Page 29 of Malevolent King

Sudden unwanted tears burned in my throat. I felt that strange connection to Niko hum to life again as we stared at each other. My desperation to get away had faded somewhat, knowing that I’d set something into motion that would see me saved. Swapping one devil for another. The knowledge that soon everything would be back to normal in my heavily controlled, unadventurous, dull life. A boring march onward toward marriage to a stranger I didn’t love and death at the end of the road. Nothing felt exciting. After the last few days with Niko, I doubted anything would ever feel exciting again.

A little swallow with clipped wings.He had no idea how right he was.

“Wow, so insightful. It doesn’t take a genius to guess that someone with a paranoid, powerful father like mine would be locked away. Tell me something less obvious,” I challenged him.

He was quiet, mulling over his words for a long moment. “You want something to happen to you. You want to be free, but you also want to hide. You’re afraid, not just of never being free… but of the opposite as well. A little bird with clipped wings in the real world won’t go far. A domesticated animal that forgot how to survive in the wild. You long for freedom, but you fear it, too. The cage is inside here.”

His finger tapped my forehead, and I jerked my head away.

Bingo. I hated how well he saw me. “You’re wrong,” I managed to say after a moment. That same emotion burning in my throat. “That’s not me,” I lied. I couldn’t let him know how right he was, even though I was pretty sure he knew. “Maybe it’s you,” I added, trying to rile him.

Nikolai was silent so long I thought he wasn’t going to answer me. “It’s not my wings that are clipped,lastochka, it’s my heart that’s defective, and my cage isn’t something I can ever escape. It’s made of bones and buried deep.”

Those words sent that burn of feeling roaring back to life in my throat. I swallowed, trying to shift it. There was something unbearably sad and tragic about Nikolai Chernov, and there always had been. Wasn’t that the very thing that had drawn me so effortlessly to him five years ago? His beauty and his tragedy, his strange personal code of honor and his darkness. I’d seen them all, all the disjointed, misshapen parts that made up this dangerous man.

“Are you going to New York to kill your brother?”

He shifted. “I don’t know. Should I? He’d make a goodpakhan. Better than me.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. Nikolai was the most unpredictable person I’d ever met. Things that motivated the men in my family didn’t motivate him. He didn’t seem interested in money, and by the sounds of it, power wasn’t attractive either. He had plenty in his own right, but the power to command other men was usually a universal fantasy, or so living with my father and cousin had led me to believe. Nikolai wasn’t anything like them while being just as deadly at the same time.

“So, why are we going to New York?”

“Because it’s my move, and New York is the board we play on. Enough questions. We need to sleep.”

I felt him shift, and my lingering thoughts flew from my head. A hot hand came to rest on my stomach, and I tensed.

“What are you doing?” I asked, my voice a frantic whisper.

He had turned toward me, and now his breath fanned against the side of my face. Awareness tore through my every nerve.

“I can’t let you sleep like this beside me, wait until I’m out and creep away. You know that, Sofia,” he said quietly.

I swallowed a hard knot of tension and dizzying heat. “So, what are you going to do?” I couldn’t get the promise from last night out of my head.I’ll pin you in place with my cock, and you can fall asleep on it.My body betrayed me by warming at the thought.

“I could tie your arms above your head to the bedframe, but it’ll be uncomfortable, or I could tie you to me. Your choice.”

I turned to look at him finally and jolted when I realized how close he was. This close, I could see the silver streaks in his gray eyes and the thickness of his dark eyelashes, resting like fans against his golden skin. Really, those eyelashes were completely unfair on a man.

I should try to get away in the night, shouldn’t I? Being tied to him would be more comfortable, but then how would I have a chance?

“I choose the headboard,” I said quickly.

He studied me for a moment longer, and then his full lip quirked upward. “To me it is, then.”

“What? Why? That’s the opposite of what I chose,” I protested as he reached for my hands.

“You might be good at hiding your thoughts around the other people in your life, but not around me. I see you.And yes, in answer to your obvious thought process, it will be harder to get away if you’re tied to me,” he said.

I pushed his hands away, fighting him as he twisted his upper body over me. He locked my hands to my sides, his bare chest pressing against my bra.

He was so huge and heavy and smelled so male. At that moment, my strength left my body. He smelled like the woods, and a hint of smoke, underlaid with a masculine musk that dragged at my senses. I couldn’t put my finger on the scent. There was nothing like it. It was just him. My belly grew warmer at the lungful I took of him as he pressed against me, holding me down.

“Don’t play with me right now, Sofia, unless you really mean it.” My hands shook at his soft growl.

I didn’t know if I was pushing against his grip or fighting my desire to reach for him. I couldn’t even imagine my father’s face at finding out his perfect, untouched trophy daughter had been fucked by Nikolai Chernov.

His body was hard on mine, and I distantly realized that I could feel his hard-on, bare and wet at the tip, pressing against my thigh. How easy it would be to squirm more against him and let him force his way between my legs. I could even pretend that I didn’t want him to if it made it easier to explain later. He could force my legs apart with his thickly muscled thigh, rip my panties down, and sink inside me. Like he’d been my first kiss five years ago, he could be my first everything.

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