“Just go. I’m done looking at your face.”
Uri’s eyes blaze and his eyebrows arrow downward. “That’s not how this works. I tell you what to do, narushitel. Not the other way around.”
I scoff. “What’s the problem? You should be chomping at the bit to go back upstairs to the latest whore you’ve got stashed up there.”
“You’re really in need of an endorphin rush today, aren’t you?”
“What I really need is my freedom!”
“Which you’ll lose the moment I let you out of my sight. Along with your life.”
“Right. Because there are big bad men who are out to get me? Please. Do you think I was born yesterday? There are no bad men. There’s just you and you want to keep me here.”
I’m starting to crack through his restraint. I can see that in the clench of his jaw and his white knuckles. “Why would I want to keep you here?”
I shrug aggressively. “To use me, to control me, to fuck me whenever the urge strikes. You get off on this, don’t you? You fucking love it.”
He walks towards me and my body erupts in tingles. Not the usual response when you’re smack dab in the middle of a fight. But nothing about this is “usual.”
“You have no idea the kind of world you’ve stumbled into.”
“Actually, I do. You’re all the same. You’re just the latest in a long line of powerful men with money to burn who think that those things give you the right to do whatever the fuck you want to whoever the fuck you want. Guess what, Uri Bugrov? They don’t.” I step towards him, pushing myself into his space. “You don’t get to use me and fuck me and then discard me when you decide you want to fuck some other sl—”
“Blyat’， Alyssa!” he roars. “There’s no other woman!” My mouth snaps shut as he glowers down at me. “I’m not entertaining anyone else up there. And since you seem so keyed up about it, I’m not fucking anyone else, either.”
My heart is beating unevenly now. Everything feels uneven, actually. Maybe it was a mistake to get so close. Between his words and his scent, I’m feeling a little weak in the knees.
He grabs me by the back of the neck and hauls my face close to his.
I should be terrified.
I’m not.
“There’s no one else?” I whisper tentatively.
His eyes flash. The next thing I know, he’s kissing me so hard that I feel like my head’s about to explode. When he finally breaks away, I’m in danger of tipping right over. Except he’s still got my neck in the palm of his hand.
“It’s just you and me, Alyssa. There’s no one else.”
Then he pushes me up against one of the basement walls and starts ripping at my pajamas. For the first time, I don’t feel the cold in the basement. All I can feel is him—his warmth, his strength, his desire for me.
How did we end up here so fast?
The little nagging voice in the back of my head chimes in. Because he told you exactly what you wanted to hear.
But I’m not willing to question it now. I’m not willing to stop him, either. His lips come down over mine again and again. He takes the kiss as though it belongs to him. As though he has the inalienable right to.
It’s a blur of kissing and touching and my clothes falling away. In the blink of an eye, I’m naked, with one leg hitched over Uri’s thigh. I’m so wet that he slides in easily. There’s precious little build-up—he just starts pumping hard, banging my body against the wall like he’s trying to punish me one thrust at a time.
It takes only minutes before I’m succumbing to a drooling, sputtering orgasm. While his hands scour my body, leaving trails of bruising heat wherever they go, I try to get a hold of myself; I try to remember that this is temporary. Anything that burns this wildly was never meant to last.
We have an expiration date and it’s coming sooner than I think.
Maybe that’s why I surrender myself to the moment and stop questioning it.
Maybe that’s why this feels like a goodbye.
Maybe that’s why, as I come hard against the wall, I can’t stop the tears from rolling down my cheeks.
40
URI
Nikolai’s eyes zero in on me like a laser. “Anything you’d like to tell me?”
I resist the urge to roll my eyes. “You’re always so relaxed after you come back from these business trips. You should really take them more often.”
“I closed the deal on the Benioff merger and I got us three new investors. You’re welcome.”