Marya shivers. Her eyelids flutter. Her lips fall open, almost involuntarily.
She watches me as I slide the food into her mouth. I swallow hard when she catches it behind closed lips, the soft flesh tugging against the tines as I drag the fork free and abandon it on the plate.
She chews, swallows. Blushes so beautifully when I whisper, “Good girl.”
I don’t know which of us is in a deeper trance, but I’m not thinking when I reach for her face, intent on wiping sauce off her lip with my thumb. Salivating to get a taste.
I’ve barely made contact when Marya jumps, jerks away. “No. You don’t get to touch me. You’ll never get to touch me.”
I don’t want to touch her.
That’s what Ishouldsay.
Except I really have lost my fucking mind, because as the scent of her shampoo thickens the air around us and I feel her breath breaking against my neck, I can’t stop myself from taunting, “It’s too late for that,moya voitelnitsa. I’ve already touched every bare inch of you.”
Her eyes flare wide. Half in shock, half in stupefied unexpected heat.
“Haven’t you wondered how you got so clean, why you smell so nice?” I capture a strand of her black hair where it hangs loose by her waist. Wrap it around one finger. “The doctor tended to all your injuries, but I was the one to bathe you, Marya. To clean all your skin. To wash this hair. To rinse away the tears and the sweat and the evidence of what your family did to you.”
We’re both breathing too fast. Our bodies so close I risk a contact burn from the flush climbing her chest and neck. Close enough that I get twisted up in the carousel of emotions churning in her eyes. Surprise, embarrassment. Then arousal. Like she likes the idea of me touching her body. Gets turned on by it. It’s a momentary glitch, a flash in the pan before the final reaction wins out: Disgust. “You washed me without permission. Touched me without permission.”
“It was a necessary evil. You smelled horrible.”
Her face burns with pure mortification. She tries to push me away but all she ends up doing is tumbling herself backward onto the bed. “You are fucking hateful.”
“And you’re finally understanding the situation you’re in.” I lean forward, fists pressed into the mattress on either side of her hips. She lays back, determined to stay as far from me as she possibly can. “You’re in my world now, Marya. The faster you come to terms with that, the better off you’ll be.”
She’s so flustered she trips over her own tongue. “You-you have to stop calling me that.”
“What?”
“You know what.Marya. Why do you keep calling me that name?”
“Because I don’t know yours.”
A simple truth that triggers a sudden shift between us. A tipping of power slightly away from me to her. There’s a fresh glint to her eyes when she says, “No, I suppose you don’t.”
“Are you going to tell me?”
The woman beneath me moves so fast I barely have time to adjust. She misses her target by a mere millimeter, her knee connecting just below my balls, pain exploding on impact as I drop to the ground.
When I manage to catch my breath, Marya is standing over me, her expression as fierce as ever. “No, asshole. You don’t get to know my name. Now get the fuck out of my room.”
9
ALIK
“That’s not good enough. I want names. Locations. Details.”
Rocco shakes on the table, the rank smell of his sweat mixing with the piss soaking his underwear. We’re trying a new position today. His arms are bound underneath the table, his waist and legs held flat to the surface by multiple straps.
The hint of barbecue is coming from the burnt soles of his feet. It turns out his blood pressure is higher than it should be, and he bled a little too much after my last visit. I need him alive until he’s answered all my questions, so I’m taking a less invasive approach.
Today we’re having a trial by fire.
The closer I put the blowtorch to the blackened skin of his feet, the louder the Italian screams. “You can make it stop, Rocco. All you have to do is give me the information I want.”
Pagano gifts me with a parade of curses, working himself into a lather. Spittle flies from his mouth, drips down his swollen face. “When are you going to get it through that ugly fucking head—I don’t know where Rina went after the auction.The only thing I know for sure is that she sold fast and at a crazy high price. That’s all the intel I’ve got, I swear.”