Page 44 of Wicked Vow

I could say that Mikhail awakened desires in me that I didn’t know I had, that he showed me my true self–or I could call it what it feels like right now…that he broke me. That he made it so that I can only feel desire when it’s intertwined with danger.

If he were still here, if our relationship had been different, it might have felt like the former. But without him here, with nothing left but longing and hurt, all I feel is as if any chance I might have had for happiness or satisfaction is broken beyond repair.

“Go sit over there.” I smile flirtatiously at Erik, gesturing toward the couch on the other side of the stage. They’re very close together–this is a small room–and I won’t be far from him. I can already picture where this might go–but in my head, it’s Mikhail again.

I’d come in here with Erik to try to forget about Mikhail, but I can already see how foolish that might have been. Instead, all of the fraught memories of the earliest parts of our relationship are rushing back as I turn on the music and walk towards the stage, feeling my heart hammer in my throat.

Erik is casually lounging on the couch in front of me, watching me with a bright, aroused interest in his eyes. I see a flicker of that predatory expression that I remember from Mikhail, that I’m so familiar with, but the difference is that I can see that Erik is trying to hide it.

Mikhail never tried to hide anything. Hewasa hunter, a violent man, a man who would take what he wanted unapologetically, and he never tried to hide that. He never tried to pretend to be anything else. Even when he was acting as if he were only a sugar daddy, just a man who wanted to spoil me, he never pretended that he didn’t want me with a near-uncontrollable lust.

That honesty, that sense of self, was part of the attraction. I’m realizing that now.

I start to dance, reaching for the pole as I move around it, planning to slowly build up to the moment where I need to decide if I’m actually going to take anything off. I hadn’t thought ahead–or thought this through really at all–and now I’m scrambling to decide just how far I want this to go.

I close my eyes briefly as I spin, remembering the way Mikhail’s rough, lust-filled voice had sounded as he’d asked me how much it would cost him for me to strip nude for him, to touch myself for him. My pulse leaps as I remember that, leaning over him as I’d rubbed my fingers over my clit, feeling myself drench his leg with my arousal as I’d come, driven wild by the way he made me feel. I remember the heat of that moment, the scent of perfume and sweat and sex, the near-palpable waves of lust I’d felt coming off of him, how hard he’d been for me.

Nothing is ever going to compare to it. Nothing.

I don’t want to open my eyes and see Erik sitting there. I want to see a muscled, tattooed man with blond hair and dangerous ice-blue eyes, a man who might fuck me or kill me, but either way, I’ll feel things I’ve never felt before all the way down.

As I spin around, forcing myself to open my eyes–in the second before, I feel something shift in the room. I feel that prickle on the back of my neck, an anticipation of something I can’t actually put a name to–and then I hear the door to the room burst open.

My eyes fly open as I pivot to see what’s happening, so startled that I almost trip. I see Erik leaping to his feet in my periphery, hear his stammer of protest–and then I see who it is.

The man that I was only seconds ago wishing I could see is standing there in the doorway, slamming it behind him as he stalks forwards, straight towards Erik with murder in his eyes.

“Mikhail!” His name comes out as a sound that’s almost a shriek, laced with disbelief as I watch him advance on Erik, his expression so violent that I’m certain nothing is going to stop him.

He doesn’t look at me. He doesn’t even acknowledge that I’m there. Erik backs up as Mikhail strides towards him, his hands raised in defense, but it doesn’t matter. Mikhail has never been a man to pull his punches, and right now, he literally does the exact opposite of that.

His fist swings out, connecting with Erik’s jaw and sending him back into the couch, Erik’s back hitting it heavily as he slumps down, his eyes wide with surprise. He doesn’t have even a second to recover–Mikhail follows him down, his hand fisting in the front of Erik’s shirt as his fist connects with the other man’s face again and again, despite Erik’s best efforts to wrestle out of Mikhail’s grasp.

The two men are fairly evenly sized–Mikhail might be slightly more muscular–but it doesn’t matter. Mikhail is out of control, his entire body shuddering with a violent need that I recognize because it’s been turned on me before. I know in that instant that if I don’t stop him, he’ll kill Erik right here.

There will be nothing I can do to save him from Viktor if that happens.

“Mikhail!” I shout out his name again as he lurches backward and then again as I scramble down from the stage, stopping just short of rushing to grab him. I’m not sure if, in his anger, if he might not strike out at me, too–and I don’t know how many of those hits I could take.

I see him stiffen, one hand still grasping the front of Erik’s shirt and the other balled up into a bloody fist–and then he pivots, dragging Erik with him as he whirls to glare at me with those piercing, angry blue eyes.

“Natalia.” His voice is hoarse, threadbare with need, and I stare at him in shocked horror as he grabs Erik up off the couch, hauling him towards the door leading out of the room. For a moment, I have not the slightest idea what he plans to do–until he opens the door, throws Erik through it out into the hall, and slams it shut, locking it from the inside.

When he turns towards me, his face flushed and chest heaving, face taut with riotous emotion, it’s all I can do to try not to run. I feel terror flood me–and desire, like I haven’t felt since the day I walked out of Viktor’s compound and left him behind.

“Mikhail.” When I say his name again, it’s a plea, but I don’t entirely know what for.

He stalks towards me, his strides measured, his gaze fixed hungrily on my face. I feel stalked, like prey, and I’m frozen like it, unable to move or run or do anything except stare at the doom coming for me–a doom that I feel as if I want to welcome with open arms.

“What are you doing here?” I whisper as he steps very close to me, staring down at my face with an inscrutable expression on his. “What do you think you’re doing?”

Slowly, very slowly, Mikhail raises one hand to my cheek. The back of his knuckles brushes along my cheekbone. A shiver runs through me to my very core, everything inside of me clenching as my eyes flutter shut, and I feel my knees go weak, his touch reverberating through me again at long last.

“What made you think I could stand to see another man touching you?” he murmurs, his breath warm against my cheek as he leans in to whisper close to my ear, his body nearly brushing mine now. “To see another man watching you, wanting you,lustingafter you?”

He pulls back a fraction, his other hand going to my waist, and he pulls me into him with a force that makes me gasp, my eyes flying open to see his still fixed on me. “I promised you,” Mikhail murmurs, his knuckles still brushing against my cheek. “I promised you that the only man who would ever touch you was me–and I keep my promises.”

I know that he’s going to kiss me before he does, and I know, to the very depth of my being, that I’m going to let him–-and worse still, that Iwanthim to.

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