The Professional (The Game Maker #1)(55)
Author: Kresley Cole

For the last five days, we’d driven ever southward toward Paris, giving me a passenger-side view of southern Russia, Poland, Germany, and northern France.

At night, we’d stayed in lavish hotels and made love for half of the hours we’d allotted for sleep. Though he’d taken me again and again, he always treated me like porcelain.

Over these days, I’d seen more of his fascinating contradictions. He knew wines, spoiling me with rare vintages, but didn’t drink with me. When we dined in fine restaurants, he was such a gentleman, his table manners impeccable—yet I knew he was always carrying a very ungentlemanly pistol in a holster.

In addition to Russian, English, and Italian, he spoke fluent French and had a good grasp of German—but I could barely get him to communicate with me about anything meaningful.

He refused to open up. With every mile we’d put between us and Russia, distance had accumulated between Sevastyan and myself. I was beginning to see that Paxán was right: something was broken inside Sevastyan.

The grief we shared hadn’t brought us closer; in fact, we’d avoided all mention of Paxán and Berezka. . . .

When he stepped through the balcony doors, I accepted the wine, asking, “Is this place really yours?”

“I bought it from a Saudi prince.” That would explain the heavy security, the private entrance. A guard and servants were already installed here.

“Sounds expensive.”

A hint of amusement. “I have money of my own, milaya.” Our first day on the road, he’d told me that when things settled down, we would need to discuss my inheritance, but I was in absolutely no hurry. Since then, we hadn’t talked about expenses or money until now.

He joined me at the railing, the situation reminding me of the first time I’d looked out from my balcony at Berezka. Except that now, Sevastyan wasn’t physically standoffish. He pulled me in front of him, my back to his front, and wrapped his warm arms around me. Resting his chin on my head, he locked me tight against his torso.

“When did you buy it?” I asked.

“Not long ago.”

Another vague answer to put with the rest of them. I bit my tongue. Sometimes I bit it so hard it bled.

Since that night on the boat, there’d been no progression of emotions—or intimacy.

He’d claimed me again and again, praising me, bringing me untold pleasure. After each time, he’d let me explore his body as intently as he’d explored mine. Nights of breathless discovery. I would drift off to sleep with my hands still caressing him.

But he never took me as he so clearly needed to. I’d find his gaze on my wrists—because he needed them bound. He’d nuzzle my ni**les, suckling them, but never grazing them with his teeth or pinching them up to the point of pain.

Yesterday, at a gas station in Germany, he’d been on the phone—again—so I’d wandered inside and made a purchase: a hard-core bondage magazine (it was just sitting in a rack of mags next to the motor oil!).

Once we’d gotten under way, he’d absently asked, “What do you have there?”

So I’d turned to a page I’d dog-eared while waiting for him, holding up one of the many pictures that had piqued my interest: a naked woman bound by her wrists and ankles to what looked like a padded sawhorse.

She’d worn these really cool nipple clamps; they’d looked like someone had placed one conductor’s wand above the peaks, then another below, tightening the slim bars together with screws on the ends. Recalling how hard Sevastyan had pinched my ni**les in the banya—and how I’d loved it—I wanted to be clamped like that. At the mere thought, my ni**les had stiffened.

Once Sevastyan had registered what he was seeing, his pupils had dilated, his knuckles gone white on the steering wheel. Voice hoarse, he’d asked, “Is that what you think you want?”

I’d nodded. “You have a lot of experience with scenes like this, right?”

“Enough for both of us, so that we never have to descend to that level again.”

Descend? “You should know—since apparently you’re the only man I’ll ever sleep with—that I want to try just about everything once. My curiosity demands it.”

He’d swallowed, his throat working. “Like what?”

In as casual a tone I could feign, I’d said, “I loved it when you whipped me with the venik.” When the stinging had turned to heat and the heat to bliss. “So maybe we should raise the stakes and try a paddle, or something like”—I’d shoved an ad for a flogger at him—“this.”

My cool Siberian’s upper lip had beaded with perspiration.

“Or this.” I’d showed him a picture of a naked and gagged woman trapped in a pillory. A fully dressed man was behind her, smacking her between the legs with a dogging bat, which looked like a leather-covered bookmark that flared at the end. “That must feel . . . electric.”

With a blistering curse, Sevastyan had snatched the mag from me, flinging it in the backseat.

I’d been certain he was about to pull the car over to ravish me on the side of the road. Yet he never had. He wouldn’t even discuss what I’d shown him—as if it’d never happened.

Basically, my relationship with Sevastyan was emotionally stunted and heading toward sexually frustrated. Two very big hurdles . . .

Now, as the lights of Paris twinkled in the distance, he turned me in his arms. “What are you thinking about?”

“The drive down. The magazine.”

He dropped his hands and drew away from me. Crossing to the railing, he rested his forearms atop it. “I’m not discussing that.”

I narrowed my eyes, filled with irritation and disappointment. But recalling his white-knuckled reaction to my choice of light reading made me realize I could wear him down. Tempt him to lose control. Maybe?

Of course, that would mean having to pay the piper. Was I ready to commit to a BDSM relationship with this man? Part of me wanted to, simply because it would at least be a defined relationship.

As we stood now, everything was up in the air, with zero stability. I was discovering that I liked stability. I’d liked living on one farm my entire childhood with steady-as-rocks parents. I’d liked settling in at one school.

Naturally, Sevastyan would feel differently after his hand-to-mouth existence as a child. But I needed more. . . .

“Talk about something else, Natalie, or we won’t talk at all.”

“Fine. We’ll discuss other things. Such as how you made so much money.” I’d had no idea he was independently wealthy to this degree, but it made sense considering he was a vor himself. Now I realized he’d lived at Berezka by choice, to be close to Paxán. The idea of that tugged at my heart. “Will you not tell me how?”