Page 5 of Craving Dahlia

Her eyebrow rises, surprise written across her face. “This is an expensive place to call itkitsch.I’m not sure the very large man at the door or the woman whose face doesn’t move would appreciate hearing you use that word to describe it.”

Ialmostlaugh. I feel a sort of buzzing, deep in my throat, that reminds me of what it might feel like to laugh. She’s funny—and she’s right, the woman at the door does have a face completely devoid of expression.

If I spent enough time around this woman, I might even remember how to laugh again. A tight, cold feeling knots in my stomach at that, a resistance to the idea. Toher.

I shrug, as if none of this matters to me at all. “Still, it leans hard into the theme,net? Old-world luxury. Taking us back in time.” I gesture around the room with my glass, and I see her eyes heat as she looks at me, her teeth scraping against that full lower lip as she takes another sip of her drink. Her throat moves, and I imagine what her mouth would taste like. Like apples, probably, and the spice of rum. How her throat would move while she swallowed down my cock. That ache settles deep in my abdomen, a tight, almost painful pressure as I throb with the need for release. I haven’t been this aroused in—I don’t remember how long.

The craving for sex is a strange thing. When I was first locked away, deep in that goddamned Russian compound, I craved it like air. Like food. After enjoying pleasure at my whim for so long, my mind couldn’t handle the fact that it was stolen from me. That there was only unending pain, instead.

But after a while, the body forgets. After enough pain, it’s possible to not even be able to remember what pleasure felt like. After a year, I stopped even bothering to get myself off. Why, when I’d only be punished for it if I was caught? All pleasure waszapreshchennyy—forbidden. I remember that word, shouted at me through bars by a guard eager to beat me for breaking the rules.

I’d wake in the night sometimes, my thighs sticky with my own release when my body couldn’t handle the neglect any longer. And for years, until I escaped, that was the only pleasure I had.

I jerked myself off the first night I was free, in a motel shower. I remember groaning aloud when I came, my hand spasming around my cock. And still, I couldn’t remember whatit felt like to be inside a woman. Couldn’t grant myself that pleasure, when my mind still told me that it could still be stripped away, and the torture of unlearning that need forced on me all over again. Five months, and I haven’t taken anyone back to my bed.

I hadn’t come here tonight to find anyone, either. But now that this woman is sitting in front of me, her lips glistening with the lingering drops of her drink, the thought of walking away from her is as painful as that need.

“Do you come here often?” she asks, clearly scrambling for small talk, and that urge to laugh buzzes in the back of my throat again. It’s clear that I’m making her nervous. There’s a strange sort of gratification in that, in the memory of what it feels like for someone to be afraid ofme. And an urge rises up in me to stoke that fear. To savor it along with the pleasure while I fuck her.

Tenderness and gentleness are no longer a part of me. And right now, what I’m craving is something far more primal.

“No.” I look at her, my gaze meeting hers, and I see her tongue run nervously along her lips, making my cock twitch.

I wait another beat, letting her squirm. The life I’ve lived has always meant that I’m alert to the signals that others give off. A twitch of a hand, a look out of the corner of the eye—it can spell death in an instant, if a man isn’t careful. If he’s distracted.

I let myself get distracted once. It won’t happen again. And while I feel sure that there’s nothing dangerous about this woman, I still watch her with that same keen eye. Reading her. Assessing her.

She’s nervous. And she’saroused. Her slender, half-bare thighs squeeze together slightly when I look directly at her, her pleated leather skirt shifting over her pale skin, and I see her fingers tighten around her glass. Her eyes are slightly glassy, her back straight, her legs canted to one side, duchess-like. She’s thepicture of wealth and elegance, and I can read a great deal into even just the way she sits.

She was someone raised with manners. Someone who appreciates fine things. I can see that from the red soles of her stilettos, the butter-soft finish of the leather of her skirt, the deep purple blouse that falls like real silk, caressing her skin the way my fingers itch to. The wrists of the sleeves are buttoned neatly, not a hair or bit of her clothing out of place, and I saw her leave her black blazer on the couch next to her friend. Maybe she just came from work? I picture her in a bathroom stall, shimmying out of a tight black pencil skirt to change it for the shorter leather one, and my cock jerks again.

I could convince her to head into the bathroom here, and wait for me. Fuck her over the counter, with the hum of a hundred people outside, able to hear her moaning for me. I could watch her face in a mirror, grip her throat while telling her to keep her eyes on me, until I come inside of her.

And then I could leave her there, and try to never think about her again.

But just like that earlier flicker of fantasy, I feel a resistance to that idea. I want her alone, in private, behind closed doors. I want a bed, skin on skin, all the things I’ve been denied for so long. I want to take, and take, until I’m satisfied, with no chance of interruption and no need to rush.

When I’m done with her, she’ll never fuck another man without thinking about the night I gave her.

Satisfaction burns through me at that thought. “I’m Alek,” I tell her abruptly, taking another sip of my Scotch. It burns, too, searing down my throat with the taste of oak and vanilla as I watch her face.

A smile tilts her lips, and a look that’s almost like relief, like she’s glad that her ridiculous pick-up line didn’t screw it up,crosses her face. “Dahlia,” she says, her lips parting as she lifts her glass to her mouth. “It’s nice to meet you.”

“A pleasure.” I linger on the last word for a second too long, and I see the pale skin at the base of her throat start to flush. I can’t help but wonder if she’s already wet, what I’ll find when I slide my hand under her skirt. I feel pre-cum pearl at the tip of my cock at the thought, dripping down the length of it, and that sensation alone is enough to make me grit my teeth together, wishing I’d jerked off in my hotel room before I came out tonight.

If I’d had the slightest thought that I was going to take someone back to my room, I might have. With her, I want it to last. But even if the first time is quick and frantic, we’ll have all night.

I toss back the Scotch. “Want to get out of here?” I look at her, letting her see the heat in my eyes, as I drag them from hers to her mouth, lingering on her full lips for a moment, down to the shape of her small breasts beneath the purple silk, all the way to the creamy skin of her thighs against the leather edge of her skirt. I linger there, too, imagining spreading them apart as I press my mouth to the wet, hot flesh between them, and my cock strains painfully against the front of my jeans.

Her mouth drops open slightly. “Aren’t you supposed to seduce me?” she teases, reaching up to brush a lock of hair off of her shoulder. “Flirt a little?”

I raise an eyebrow. “Do I need to?”

Her cheeks flush slightly, as if she’s been caught out, and I see a rebellious glint in her eyes. A spark of fire that makes me bite back a groan. “Do you always get right to the point?” she asks, and I chuckle, leaning forward until we’re a breath apart, until I could reach out and touch her, but I don’t. Not yet.

“Do you want to play games,gertsoginya?”I lean forward, brushing one rough finger along the edge of her jaw, up to pusha lock of honey-colored hair behind her ear. I drag that same fingertip over the shell of her ear, deceptively gently, and Ifeelthe way she shudders, her lips parted, her warm, apple-scented breath hanging in the air between us. “Or do you want to get fucked?”

Her mouth drops open, and she looks stunned. If I were a gambling man—and once upon a time, I was—I’d bet money that no man has ever dared speak to her like that.

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