Chapter 232 It's you only
Chapter 232 It's you only
Her brows furrowed and looked between me and the shower. The corner of her lip pulled down a fraction, just for a second. Not a full frown, but I couldn’t stop staring at her mouth now.
"Are you sure?" I pressed, the weight of my presence lingering around her like a coiled spring.
"Volkov, I....," she shook her head and inhaled, "I'm fine. Tired. Just tired." She was lying.
The tone of her voice had words lingering in the air, unspoken. She was holding back, and my instincts prickled, sensing it like a predator sensing hesitation in prey.
"Remember, Elena, I told you not to lie to me." My fingers tightened on the towel sitting low on my hips. They itched to punish her for not being honest with me.
"Ugh." She huffed and rolled her head dramatically with her eyes. "That was really nice, Andrey. I'm not used to being treated like this. Normally, when men use me, they leave as fast as they can afterwards."
"I saw an opportunity and I took it, but I'm not using you, Elena." As badly as I wanted her, I still saw her as a person, delicate and alive. And besides that she was mate. This wasn't the right time to tell her so.
"That's all the others ever did. I wasn't a person; I was just a pretty thing for them to use. And when they were done, that was it."
"You don’t think I’ll be any different?" I asked, my voice low, carrying the quiet authority of someone used to commanding obedience.
"Even if you are, it's not safe for me to want that." She turned to look at her own reflection in the mirror again. My gaze followed the sight of her elegant neck and the faint marks on her throat, my instincts flaring in protectiveness.
"Elena, I might have put money on the line to get you, but I need you to understand it's not just any woman I would have done that for. It had to be you and only you..." I paused, running my hand over my chin and scratching my beard, hiding the tension that always lingered in my wolfish reflexes. "This time between us can be fun. It can be meaningful. But we don’t have to make it any more than that if we don’t want to."
Her eyes closed and she took a shuddering breath. I figured she was thinking over what I said. It would be good for us both to get what we could out of our time together and it didn’t need to be a cold transaction. Not like what she experienced before.
"I know that you're a Ballerina. I know that you're a woman with your own life, and I would never want to take those things away from you," I went on, my voice steady even as the silent pulse of Alpha energy hummed beneath the surface.
"Okay," Her voice was soft and small, so faint I could have sworn I heard it inside my own head. But when I met her gaze in the mirror, she nodded at me with the corner of her mouth turned up. The smile was a bit forced, but her eyes were genuine. We both wanted each other, at least physically. She had admitted as much downstairs.
"This isn’t your everyday relationship, and we both know that." Relationships were usually my enemies. Women didn’t stay with me long, and I didn’t care.
"You want this arrangement to be mutually beneficial when it comes to the sex." Her laugh was half a sigh, but the glimmer had returned to her crystal-clear eyes, and the sight made my chest tighten. She was beautiful when she smiled, and the instinct to protect and claim her surged beneath my human composure.
"Do you enjoy it?" I prompted.
Her cheeks immediately turned pink, and she sucked in a breath, avoiding my eyes. She twirled a strand of hair around her fingers for a second before freezing.
"It's really late; I think I should go to bed. I still have to make it to the studio in the morning." Her hand went for the handle to the bathroom door. Before I knew it, my hand whipped out and grabbed her elbow, just enough to stop her.
Elena’s head turned to the side, looking at me from the corner of her eye. A small pout appeared on her lips as I halted her attempt at avoiding the question.
"Elena, come on. Just tell me. You like it when I make you come," I stepped closer until my bare chest was against her back. I felt the cool silk of her robe on my skin. Her body shuddered, and I wrapped my arms around her. "I know you do. But I want to hear you say it."
"That's... embarrassing." She covered her face with her hands, and I gently squeezed her tighter, pressing her into me, coaxing her words out. "You say so many lewd things, Volkov."
"Baby, I can say all kinds of things, and I know you like it." I dipped my head and pressed my face into her neck. She smelled so sweet, the faint pulse of warmth beneath her skin triggering a deep, quiet hunger I had to fight to contain. I kissed the side of her throat.
A soft gasp instantly slipped from her lips, and she tensed in my arms. But I felt the way she shifted her hips against me. It shouldn’t have surprised me as much as it did that my cock twitched to life as Elena shivered in my embrace.
"I like it." She whispered. A second later, she pushed free of my arms and wrapped her hand around the door handle. "You're wicked." Then she opened the door to the spare room she was staying in.
I followed her, still wearing nothing more than the towel around my hips. "See, that wasn’t so hard. You need to be more honest about enjoying that wickedness."
She rolled her eyes and opened the door to the closet. "You said this time between us can be fun. So, what does that mean? It’s not a relationship. Does that mean we’re like friends?"
At her words, I barked out a short laugh. "We might as well be. Friends with benefits. Although I’ve never paid for any friends before."
Her expression immediately went sour again. Without saying anything, she focused on the closet again, pulling out a thin slip of lace that was less a nightgown and more something that resembled lingerie, if you asked me.
My cock tried to take over my brain again. Instead of focusing on the lines of her body I could see through her robe, I took a deep, shuddering breath and looked to the ceiling, fighting the quiet, feral pulse inside me that wanted to claim every inch of her.