But right now, he’d be damned if he was just going to let her cut him up and walk away with a few yoga breaths.
Now it was he who became calm. Deadly calm as he closed the space between them and said, “You should have eaten your lunch, zhena.”
She threw him an annoyed look. “I wasn’t hungry.”
“This would be easier if you had eaten your lunch.”
Before she could ask the next obvious question, he had her trapped against the door that led to the rear bedroom cabin. Then he began his torture. With a single kiss.
39
Sam cursed herself for letting her profession cloud her instincts. She’d been prepared to stand strong against any argument Nikolai might offer against letting her file for divorce. She’d readied herself for yelling, threats—and though she suspected deep down in her soul that Nikolai would never lay a hand on her, there was a part of her that always braced for possible punches. Seventeen years with her mother and over a decade working in domestic violence shelters. There were just some things you couldn’t unlearn.
But she’d never learned how to deal with being kissed. At least not kissed the way Nikolai kissed her. Hot and urgent, like it was the end of the world and they’d both be blinked out of existence if she didn’t return his erotic overtures.
It screwed with her senses, never failed to take her reasoning skills offline. And instead of pushing him away, she found her hands clutching at his sleeves, bunching the material in her hands as his mighty body pressed hers hard into the cabin’s rear door.
Why did kissing him feel like such consolation now? Like she’d been out in the desert during their argument and he was now welcoming her home?
“Da, she now acts like real wife in all ways, just as I wanted.”
The sudden memory of those words made her heart scream with sadness, and in a fit of self-disgust she ripped her lips away from his and pushed against him.
But it was like pushing against a stone wall. Nikolai barely moved. “Zhena, don’t… don’t push me away.” His voice was ragged against her lips. “Talk to me. Tell me what I did. Tell me how to fix it. Please.”
She could stand up to any command this man gave her and throw it back in his face, but when he begged…?
She shook her head, wishing he were a different man. That she was a different woman, one who could be okay with a relationship built on sex without love. On manipulation with the ultimate goal being her complete surrender. She thought of the woman she’d fobbed off on Nikolai the night they met and knew there were a lot more like her waiting in the wings. Women who would be happy to have a rich husband, one who also happened to be amazing in the sack. There were a lot of women who would be satisfied with that, no love required.
“You can’t fix it,” she told him again, her body pulsing with desire. “This is the end, Nikolai. Please just let me—”
He hit her with another sizzling kiss, this one so hot, it pushed her head back against the door and made her back arch.
Nikolai quickly took advantage of her lifted pelvis, plunging his hand down inside her waistband. “Ride my hand, zhena.”
Oh God, she was lost, she realized, feeling her body become soft and pliable as soon as he touched her. Sam didn’t realize she was obeying his command until he said, “Yes, just like that.”
“Last time,” she gasped, flailing at straws to get out of this with some pride intact. “One last time and never again.”
His powerful hand pumped into her with relentless strokes. “Zhena, you’re so wet, so hot for me, every time I touch you—” he broke off with a frustrated growl. “How can you want to leave me? How can you?”
Of course the answer to that question was complicated, but the orgasm that soon overtook her wasn’t. She bit down on her lip to keep from crying out and letting Dave know exactly what they were now doing in the back of the plane.
“So wet, zhena, so wet,” he whispered against her ear as she climaxed all over his fingers.
Before she could come all the way down, he lifted her up and carried her over to the couch just a few feet away. Pushing away the Russian newspaper he’d been reading earlier in the flight, he sat her down on the cushioned seat. But instead of entering her like he usually did after he’d gotten her to come once, he began slowly unbuttoning her short sleeved blouse.
“What… what are you doing?” she asked.
“If this is last time I can have you, I want to remember it,” he answered.
So he was taking her condition on having sex with him seriously. A dribble of sad gratitude trickled through Sam’s heart, despite the shame of knowing she still couldn’t resist him when it came to this. Never in this.
Nikolai’s hands worked and soon her top was all the way off, followed by her bra, which was removed with an easy flick of the wrist. His eyes heated up when the bra fell away, revealing her breasts, swollen with tightly beaded nipples at the center of their aureoles.
“Zhena…” he said, his tone regretful as he dealt with everything below her waist: her skirt and panties, her casual flats.
Soon, she was fully naked, without a stitch of clothing to hide behind. But he was still fully clothed. And she had the feeling that was exactly how he wanted it.
His eyes roamed over her breasts and stomach before finally landing on her sex, which was still glistening with the orgasm he’d given her.
Only after he’d looked his fill, did he unzip his pants.
“Zhena, you will tell me why you made us leave Greece, why you want divorce.” He took her roughly by the hips and pushed into her with an, angry jerk. “You will tell me.”
Sam gasped at the suddenness of his intrusion. Rushed to widen her legs in order to accommodate his large girth. But it didn’t hurt. No, it didn’t hurt, even when he started pumping into her with vicious, punishing strokes. Even like this it felt unbelievably good to have him inside her.
In fact it might be better this way, she thought to herself. She didn’t want to remember the Nikolai who had supposedly been afraid of hurting her this morning, running game like a pro seduction artist. She wanted to remember him like this, merciless and vengeful. Crude. The exact sort of guy she had no business falling in love with.
“Do you see how you can’t help yourself with me, zhena? How powerless I make you with my touch?” he sneered into her ear, like the jerk he truly was when he wasn’t playing head games with her.
But his next words were sharp with hurt. “We are perfect fit. Why do you leave me? Why?”