I’ve never felt comfort like this mattress, the way it seems to massage my thighs.
But I don’t fall back. I stay sitting, telling myself that this is wrong, I’m a prisoner, I need to get out, get out now.
My mind keeps returning to the moment Artem draped his jacket over me, the warmth of the material, still hot from his body. I close my eyes and see myself turning to him, staring up into his eyes, and telling him I want him, want him right now.
My sex tingles and my nipples get hard and hot.
I imagine putting my hand on him and rubbing his manhood through his pants, and in my fantasy I know exactly what I’m doing, exactly how to please a man even if my experience level is a big fat zero.
My traitor mind keeps on, filling me with searing desire, as I imagine Artem’s mouth wide open around my sex.
His tongue attacking me.
What the hell is wrong with me? I’m a prisoner.
I open my eyes at the knock on my door, heavy and confident.
Immediately, I know it’s Artem.
It’s the way he knocks.
A man in charge.
“Yes?” I say, surprised at how small my voice sounds.
“It’s me,” Artem rumbles. “Can I come in?”
I laugh grimly. “I don’t think I have a choice.”
I bite down a moment later, stunned at the sassiness in my voice, wondering where the heck that came from.
Artem Elgort is the leader of the Bratva, a man who could have me killed in the most gruesome way with the snap of his fingers, and I’m going to sass him?
He opens the door and strides in, still wearing his sleek suit, looking eerie and handsome in the light from the lamps. They glow fire like.
He stalks across the room until he’s standing over me. I stand up instinctively, feeling the heat emanating from him. His intense brown eyes seem to flare. I wish I could read him. What is he thinking right now?
He seems angry, his jaws taut, everything in him tense like he could snap any moment.
“I want you to spend the next few days getting comfortable here,” he says, voice a deep growl.
“And after that?” I whisper, sassiness deflating.
“After …” A smirk toys with his lips. “We’ll deal with that when the time comes, Anna. But get comfortable, make yourself at home. I want you to think of this as your home, if you can.”
“A home is a place you can leave,” I say quietly, heart pounding, a voice inside screaming at me to shut up before this man loses his patience and makes me pay. “A place you come back to after a long day. If I can’t leave, it’s not a home. It’s a—”
“But you can leave,” he says.
“What?” I mutter, eyes narrowed in suspicion.
“You can walk up to any of my guards at any time and ask them to take you back to the city,” he says. “I hope you don’t choose to do that, but the choice is there.”
“Are you joking?”
He just stares.
“Woah, okay, I guess you don’t make a lot of jokes, then, judging by that reaction?”
That same almost smirk.
He stares.
Then he says, “Do you have any interests, a hobby to keep you busy?”
“I like cooking,” I say, mind spinning about a million miles per hour. I can hardly believe that this is happening right now. “I love it, in fact. But I’ve never had much opportunity to pursue it, but—well, it doesn’t matter.”
My dreams don’t matter.
“We have four kitchens here,” he says. “Make use of them whenever you like. Or leave. But Anna, I have to tell you, if you left me …”
He just stares, jaws getting tighter. There’s something in his eyes I can’t quite read, something that skirts the line between violence and … and what?
I don’t know.
And that’s the problem.
If you left me, I would hunt you down and torture you in the most grotesque way you can imagine. I’d make you scream until the second I mercifully ended your life.
A chill moves through me as I stare up at this man, my body pricked in a cold layer of sweat.
Intellectually, I know that this man is a criminal, that he purchased me, that he could kill me any time he wanted.
But he’s telling me I’m free to go.
Is it a trick?
Is he testing me?
Maybe if I walked up to one of his guards and asked to leave, they’d smile cruelly and take out their gun and point it at my head.
“Mr. Elgort knew you were a traitor slut,” he’d say, and then pull the trigger.
Bang.
Lights out.
That’s the end of my story.
“Anna?” he growls. “Are you staying, or are you going?”
“This place is nice,” I say tactfully. “It’s beautiful, in fact. But I’m … if I stay …”
Words fail me.
He moves even closer. His chest is pressed almost right up against my face now. For a crazy second I think I can hear his heart pounding out of his stony pectorals.