.
"Answer the question."
He swung his head around, giving me a look so raw and primal that I gasped. "If you weren't, I'd be buried inside you right now. Devstvennitsa ili net." Virgin or not. "What was supposed to sate my appetite has only whetted it."
Facts: He'd fantasized about me for the last month. He craved having sex with me, even if I was a virgin. He'd seemed to like certain things about my personality. He wanted more of me; I sure as hell wanted more of him--
"But this can never happen again," he added, his tone ringing with finality.
Was I going to be cock-blocked by some twisted kind of mafiya logic? I rose, walking on my knees to the edge of the bed, loving how his brows-drawn gaze followed the sway of my breasts. "I want it to happen again. And I usually get what I want. If you're not strong enough to resist me, then that's on you."
He narrowed his eyes at the challenge, seeming not to realize that he'd stepped closer to me. And then again.
"If you tempt me, I won't be so gentle with you."
This had been gentle?
When I shivered with eagerness, he made a blustering sound. "You said I confused you? You baffle me. Is it me that you think you want, or merely the pleasure you crave?"
"I want the opportunity to find out."
"I believed that you would know better than this, that you had better instincts with men."
My eyes shot wide. "You didn't just say that. My instincts are untouchable!"
"Don't you get it? Your father intends to give you the goddamn world; even if I wanted it, a man like me will never be in your future." He turned toward the cabin door.
Staring after him, I murmured, "How strange."
He paused at the threshold without turning around. As if he couldn't help himself, he said, "What is strange?"
I tilted my head. "That you think I won't be deciding who gets to be in my future."
Shoulders bunched with tension, he slammed the door behind him.
Chapter 10
"My alarm!" I shot upright in bed, knowing I was late for work, wondering why the hell my clock hadn't gone off. "Late!"
Rubbing my eyes, I gradually comprehended that I was on a plane, that all the events of last night weren't a dream.
What had happened in this bed wasn't a dream.
I turned toward the door, found Sevastyan hanging up garment bags, a suitcase at his feet. "Relax, Natalie. You no longer have those worries."
Whereas I was naked, wearing nothing but a sheet over my lap and my wildly curling hair over my breasts, he was clad in an immaculate three-piece gray suit and a long coat. It fit his broad shoulders flawlessly.
I blurted out, "You look incredible." Like a billion bucks, like the dream man who'd rocked my world. No, he'd knocked it off its axis. It was as if I'd thought pleasure was only rated on a scale of one to ten, and then this guy had seductively whispered, "Didn't you know? The upper end is infinity."
And then this guy, let's just call him Sevastyan, had demonstrated. Surely that deserved an encore?
At my compliment, his high cheekbones grew tinged with color, but he said nothing.
Roll with it, Nat. "Hey, we've landed? I can't believe I slept through it." I frowned to see that the curtains were closed.
Had he come back in here after I'd fallen asleep again and drawn them for me? Awww.
"How much did I miss?" I'd slept like the dead--how long had I been out, anyway?--and now felt rested for the first time in weeks. A quick inventory of my body told me I was sore, but in all the right places.