“I don’t.”

“Mmm.” His touch moves up to where my clit is pulsing strangely. Understanding rolls over me in waves. He put something on it, a clamp maybe, to restrict blood flow. It’s going to hurt like a bitch when he takes it off.

Casimir lifts his attention to my face as he presses three fingers into me. I arch off the bed, the intrusion almost too much with the plug in place. He plants his free hand on my stomach, holds me down as he keeps fucking me slowly. “Like I said—your body always tells the truth.”

I can’t quite catch my breath. “Physical response . . . unintentional.”

“Is that why you can’t manage a full sentence?” He curls his fingers, brushing them against my G-spot. “Because you hate what I do to you so much? Give in, Ruby. Admit that you’re mine, that you want me as I am, want to be with me honestly, not as watered-down versions of ourselves.”

“No.” I can’t think. It’s a blessing that I’m tied down, because I’d be riding his hand fully if I weren’t. Gods, but I’m a horrible person—even as my brain is screaming at me that this man is using sex to manipulate me, that he lied to me, that he’s going to do something to hurt my family and the city I love, there’s a large part of me that simply wants to beg him to fuck me again.

I don’t realize he’s not holding me down anymore until I lift my hips to take his fingers deeper. His brutal smile almost makes me come on the spot. This is a game, and I’m losing.

Casimir moves before I can fully process what he intends. He unhooks the cuffs at my ankles and flips me onto my stomach. The bar my wrists are cuffed to rotates with me. Though it’s positioned in such a way that I still can’t lift my upper body off the bed—I’m too spread out to get leverage.

That doesn’t stop him from lifting my hips. It doesn’t stop me from arching my back more to practically offer him my pussy. Gods, what is wrong with me? It’s like he’s got some kind of drug coming out of his pores that turns me into a sex demon.

Liar. You know who’s responsible for your actions, and it’s not him.

I’m not ready to face that truth. Not now. Maybe not ever.

But when his cock presses to my entrance, I don’t try to jerk away. I just bite the sheets to keep from moaning aloud. With the plug in place, he has to fight his way inside me. He keeps squeezing my ass cheeks, spreading them and then pressing them together, making the plug shift inside me.

It feels good. Better than good.

If I’d known this is what anal could be, I would have changed my mind about trying it again sooner.

“There’s my good girl. Take my cock. Just like that.” His Russian accent gets thicker. He presses my cheeks together again, and this time I can’t stop myself from moaning. “You’ll take me here too. Properly this time. You don’t give a fuck who I am as long as I make you feel like the little slut you are. Isn’t that right, baby?”

“No,” I gasp. I don’t register that I’m moving, squirming on his cock, until he thrusts a little. “Casimir, stop.”

“Make me.” He leans down to press his hands to the bed on either side of me, his chest against my back, his cock buried achingly deep inside me. And, worst of all, his rough voice is in my ear, stripping me bare. “You’ve always been able to stop me, baby. Right from the beginning. But you never did. You aren’t stopping me now. You want my cock deeper, want me to fuck you harder, need me to make you come.”

It’s a testament to the truth of his words that I can’t find any of my own. “No.”

“Prove it.” He reaches between me and the bed and touches my pulsing clit. Even the light stroke is almost too much. I cry out, shoving back onto his cock as much as I’m able to.

The only warning I get is a click before the clamp falls off my clit. The blood rushes back in an agonizing sensation that makes me scream. Casimir is already moving, urging my hips higher as he fucks me hard enough to shift me up the mattress.

Gods help me, but I come all over his cock.

He pulls out of me, and then his mouth is there, eating me from behind, soothing my throbbing clit with his tongue. He teases another orgasm out of me just like that.

Then it starts again.

Casimir fucks me with his tongue, his fingers, his cock, barely giving me any time to recover before he starts winding me up again. And all the while, the bastard’s voice is in my ear, telling me I know how to make this stop, all I have to do is speak that one little word, how I won’t say it because I’m his perfect little slut.

And I come for him. Again and again and again, until my world narrows down to his touch, to him.

Even as I tell him no, tell him I don’t want this, I don’t want him, I keep my safe word trapped firmly behind my teeth.

Which just proves my worst fear. I really am a monster.

Just like him.

OceanofPDF.com

13

Iwake up tucked against Casimir’s body. He uncuffed me at some point during the night and now is breathing low and even. That, at least, I recognize on an intrinsic level. I’ve slept next to this man for two years. I know the cadence of his heartbeat against my ear, of his slow exhales and deep inhales. I don’t know if it’s reassuring or horrible that he can’t lie in his sleep.

I lift my head and study his expression, trying to compare it to the one I knew so well. His brow is relaxed in sleep; his jaw too. It makes him look younger. More like Luke, the man I originally fell in love with. Except he isn’t Luke. He never has been.

He’s Casimir Romanov.

I still can’t quite wrap my head around it . . . or the implications. Everything he’s said has been focused solely on me, aside from answering that more Romanovs are in Carver City. But he can’t be here because he’s so in love with me. He’s here at his father’s behest. Or, worse, his uncle’s. Jovan Romanov is head of the Romanov empire that stretches the globe and his reputation is akin to the boogeyman of the mafia. You don’t fuck with him if you want to live.

Getting out of here has to be the first priority. My family needs to know that there’s something coming. Something bad.

That, more than anything, gets me moving. It’s one thing to endanger myself with my choices. Hurting my parents? My aunts and uncles? Unacceptable.

Casimir’s hand shoots out and closes around my wrists before I make it more than an inch from him. He speaks without opening his eyes. “The door is locked, baby.”

Sure, but there’s a panic button. Pushing that probably cancels the contract right there and there. The Concierge doesn’t seem like someone to fuck with, and the rules of the auction are sacred. “Let me go.”

He opens his eyes and sighs. “We’re not past this then.”

I jerk away from him, and he releases me, dragging a finger over the ring I’m still wearing. It’s achingly apparent that he chose to free me. I didn’t do it with my own strength. I glare. “Tell me what your family wants with Carver City.”

Casimir stretches out and props his head on his arm. “The same thing we always want. Power. Territory. Money. Not necessarily in that order.”

I cross my arms over my chest, which feels ridiculous while I’m naked. “That is not a plan.”

“You didn’t ask for the plan.”

“Casimir.”

His slow smile makes my heart backflip. The only warning I get is a slight tensing of his abs, and then he’s on me, flipping me onto my back and settling between my thighs. “Say it again.”

He’s holding me down, but his expression is hardly threatening. I narrow my eyes. “No.”

“So difficult.”

“Answer my question. The plan. Your intentions. Whatever you want to call them. We’re talking about my family’s safety. I might be a fucking fool when it comes to dealing with you, but they are my priority.”