Total pages in book: 42
Estimated words: 39046 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 195(@200wpm)___ 156(@250wpm)___ 130(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 39046 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 195(@200wpm)___ 156(@250wpm)___ 130(@300wpm)
14
Malik
Iwas out of my fucking depth. Within one brutal kiss and his hand around my throat, Rurik had accomplished stripping away my defenses, leaving me feeling vulnerable and raw. Splayed open. For the first time, I was laid bare in front of Rurik, and he was seeing everything I tried so fucking hard to hide from the world.
I’d thought seeing him finally crack, finally give in to that lack of control would make me feel better. Make me feel higher than I usually felt around him. More in control. Because I’d been the one to make his perfect mask fracture.
To break.
But instead, I’d only backed myself into a corner. Dug myself into a proverbial hole. Because Rurik wasn’t like me when he got angry, when he was pissed off with the world.
No… Rurik let his humanity slip away. His eyes were blank and cold as he stared at me, waiting for me to follow his command. I swallowed thickly, hating that my fingers trembled at my sides. I didn’t want to obey. Fuck, I did not want to give him more power than he already had over me. But when he arched that perfect fucking brow at me, impatience leaking into his features, I knew I didn’t have a choice.
Either I’d strip or he’d come do it for me. It was written in every aggressive angle of his body.
We’re playing my game, and your hand is empty.
His words echoed in my head on repeat. It was clear I no longer held the control in this situation, and that lack of control left me spiraling. I was untethered. Fucking lost. I couldn’t even bring myself to be angry in the face of the monster standing in front of me.
It didn’t matter that Rurik was both shorter and smaller than me. Seeing that mask of his gone made him seem larger than life, and now, I understood how he’d come to be Anatoly’s second when he was only in his late twenties.
Rurik had always been nothing more than the devil in disguise.
“Five… four… three…” His words were soft. Careful. Completely the opposite of the cold look in his eyes. And they had me scrambling to tug my shirt over my head. My nail split and blood welled on my thumb when I fumbled to unbutton my jeans and yank my zipper down, but I didn’t pay the pain or the blood any mind.
Once my boots were off and my clothes were kicked to the side, Rurik began slowly working open the buttons on his dress shirt. I damn near swallowed my tongue as slowly, inch by torturous fucking inch, more and more of his tatted skin was revealed to my hungry eyes. My cock, hard and leaking, jerked against my belly, and my fingers twitched.
“On the bed on your stomach,” Rurik growled.
It took me a moment to obey. My feet felt rooted to the floor. I was caught between wanting to obey him and wanting to fight him. See where fighting him might get me. But when he paused, danger flickering in his blue eyes, I bit the inside of my cheek and followed his order.
I knew when to fight fire and when to let it burn me. And today… today I was going to let it burn me. I might come out less burned if I did. If I fought that fire… it might damn well kill me. I wouldn’t win. I knew it with every fiber of my fucking being.
Blowing out a soft breath, I moved onto the mattress, hating that my cheeks flamed as I crawled across the king-sized bed to settle in the middle. I’d never been the bottom. Never. I needed to be in control. But Rurik was one hundred percent a top. A dom. I couldn’t ever see him bottoming for me, especially not when he had a cloak of steely rage wrapped around him. His anger was so damn palpable, I could barely breathe through its cloying thickness.
Slowly, I flattened myself to the mattress, my breath shuddering out of me. I hated that I trembled as I waited on him to do something. Anything. But Rurik was silent behind me. I couldn’t even hear him moving anymore. Was he still undressing? Or was he just staring at me, bare and laid out before him?
Suddenly, my arms were wrenched behind me. I gasped, trying to push up, to knock him away, but then, Rurik was on the bed, one knee resting on my upper back. Vomit clawed its way up my throat as he pinned my wrists together in his steely grasp. And then, the leather of his belt was wrapping around my wrists, capturing them and holding them at the small of my back.
“Rurik,” I gasped, panic clawing at my senses. I swallowed bile. “Rurik—”
His knee moved, and then, his hand was clamping around the nape of my neck. He leaned over next to me, his blue eyes meeting mine. Some of his mask was back in place now, and his eyes were cool and calm.