Page 42 of Ivory Ashes

“Get off of me!” I wiggle to get free, but Mikhail silently bends me over the edge of the mattress and spanks me a third time.

The force drives me into the bed, grinding me against the edge of the mattress. Heat that has nothing at all to do with how much it stings blooms low in my belly. My back arches all on its own, that traitorous little bitch.

When his palm slaps against me the next time, a soft moan forces its way out of my lips.

Suddenly, Mikhail backs away, panting. In an effort to look like I’m not the world’s horniest masochist, I flip over and slide to a human puddle on the floor. Only to find myself eye level with Mikhail’s gray sweatpants, which are doing absolutely nothing to hide the significant erection he’s sporting.

I gasp and look up at him. “You liked that!”

Even from down here, his dark eyes shine with a light all their own. “Am I supposed to deny it?”

“You’re supposed to pretend you’re not a fucking psychopath,” I hiss. “You kidnapped—No, I’m sorry, abducted me—and now you’re getting your rocks off by spanking me. Red fucking flag, Mikhail. I guess I should have known. It runs in the family.”

In the blink of an eye, Mikhail rips me off the floor and back on the bed. He stands between my spread legs, his hands on my thighs. His thumbs trace up my inner leg slowly, inching towards the pulsing ache at my center.

God, it’s been a long, long time.

“I could check and see if you liked it, Viviana.” He spends time saying my name. He savors it like a decadent dessert. “I’m sure I’ll find you dripping for me. Don’t think I didn’t hear the way you moaned.”

I want to deny it. I want to stick my tongue out at him like a tantruming child and tell him I’m as dry as the fucking Dust Bowl.

But there’s no point. If I push him, he’ll check. I know he will. Then he’ll find the evidence of how much I liked him touching me.

None of that is the problem. The problem is that he’ll assume wanting him is the same as wanting to be with him. He’ll assume I want this house and this world and this life.

I don’t.

Not for me or sure as hell not for my son.

“Sue me; I moaned,” I admit. “But touching isn’t something we ever had trouble with. It’s how we got into this mess in the first place, actually. It’s everything else we struggle with.”

“There is nothing else.”

I snort. “Of course you’d say that. The man who kidnapped a woman and her child with less than five words spoken is bad at communicating? Who would have guessed?!”

“I didn’t kidnap your child. I kidnapped mine.”

I sit up, my legs tightening around Mikhail’s hips, and jab him in the chest. “He’s mine. And nothing you can say is ever going to convince me to lie down and let you destroy his life. I’m not going to let you use him like some bartering chip. I’ll never stop running and I’ll never stop fighting and I’ll?—”

“Get yourself killed,” he snarls, interrupting. “You want me to communicate? Fine. You are the mother of the one and only heir to the Novikov Bratva. It can be a position of power if you accept it. If not, it’s a liability.”

I know how this world works, so I know just how right he is. Women have been killed for getting in the way of their children inheriting their birthright. I’ve heard stories about it. Girls who ran off with their secret heirs only to turn up dead once the father found out. Those stories have been haunting me to sleep every night for the last five years.

“You’ll kill me?” I challenge.

Mikhail’s jaw clicks. “Dante loves you. You’re his whole world. I would never do anything to harm him.”

“Except rip him out of his school and his house and his routine,” I fire back. “Sorry, but you’ve been in his life for an afternoon and your track record is already shit.”

“I’m his father. I want to take care of him.”

“That’s what my father said before he literally sold me to a madman. But you already know how that ended up.”

He knows parts of it. Not all of it.

Mikhail doesn’t know exactly how deep my father’s control ran. If he thinks selling me off to Trofim for a reputation boost is the worst of it, he needs to get a hell of a lot more creative.

No matter what, I won’t let anyone treat my son the way I was treated. Not while I’m alive to stop them.

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