Total pages in book: 63
Estimated words: 57296 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 286(@200wpm)___ 229(@250wpm)___ 191(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 57296 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 286(@200wpm)___ 229(@250wpm)___ 191(@300wpm)
At the same time, my heart lurched, because for months now I had longed to call my master by what seemed to me so obviously his proper title: gospodin—not just master, but lord. To finally have the chance to speak the word aloud, here at what seemed the terrible end of my service to him and in that awful mangling of the true, musical sound of the word in Russian… it drew a sob from deep inside my chest.
“Listen,” Ivan said urgently into my ear, apparently having forgotten all about the sudden revelation of my Russian. “I’m not taking you to Belkonov. I’m sending you back to America. I’ll tell them I killed you. You’re going to do something disrespectful when I let you up, so that I have a reason.”
My heart beat wildly. My mouth open and shut, too many words crowding into my brain. The confirmation, for which I had hoped so fervently, that Ivan must have feelings for me—might even love me—seemed to take up all the available space in my head. I desperately needed that space for other things, though, right now: my mission, above all, and the way that Ivan sending me away would doom it even as an utterly unexpected chance opened to save both of us.
Should I tell him? Could I tell him without placing us in danger, given that Ivan clearly thought someone had bugged the car?
I had to remain cautious, even if it meant losing this opportunity. I genuinely didn’t care about my own life at that moment, but if one of Ivan’s dangerous rivals or, worse, scheming underlings—Belkonov himself, possibly—could hear me, the suggestion that Ivan might fall under an outside influence would mean death for him.
Worse, if the Pretorian Guard thought my mission had failed, they might well kill Ivan themselves. They had sent me to try to turn him, but having me kill him and leave him in a compromising position had represented their second choice: it would have allowed them an opportunity to strengthen another, more pliable warlord and have him either destroy or annex the empire Ivan had inherited from Klimatov. My trainer had told me, though, that simply killing Ivan and hoping for a similar result was their probable course of action if I couldn’t turn him or kill him.
For a moment—a moment of weakness, I knew, but one I couldn’t have lived without—I let myself feel Ivan’s strong grip around my waist and my throat. I let the warmth of requited love between a dominant man and a submissive woman fill my chest, all too sure that it represented both the first and the last time I would feel it, safe within Ivan’s arms despite that grip being so rough—no, because that grip was so rough and so masterful.
“Thank you, Master,” I whispered.
His next words were out loud, and they were sneering and scornful.
“Get the fuck off my lap, whore. I’m done with you. And take off that coat. You are to be naked in the presence of men from now on. That’s the way Belkonov likes his sluts, I hear.”
CHAPTER 18
Heather
Ivan pushed me down into a crouch on the floor of the limo, looking up at him. The car drove on in silence for a few seconds, in the direction, I felt sure, of Belkonov’s house.
I tried to quiet the roiling thoughts in my head, the confused emotions in my chest and tummy, the tug of all the sensations that seemed to run across my skin like fire: the memory of Ivan’s hands on me; the way they had possessed me at waist and throat and then pushed me dismissively away; how his touch and his casual manhandling had evoked the terrible whipping he had given me, on top of Pyotr’s lashes, and on top of the soreness that Anya’s horrible wooden spoon had left.
Slowly, looking directly into Ivan’s face, I started to take off my coat. I needed to create the scene my master had specified—some moment of disrespect for the benefit of Anatoly in the front seat, and whoever else might be listening. My mind had gone completely blank, though; the expression on Ivan’s face, though I knew its coldness must not represent his actual feelings, nevertheless sent panic surging through me.
I needed time; instinctively, I shrugged the coat from my shoulders as sluggishly as I could. I realized as I felt my nakedness revealed, and I saw the look in my master’s eyes, that I must appear to Ivan as if I meant to do some kind of seductive striptease for him, as if I were trying to win back his favor with the revelation of my pretty body.
I tried to lean into the idea, a plan beginning to form in my head. The part of the rejected concubine, desperate to avoid her casual transfer from one brutal warlord’s bed to another’s, like a role in some dark, suspenseful thriller, took hold inside me. I didn’t have to imagine too much of her, either, because I had supposed that to be my real situation only a few minutes before. More, the terror that came from my realization that the Guard might simply kill him threatened to well up into sheer panic at any moment.