Page 36 of Mistaken
“I was sixteen when I earned my license. I keep my skills up by flying a few times a year.”
It’s then that I realize that I don’t even know how old my husband is. “So, how old are you?” I’m already cringing, but it’s not like I’ve gotten a chance to do any homework on the man. I just got my phone back before the wedding. But I still feel like an idiot. He’s kissing along my collarbone, and he pulls down the strap of my sundress as he answers me. “I’m thirty-one.”
I’m about to ask something stupid, like 'what's your favorite color?' when he planted his lips on mine, and conversation time is over. Maksim leaned me back against the control column and sucked a bruise just under my nipple and I might have been grinding on him a bit. I gripped the back of his seat and tried to remember the ‘no touchie’ rule but… I wanted to grab those big shoulders of his, and feel the muscles move under my fingers. I really,reallywanted to sink my fingers into his thick, dark hair. It’s silkier than mine and there was so much of it.
Maksim lifted me again while I’d been thinking about his hair, he unzipped his jeans and just pulled my undies aside, sliding into me, he was much rougher than usual.
“Relax,” he’s doing that filthy whispering thing in my ear and it’s working. “Let me in.” He’s moving my hips side to side, trying to loosen me up. “I can feel your underwear grazing the side of my cock.” Maksim abruptly pulls my undies up at the back, tightening them against my clitoris, which is now rubbing against the lace in a really distracting way. I could hear the crash of the waves against the rocks below us, the heat of the sun on my back. Everything else was gone, just the feeling of his thick, heavy cock inside me and the gorgeous words of filth he keeps whispering in English and Russian in my ear.
I really have to learn Russian…
I didn’t mean to do it. I wasn’t being sneaky. But one of my hands found its way under Maksim’s t-shirt, flattened against the warmth of his skin and my fingers slid over a long, rough patch of scarred skin. He pulls my hand loose and imprisons it with the other behind my back, bouncing me harder on his cock and yanking on my underwear until it rips free. The last, vicious tug of the fabric against my clitoris tips me over the edge and I tighten down hard enough on his cock to hold him immobile inside me for a moment until the spasms slow, and he’s thrusting viciously to his own finish.
My hands are still held hostage by Maksim, though his sweaty forehead is against my shoulder. When we can finally breathe without panting, he lets go and pulls me carefully off his cock. I can still feel the heat and wet from us both slicking my inner thighs as I unsteadily climb out of the helicopter with him.
“Why won’t you let me touch you?”
Damnit. That just burst out of me, I wasn’t going to ask. Was it because of the scar I felt?
His eyes are cold again, examining me in that impersonal way he’d had when he thought I was the woman who’d stolen his arms stash.
“This isn’t love, Ella.” If Maksim’s voice had been a touch, he would have given me frostbite. “This is fucking. You’re not allowed to touch me as if you have any right to.” He abruptly lifted me off of him, and onto the tarmac, and zipped up his jeans.
Maksim walked down the pathway back to the house. I was left standing on the pad, my thighs wet, and wanting to set fire to his big, fancy helicopter.
Chapter 12 - Ice Skating and Peppermint Schnapps
In which there are heart-to-heart discussions and the slightest bit of redemption for heartless bastards.
Ella…
I stood at the head of the exquisitely set table. It’s stretched clear across the vast dining room, set for, what? Forty people? It looks like something from an ultra, super uber-amazing Christmas Pinterest board. A snowscape, right down to the chilly, silver-white place settings. The back of each chair has a square boxwood wreath with an elegant name card in beautiful calligraphy.
It’s perfect. And cold. And I’m freezing.
I see the reflection in the massive windows from the three artistically arranged Christmas trees. White and silver. And cold. Then I catch my reflection and I walk closer. I’m in a white cashmere dress to match the table, and the diamonds I’d worn for our wedding. Knee-high boots. The stylist came by today- on Christmas Day, what the hell! Who makes a hairstylist work on Christmas Day? I made sure he’d given her a gigantic tip.
I wanted to be angry. I always worked better from a place of rage than sorrow. But I just felt… tired, I guess. What’s the point? Maksim despised me, even though he’d takenmylife away from me.
Tania told me more than once that she’d “go on the run” with me, which is sweet but impossible. The vision of him chasing me through the forest keeps looping through my consciousness every time I consider trying to slip away. I’ve come up with a thousand escape scenarios and scrapped them all because, in the end, I know it’s impossible.
My only hope is to make him tired of me and maybe he’ll just let me go when he decides a bitter shell of a wife isn’t that interesting.
The first move was obvious. Maksim hasn’t touched me since we returned from St. John’s, because apparently even he has a line he won’t cross, which is me finding him completely repellant.
Four days ago…
When we returned from the silent flight back, I headed for the guest room.
“Your clothes have already been moved to the master bedroom,” Maksim’s voice stopped me. He was idly sorting through some important mail Alina left for him. “Your personal items from your apartment arrive tomorrow. I’ll have them put in storage downstairs until you decide what to do with them.”
He’s waiting for me to flip out, I thought,not happening.Wordlessly, I headed for the massive doors guarding his bedroom. Our bedroom, I guess. Throwing them open and strolling inside I expected… something. Like a medieval castle guard with an axe intoning, “None shall pass!” But no blade swung down to cleave my skull wide open, so I headed for what I assumed was the closet. The master was similar in layout to the guest bedroom, just much, much larger. The doors leading to what I thought was the closet here opened to a dressing room the size of the living room and kitchen combined in my old apartment; rows upon rows of beautiful, hand-made suits, drawers filled with watches that cost more than the average house, leather belts, stupidly expensive silk ties all displayed behind glass fronts. Slide-out shoe racks, huge mirrors, and even a seating area with glamorous lighting by another floor-to-ceiling window.
You know, in case your standard billionaire wanted to curl up in their closet and enjoy the scenery and their clothes at the same time.
Actually, I would really love to do that.
Walking past “my” side of the closet was less exciting. The clothes were beautifully displayed, everything from evening gowns to workout wear, just nothing I’d picked out. No soft and over-stretched sweatshirts with my college logo or ridiculously fuzzy socks. None of it was mine.
