Page 31 of Poisoned Vows

It’s not a gentle kiss. There’s nothing soft or romantic about it, but I canfeelhow much he wants me, the heavy hand he’s still holding his desire back with.

“Just do it,” I hiss, twisting my lips away from his. There’s nothing but a breath between our mouths—I can’t get further away than that, not with his hand knotted in my hair. “There’s no point in making a big production out of it. All of this—”

“—is whatIwant,” he finishes for me, his other hand tightening on my waist, pulling me hard against him. I can feel the thick, rigid length of his erection in his suit trousers, pressing hotly against my bare thigh, the thin strip of lace between him and me, nothing that can protect me. “I want to take my time, Lilliana. I want you tofeeleverything that I’m going to do to you. Every touch—” his hand on my waist skims up my spine, tracing upwards. “Every kiss.” His lips graze over mine again, his fingers tugging at my hair as he bends my head back, his mouth finding the edge of my jaw, dipping lower still to the smooth skin of my throat. I feel a flush of desire as his tongue grazes over the soft spot just beneath my ear, trailing a path lower, and my skin prickles under his lips.

“You like that.” It’s not a question, murmured against my skin.

“No,” I insist. But I’m starting to wonder why I’m still trying to insist otherwise. Nikolai is no fool, and he’s definitely not a virgin. He knows how a woman who wants him responds, I’m sure of that. And while my mind might be screaming for me to be let out of here, my body wants to arch into him, unbutton his shirt, and find out what that hard, muscled body feels like under my hands.

What am I thinking?In two weeks, I’ve gone from being someone who’s never even fantasized about having sex, dreading the very thought of it, to quivering with desire at the memory of his fingers beneath my skirt. And now—now he’s going to do so much more.

His hand cups my breast, palm warm against my skin, his thumb brushing over my stiffened nipple. “Every inch of your body is perfection,” he murmurs, and suddenly his hand releases my hair as he steps back, his gaze sweeping over my nearly-nude figure.

“I didn’t need to have you strip for me to know it would be. And I’m glad I didn’t.” His eyes are hungry as they take in my face, my breasts, my narrow waist, and the slender swell of my hips, dropping lower to the apex of my thighs. “Take off the panties, Lilliana. Let me see the rest of you.”

I shudder. I can’t help it. Up to this point, he’s undressedme; I haven’t had much of a say in the matter. But now he wants more. He wants me to assist in my own debasement. In my submission to his desires.

“Take them off yourself.” I tilt my chin up, summoning the last of my defiance. “You know what you want, after all.”

“I want my new wife to obey me.” His gaze darkens. “I could have made you strip, you know. In front of my father, in front of yours. I could have demanded just about anything, and you would have been forced to do it. My father loves the idea of humiliation, when it comes to beautiful, innocent young women.”

“But you didn’t want him to see me. You’d already decided I was yours, and yours alone. Somakeme.” I glare at him. “Take what you stole, Nikolai. I’m not giving you a damn thing.”

He closes the distance between us in a moment, his hand wrapping in my hair again as he looks down at me with blue-grey eyes gone steely. “Be careful what you ask for, Lilliana,” he growls, and my name sounds like sin on his tongue, like he says it with a lust I’ve never heard or imagined from anyone.

“I’ll never ask you for anything.” I breathe the words through clenched teeth, fighting back the wild tangle of emotions inside of me. I don’t know what I feel any longer, my mind and my body entirely at odds with each other, and as Nikolai backs me towards the bed, I feel my heart galloping in my chest.

“No,” he murmurs. “You’re going to beg.”

And then he spills me back onto the bed, his fist grabbing the side of the panties as he rips them away from me with a tearing of lace that sends a shudder through me from my head to the tips of my toes.

“Open your legs,” he demands, and I ignore him. My thighs are pressed together, because I don’t want him to see that I’m wet, my skin flushed and beginning to swell with arousal, my body starting to pulse with an ache that I’ve only recently learned the meaning of.

“I told you I’m not doing anything that you don’t make me.” I grit my teeth against the fear of pushing him.What’s the difference between this and what would have happened with thepakhan?If I let Nikolai get the better of me now, no matter what danger it might put me in, it will set a precedent for our marriage.

He might hurt me, if I make him angry. But I was always prepared for pain. What I wasn’t prepared for was to be caught in a trap I could never escape.

If I make this frustrating enough for him, maybe he’ll even decide he’s done with me, after tonight.

Nikolai hisses through his teeth, and I can see his cock straining against the front of his trousers. His hands land on my legs just above my knees, fingers digging into my flesh with barely restrained violence, and he pushes them apart, hands sliding down my inner thighs until they’re closed around the soft skin as he pushes my knees apart and back. He spreads me open for him, so he can see all my soft pink flesh bared and vulnerable, and I feel my cheeks heat with shame and unwanted arousal as he lets out a low, satisfied groan.

“That’s what I wanted to see,devochka,” he murmurs, his eyes hard and dark with lust.

“What is that?” I choke out the words, fighting back humiliated tears. This somehow feels worse than what happened in the study. He’d kept that a secret between us, the shameful arousal that I’d felt as his fingers teased my clit. But this—

Why did I think he wouldn’t know? He was always going to touch me eventually.

“The truth.” His hands slide higher, holding me open, and his fingers stroke along my outer folds, so close to where I’m beginning to swell and throb, the ache spreading through me. “You can lie to me all you like, Lilliana. There will be consequences, but your pretty mouth can spill all the untruths you desire. But your body—” he groans again, his fingers parting me, his gaze hungrily taking in the sight of every inch of my pussy, spread open for his pleasure. “Your body will tell me the truth.”

His finger touches my clit. It’s a slight touch, the fingertip rolling over the hard pebble of flesh, pushing the hood up as he rubs back and forth with the lightest of grazes. But my entire body jerks, my hips arching into his fingers, and he chuckles—that low, satisfied sound again.

“You want me. And when you find out how much pleasure I can bring you, you willbegfor me.”

“No,” I whisper. “I’ll never beg for anything from you.”

His finger rolls over my clit again. He seems to know exactly the right pressure to make me twitch and arch under him against my will, even though he’s only ever touched me like this once before. It’s not enough to make me come, not even if he did it for a long time—at least I don’t think so—but it’s enough to make me breathless, to effectively steal my ability to snipe back at him, which I think is exactly what he wants.

“Maybe not tonight.” His other hand goes casually to the buttons of his shirt, undoing one at a time as if he weren’t stroking me intimately with the other. “But I’m going to make you come tonight, tomorrow night, and again the night after that. You’ll be addicted to the pleasure, Lilliana. You’llcraveit—craveme. And eventually, I’ll withhold it. And then—”

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