Page 49 of Tarnished Reign

Holy hell! Okay, now I’m way more than a little nervous. I’m also incredibly turned on.

He cocks his head and watches me.

“Is that how you feel?” he asks sarcastically.

I stare at him, and I know that this is a moment that I can't fail. This is a test of sorts. If I say to him that no, I don't feel those things, that I want him to gently kiss me and make love to me, lay me down in a bed of flowers and make this all romantic, he's going to withdraw into that steely shell of his.

I'll be left kicking my legs, on my back, with my soft hermit-crab belly in the air once more. This man who could be my shell will walk away.

The thing is, Dimitri thinks he can read people so well, but he's absolutely wrong. I want those things too, eventually. I just need him to take it slow.

“The first time you take me, I'd like you to make love to me.”

His mouth twists into a sneer as if to say he’s right. I ignore it.

“It will be my first time, and I want it to be gentle. After that, everything you have just described sounds like exactly what I want.”

One brow punches up in disbelief.

He thinks because I haven’t had sex, I'm innocent? He doesn't know that I sometimes guiltily watch porn and that my favorite is either guys jacking off, or, and this is my dark secret, I like to watch more than one man with a woman as she's tied up, helpless, a little bit scared, and very much turned-on.

I wonder what he’d think if he knew I read the entire works of the Marquis de Sade. Not that it's erotic, it's banal in its boring; endless descriptions of depraved sexual acts described the same way that someone describes a bad day at the office. I read it, though. Every disgusting bit of it. It was part of my course.

“Shall I make myself clearer?” I ask him. “I want you to fuck me. I've never wanted anyone in my entire life as much as I want you. I want you to cage me in with that big, gorgeous body of yours and hold me down while you take what you want.”

His eyes widen, and I can't help the small smile breaking free. “Shocked you, didn't I?”

He merely nods.

“I want your fingerprints on my skin, on my ass, on my hips. I want your bite mark on my neck.”

He swallows hard.

“Did you think because I haven't had sex that my fantasies are all romance and flowers?”

“Yes.”

I laugh. “You don't understand women at all. Just because I didn't want to give myself away to someone who I felt didn't deserve it, doesn't mean that I don't have desire. Doesn't mean that at night I haven't laid in my bed frustrated as hell watching porn, touching myself and wishing that there was somebody there.”

“You watch porn?” He seems utterly scandalized.

“Are you serious right now? Do you even know the texts we have to study when we do literature at the level I did?”

“No,” he admits.

“I swear to God, Dimitri, that if you read the Marquis de Sade, your hair would turn white. I haven’t had sex before, so I need you to take it easy with me at first, but if you think that my desires are limited to soft kisses and gentle words and soft touches, you're mistaken.”

I lean in and kiss the side of his cheek where the bruises are starting to appear. I kiss a little further up until I reach his ear, and then I gently bite the lobe. I've never been so bold, but something about this energy between us has set free the deep, dark part of myself I've always hidden away.

“Maybe you don't know me as well as you think you do,” I whisper.

I look down at the papers on the desk, breaking the spell. “Do you think we should take a look at these? Maybe it will help us find Ari, and then we can kill him.”

He shakes his head, but there's a smile playing about his lips. “Look at you, going all Bonnie and Clyde on my ass.”

“That man took me, and he was going to sell me.” I swallow hard, not wanting the tears to come again. He already sees me as weak, naive, stupid. I don't want to seem that way. Now that I know that he wants me, I want to be worthy of that desire.

I've spent my entire life being trodden on. I spent my entire life either being ignored, laughed at, or treated like an object of desire. Object being the operative word. Even Dimitri did it. He looked at me and projected his own ideas and fantasies onto the canvas that he saw.

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