seen a cock before, let alone touched one.
Hesitantly, she puts out her hand and closes it around my cock. It fills her hand. When she squeezes the shaft, her fingers don’t meet around it.
She looks up at me once more, nervous and wide-eyed.
Those pale pink lips part. Her open mouth is about to close around my cock.
Until I stop her.
I gently push her away, tucking my cock back inside my pants.
I want Nessa to suck my cock. Fucking hell, I want it so bad.
But not like this. Not by coercion.
I don’t want her to do it because she’s scared, because she’s trying to convince me not to hurt her brother.
I want her to do it because she craves me as badly as I want her.
That’s not going to happen.
She’s my prisoner, and I’m the monster keeping her here.
I have to lock her back in her room before I lose my last shred of self-control.
20
Nessa
I’m lying in my bed in the dark.
My heart is racing like I’m on a treadmill.
Oh my god oh my god oh my god.
Why did he bring me back here?
I know Mikolaj wants me. I could see it on his face.
He was feeling what I was feeling. The same desperation, the same lust. The same wildness telling me to ignore all rational thought, to take what I wanted and damn the consequences.
I wanted HIM.
I know it’s insane. I know he’s my enemy, and that he wants to destroy everything I love.
But my body and my brain are two separate entities.
I’ve never even had a boyfriend! I had crushes, boys I thought were cute. It was almost a game—something I liked to imagine, without taking any action.
I never really wanted to be kissed, not badly enough to make it happen. There was nothing special about any of those boys. Nothing made them stand out. They were interchangeable in my fantasies.
I’ve never had a strong attraction to anybody.
Until now.
My attraction to Mikolaj is a compulsion. It’s nothing as simple as lust. It’s every emotion wrapped into one: fear, intimidation, arousal, fixation, and anguish. It’s so intense that nothing as normal as a crush could hope to compare to it. It’s a force of nature. It’s a goddamn tsunami.
It takes control of me.
I know he’s feeling it, too.
But he pushed me away, and he brought me back to my room and left me here.
Why?!
One tiny corner of my brain is still thinking rationally. It tells me, “Because he knows this is doomed. He knows he’s going to kill your brother, your parents, and even you. And the tiny shred of morality left inside of him says that it’s wrong to fuck you before he murders you.”
It’s a sobering thought. One that should shake me out of this madness.
I roll over under the blankets, closing my eyes, trying to force myself to go to sleep.
I’m plagued by the throbbing between my thighs. The itching and burning of my skin. I wanted him to touch me so badly. Why didn’t he run his hands down my body at least?
If he had just kissed me again, I could be satisfied. I could go to sleep thinking of that.
But he refused to touch me at all.
It almost makes me angry.
He told me to convince him. Then he sat there like a fucking robot.
Yeah, I’m definitely pissed.
I used to be a girl who would curl up and cry when she was disappointed. Well, not anymore. I’m tired of crying. I’m tired of doing what people say. I’m tired of being locked in this room.
I slip out from under the blanket and pad barefoot toward the door.
I’m still naked, other than my underwear. I never recovered the nightgown—it’s probably still down in the billiards room.
I try the door handle. It turns silently under my palm.
I’m going to take that as a sign. Mikolaj didn’t actually lock me in my room. He’s not sloppy. Either he did it on purpose, or subconsciously he wants this as badly as I do.
I creep out of my room and down the dark hallway.
I remember how terrified I was, the first time I did this.
I’ve spent more than a month in this house now. I know its sounds as well as I know the sound of my own heartbeat and my own breath in my lungs. I know exactly how to avoid Andrei, who’s supposed to be keeping watch tonight. I hear him in the kitchen, pouring himself a glass of milk. He always drinks milk, never water.
I cross the main