Total pages in book: 81
Estimated words: 76142 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 381(@200wpm)___ 305(@250wpm)___ 254(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76142 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 381(@200wpm)___ 305(@250wpm)___ 254(@300wpm)
I try to shut myself off from this, but I can’t. I’ve allowed him to make me vulnerable beneath him. Every time he’s stripped me bare. Every time he’s made me cry. Every time he’s wrought pleasure from my body and held me in the aftermath of pain and pleasure. Every time he’s called me his little kisa, and kissed me, he’s molded my heart to his. And as much as I wish it wasn’t so, I can’t deny the way his beautiful, strapping body, gleaming in sweat and taut with power, makes me feel. How I want to touch him in his anger and passion and rage, to curl up in his lap and kiss him until the wrath within him seeps away.
Some of his anger seems to abate while he quirks a stern eyebrow at me. “How dare I?” he asks. “You’re cuffed and caged and have the audacity to scold me?” He shakes his head. “It’s unfortunate I was too angry to punish you before I left this room, Calina.” I blink. He’s still calling me Calina. He doesn’t know who I am yet. “It seems being caged and helpless hasn’t brought out the submissive in you at all.”
“Submissive in me?” I spit back out. “I did nothing to deserve this. I’ve done nothing but pay off my debt as you’ve asked. I’ve allowed you to do anything you want to me, and yet here I am, caged like an animal.”
“You haven’t been tamed at all.”
“Tamed? Was that part of our agreement?”
Uncrossing his arms, he stalks to me. I close my mouth now; I know I’m pushing this, and he has the power to hurt me so easily. “Here you are,” he says with practiced patience. When he reaches the cage, he crouches before me and a muscle ticks in his jaw. “Mine, yet not fully, for you belong to another. One you had the audacity to call the day before our wedding.” He can’t hide the pain in his tone. But now he’s told me at least part of why he’s angry.
I shake my head. “I called my friend,” I tell him, but I’m scared to tell him more, to tell him the full truth. If he investigates and finds Calina… or is it already too late? Are his men on their way this very minute?
I begin to tremble again, and I try to speak to him reasonably.
“Please, Demyan. Listen to me. If you’ll only listen to the truth.”
“The truth?” he asks. “Do you think I would believe you?”
“What reason have I given you not to?”
But his phone rings on the bedside table before we can continue. Not answering me, he stalks out of the room and takes the call. Though he speaks in Russian, I hear him curse.
Without a backward glance, he leaves me and shuts the door behind him. I’m still helpless and bound in the cage, unable to control a single thing beyond my own breathing.
Chapter 17
“Demyan, there’s something you need to see.” It’s Maksym on the phone. Between the call I got from Filip early this morning and my interaction with Calina, my nerves feel frayed and electric, fraught with tension.
“What is it?” I snap. I want to shower. I want her to stay in her cage to punish her for not being who I thought she was. For sneaking and lying.
For not being fully mine as I imagined.
I know now that she never was, that our entire arrangement was meant to serve one purpose. How could I have allowed myself to be weakened by her beauty and charm? How could I have let myself feel anything but detachment as I made her serve her purpose here? I want to break things, to hurt someone, to somehow release this anger that pulses through me like liquid lava, threatening destruction for anyone and anything in its path.
“Is it urgent?” I ask. “Why can’t you tell me over the phone?”
“Because you need to see it. Vladak has reported back to us after investigating this morning.”
“Come to me,” I tell him. I never allow them to come here, to my private residence. But I don’t want to leave Calina again.
I don’t know what I’m going to do to her.
I want to yank her out of that cage and turn her over my knee and redden her ass. I want to take her out and impale her on my cock, mark her with my come and make her scream her pleasure so she remembers who her master is.
But I still don’t trust myself not to hurt her. It was why I put her in there to begin with. Before they arrive, I walk to the doorway between the rooms and shut the door so Calina doesn’t see them come or hear what we say.
I can’t look at her right now. It’s killing me to have her apart from me, restrained as she is. I want to pull her to me and ask her why. I want to look into the depths of those beautiful eyes and find out if this means anything to her at all.