He dropped onto the bed, his weight a crushing, welcome gravity that pinned me deep into the mattress. But he wasn’t in a hurry. He began a slow, agonizing descent, his mouth trailing fire down my neck. He found the pulse point behind my ear, histongue wet and searing as he licked a path to my jaw, making my breath hitch and my toes curl into the silk.
“You think you can just replace me?” he hissed, his teeth grazing my earlobe, his breath hot and smelling of mint and narrowed intent.
“I think,” I gasped, my fingers digging into the iron-hard slabs of his shoulders, “that you talk too much when you’re scared.”
He didn’t argue. He growled—a vibration I felt deep in my marrow—and slid lower. His hands hooked under my thighs, his grip bruising as he dragged me to the very edge of the bed. He forced my legs wide, leaving me completely open and shaking under his gaze.
The first contact wasn’t gentle; he used his tongue like a weapon, drinking from me with a starving intensity that made my vision go dark. His fingers didn’t just rest on my hips—they sank into the soft flesh, anchoring me so I couldn’t move an inch while he mapped out every nerve ending.
“Please,” I choked out, my voice sounding wrecked even to my own ears.
Gregory paused for a heartbeat, his hot breath ghosting over the sensitive skin he’d just been devouring. He looked up, a cruel, beautiful smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Please, what? Use your words.”
“Don’t stop,” I whispered, my hands fisting in his dark hair.
“I haven’t even started,” he hissed, and then he was back, his tongue swirling against the center of my ache with a white-hot friction that sent jolts of electricity straight up my spine.
I was sobbing his name now, my fingers alternately trying to yank him closer and shove him away as the pleasure became a physical weight I couldn’t carry. I felt the coil in my stomachwinding tighter and tighter, faster and faster, until the entire world narrowed to that one point of contact.
He knew exactly where I was. He slowed down, his tongue barely grazing me, a torturous, teasing flick that made me whine in frustration. “You like it when I take my time, don’t you?” he murmured against my thigh.
“Gregory,now,” I snapped, my heels digging into the mattress.
He didn’t give me a choice. He used his teeth—a sharp, tiny nip that sent me screaming over the edge. I shattered. My back arched into a violent bow, my body hit by wave after wave of long, rhythmic pulses that tore through me. I couldn't breathe; the air in the room felt too thin, too hot, too full of him.
Before I could even find my bearings, he was dragging me up the bed. He sat back on his heels, watching me through the gloom. His eyes were almost entirely black, his pupils so dilated they swallowed the iris, and his chest heaved with a raw, unchecked hunger that told me I wasn't the only one who was about to break.
“Good girl,” he whispered, his voice a low, dangerous vibration. “Now it’s my turn.”
I didn’t wait. I moved between his knees, my hands trembling as I reached for the heavy, pulsing heat of him. Taking him into my mouth was an act of war. I wanted to hear that cold, Russian composure break into a thousand jagged pieces.
I used my lips and tongue with a slow, agonizing suction, swirling around the broad, velvet head of him until I heard his breath hitch. I went deeper, my throat tightening, my eyes watering from the sheer size and heat of him. I wanted to taste the salt of his skin, the scent of his arousal, the very essence of the man I claimed to hate.
Gregory’s hands found my head, his fingers threading through my hair with a sudden, desperate possessiveness. He began to thrust his hips forward, a rhythmic, primal motion that told me his restraint was a frayed wire. He wasn’t the strategist now. He was just a man starving for the one thing he had spent weeks trying to convince himself he didn’t need.
“Sofia—enough,” he choked out, his voice cracking. “I can’t—”
He flipped me over with a sudden, bruising strength, pressing my chest into the cool pillows and pinning my wrists above my head with one hand. I felt the searing heat of his body settle against my back, his chest a wall of fire against my skin.
He entered me in one slow, devastating surge.
It was a blunt, overwhelming fullness that seemed to reach all the way to my throat. I cried out, the sound muffled by the pillow, as he held there for a heartbeat, letting our bodies adjust to the violent integration. He wasn’t moving yet; he was just marking me, his heart thudding a frantic rhythm against my spine.
“You’re mine,” he hissed into my ear, his teeth grazing the lobe. “Say it.”
“I’m…mine,” I gasped, the lie tasting like honey and copper.
He laughed—a dark, breathless sound—and began to move. It was a fast, punishing pace, each thrust a collision of our tempers. The bed frame groaned against the wall, a steady, frantic percussion to the sound of our skin slapping together and the jagged bursts of our breath.
I reached back, my hand finding his thigh, pulling him deeper, wanting the ache to drown out the memory of the weeks he’d spent ignoring me. I wanted to feel him everywhere. The friction was a building fever, a tightening coil that felt like it was going to tear me apart from the inside out.
“Tell me,” he rasped, his teeth grazing my ear. “Tell me who you belong to.”
“I…I hate you,” I whispered, my voice a broken thread.
The friction was a building fever. I reached back, my hand finding the tension in his thigh, pulling him deeper, harder, wanting the ache to become so loud it drowned out the silence of the last month. We were sweat-slicked and desperate, a tangle of limbs and jagged breaths in the dark.
I could feel the tension in his muscles, the way his entire body was coiled for the final strike. The pressure behind my ribs began to build again, a white-hot spark that caught and spread until my whole body was a live wire.