Under Control: Chapter 11

I don’t move. He only stares at me. Neither of us speaks for a long moment.

“I should’ve known you’d show up,” I tell him, taking a step forward. I crunch over shattered pottery. “Did you know this was going to happen?”

“No, I did not.”

“Could you have stopped it?”

“I wasn’t aware anything was wrong until you came home. I haven’t been watching your mother.”

My heart’s racing in my throat. The implication is pretty obvious: he has been watching me.

So much for that dinner date being the end of this.

I never really believed he’d get the message though.

“Did you know? About my uncle?”

He pushes himself to his feet like a glorious angel spreading its wings. Power and malicious intent roll off him in waves. A horrible feeling crawls into my guts, and I’m sure beyond anything I’ve ever been sure about before in my life that Valentin is a very, very bad man.

That he has done things, terrible things, maybe even things like this.

That he’ll do them again too.

And that maybe he’ll do them for me.

“I knew,” he confirms. “Not at first. After you stormed into my life, I looked into you. I couldn’t help myself.” He comes around the overturned coffee table, stepping over magazines. Their pages crinkle under his shoes. The shower water runs through the pipes in the wall, a steady white noise. “You fascinated me, malishka. You are beautiful, but also, I saw something in you. Something strong and perfect. I knew, in that moment, that I had to have you. But I didn’t realize what you were yet.” He stops in front of me, a massive storm front, a hurricane of a man.

“What do you think I am?”

“A gift,” he says, touching my cheek gently with his thumb. He moves it across my face and pushes down on my lower lip. “Heaven brought you to me. You are exactly what I’ve needed.”

He pushes his thumb against my teeth.

I open my mouth—and bite down.

His eyes widen in surprise. I don’t try to break skin, but I want to let him know that I’m not here for him to fuck with me. Except it has the opposite effect: he surges forward, grabs me by the hair, and slams me back into the wall. I gasp in shock and my mouth opens again, and this time he puts his thumb onto my tongue.

I whimper as his knee presses up between my legs. I suck down on him, more out of shock than anything else. He growls and it’s the sound of a hungry, barely restrained beast.

“The more you struggle, the more I want you,” he whispers and pushes his thumb deeper into my mouth. Then he pulls it back and smears my spit around my lips. “The more you resist, the more you draw me in.”

“That’s sick, you know that?”

His knee tightens its pressure between my legs. I whimper again and my hips grind forward, pushing myself along him.

If he’s sick, then I’m fucking sick too.

Because I like this.

He scares me—I can’t pretend otherwise—but he’s also beautiful in the way a dangerous, violent bull is beautiful. He can break me, destroy me, but instead he uses all that power to make me feel good.

I hate him for it. And I want him for it too.

“You need me now. I know your mother is in danger. You don’t have to worry—I will never let anyone hurt you. But it will be complicated, protecting your mother as well. It will cause me problems.”

“What am I supposed to do?” I ask him. I grind against his thigh and grab onto his shoulders. I shudder, eyes closed. “What do you want from me?”

“You know what I want.” He leans close and bites my chin and nibbles up to my lips. “I want you. I want you to be my wife.”

I grind down harder, faster. “I don’t want that.”

“I don’t care. Do you want me to protect your mother? Do you want me to keep her safe?”

“Yes,” I moan as the bliss in my core builds.

“Then marry me. I will protect her. I will protect you. I have that power.”

“I can’t. I can’t.” I gasp, back arching as he pushes harder into me, the pressure mounting against my clit. My head’s going haywire. My vision tunnels. “Please, Valentin.”

“Marry me.”

“Please,” I whimper and my back arches into him. Pleasure mounts, hitting a peak. “Please, Valentin, please.”

“Marry me, Karine,” he growls in my ear before hammering my mouth with a kiss.

I come so hard I nearly black out. I moan against his tongue. He dominates me with his lips, takes me, makes me his, and I’m a puddle of brainless satisfaction as I slump forward into him.

“Okay,” I whisper, barely even aware of what I’m saying. “I’ll marry you.”

“Good girl,” he says.

Then lifts me off my feet, throws me over his shoulder, and carries me out into the street.