Page 36 of Keeping Ruby

“We’re…”

“Yes,” he answers my unasked question.

“H-how?”

There is a beat of silence, and then brutal honesty. “You were drugged, and then you were transported on a private plane, to me.”

I gape. “Private plane?”

He nods. “Yes.”

I can’t comprehend the magnitude of his power. I can’t comprehend the idea of any one person possessing the kind of power that allows someone to kidnap, transport, and keep a human being. And get away with it. It’s—it’s terrible. Deeply unsettling. Terrifying.

“Kirill.” I’m trembling against him now. “You must know this is all so wrong?”

His eyes search mine. And then he cuts his knee between my legs, moving it high enough to pull a gasp from the trench of me. I try to pull away, to roll onto my back—to escape him. But he takes advantage of the opening my move gives him, sliding his big body over mine.

His hands come to frame my face, his fingers diving into the waves of my hair. I hold my breath in starved lungs as his gaze whispers over my flesh, drawing pebbles of awareness to the surface of every inch of me.

Under the thin fabric of my light pink tank top, my nipples harden as though reaching for him. My body knows the secrets my mind rejects, begging in silence the words I refuse to say.

“You are so fucking beautiful,” he rasps.

“Kirill.” I’m not even sure what I’m pleading for anymore. Am I begging for him to see that this—whatever it is we are—whatever it is we’re becoming—is wrong? Or am I begging for him to take control? To possess me? To finally make good on his threat to claim me, all of me?

There’s a dark part of me, a whisper of forbidden desire that aches for him to take all the parts of me I yearn for him to take—to steal from me my choice—to lift the burden of begging for that which my body hungers for. I don’t want to carry the guilt of wanting my husband. I don’t want to suffocate under the weight of begging for a man who took so much from me.

I’m a coward—because I can’t hate him for taking me if I’m the one who asks for it.

And I’m not ready to not hate my husband.

I’m not sure I’ll ever be ready to not hate him.

Confliction sparks in my core, quickening my heart as he dips his head. He smells so earthy and masculine, I can’t help the sigh that slips from my lips. His lips hitch, the cocky twist making my belly flutter.

“It’s time for my kiss, wife.”

“You haven’t even brushed my hair,” I protest.

His fingers twist in the strands, pulling my head back to expose my neck in the second before he drops his lips to the delicate flesh, sucking hard enough to strike lightning inside me.

Against the assaulted skin, he rumbles, “You like it when I brush your hair?”

“Yes,” I breathe, too stripped of caution to dance around the truth.

I feel his grin rather than see it. “Noted.”

He kisses a fiery path up my neck, to my jaw. His tongue is hot as he tastes my skin, nipping my chin before his mouth covers mine in a kiss that is instantly brutal. It’s not a kiss that’s meant to tease desire and awaken arousal. This is a kiss intended to steal souls. It’s a little hard, crushing. There’s tongue and teeth and a pressure in my core that expands painfully inside me.

He’s completely covering me now, his big body over mine. With one hand in my hair, his elbow bracketing my frame to hold just some of his weight, his other hand begins to roam. He starts at my hip where too much skin is exposed by the bunched material of my tank top. The tips of rough fingers—fingers that have no place on a banker’s hands—trail lightly across oversensitive skin.

A new kind of heat blooms inside my core, spreading like wildfire through my body. Against his lips, I gasp in breath that tastes of him. Cedar and flame sear my lungs and I whimper, but he only deepens the kiss. It’s like he’s trying to climb inside my body through this kiss. To settle his soul in the very depths of me for safekeeping.

He shoves his hand higher up my shirt, his fingertips grazing untouched skin, pulling unwilling shivers of arousal from the trench of me.

My breasts feel heavy and full. They ache to be touched even as my mind screams against the idea. My nipples are sensitive and stretched for him. My body and mind have never been at war quite like this.

His big hand finds the swell and cups me, his thumb passing over the pebbled tip of one breast—the sensation like a blade cutting me to the quick. I gasp, sharp and loud. Liquid fire pools in my panties in a wash of desire and shame. He covers my breast in response with a gentle squeeze.

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