9: In Which She Might Have Nikolai in Her Browser History

9: In Which She Miscalculates Her Feelings

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“What the hell?” was the first thing Nikolai groggily murmured when he woke up at the crack of dawn and began to realise that his wrists were cuffed to the wooden headboard of his ridiculously large bed.

His blue eyes focused on me as he made a futile attempt at freeing himself. Since his arms were raised up on either side of his head, I wasn’t too worried about him dislocating something. I was, however, worried that Nikolai was a possible kinky fucker because he had one drawer dedicated to handcuffs of various designs and sizes in his bedroom.

But that was neither here nor there.

“Has anyone mentioned that you sleep like a corpse?” I remarked, cross-legged and appraising him from the foot of the bed.

“I can’t say it’s ever come up in conversation,” he countered, his voice heavy with sarcasm. He jerked his wrists again, shooting me a dark look. “You're going to release me now, Ophelia.”

God, the way he said my name… Like it was something mysterious and exotic, and not something out of the only play my mother ever read and finished in high school.

“I don’t think so,” I told him, grimacing when he began to pull at his restraints once more. He was going to bruise himself if he wasn’t careful. His skin was no match against the cold, hard metal.

He stopped fighting, watching me warily. “Is this a game?” He ran his tongue along his pouty lower lip. I stifled a moan at how hot that was. “You like cuffing me? Well, pussycat, let me go and I’ll cuff you. Think about how much you’d like that…”

I did. Briefly. It was tempting to allow him to confine me to his bed, to have his wicked way with me. I had no doubt it would be wicked… But there were some things I needed to get straight; things he probably would never tell me under normal circumstances. Things I needed to know before I went back home.

“I guess you could call this a game,” I said slowly, running a hand up one of his long, exposed legs and pausing at his knee. I traced his kneecap in small circles, no doubt tickling him. He tried to get his leg away from me, groaning when he realised how impossible that was. “It’s called Truth and Reward.”

“Truth and Reward,” he echoed, and we both stared at the erection straining at the crotch of his silk boxers shorts.

“Yeah.” I licked my lips, moving to straddle him. He automatically jerked, his cock unerringly hitting my exposed clit through the thin silk of his boxers. I gasped. “We’ll start easy,” I breathed, ignoring the sweet sensation. “Favourite food?”

His blue eyes were fixed on me, registering disbelief. “My favourite food?”

“Like I said – easy.”

“But I could lie to you. How would you know that it was the truth?”

“Why would you lie about something like that?”

“Fair enough,” he slowly conceded. He tilted his head to one side. “Pelmeni.” At my blank look, he elaborated: “They’re dumplings. Pastry dumplings stuffed with meatballs. My mother would make them all the time. For a time, that’s all I ate.” His eyes danced with fond memories and I knew that he was telling the truth. No guy could make up a story like that.

“Reward,” I murmured, lowering my mouth to his heavy chest and closing it over one of his dusky nipples. I nibbled at the pebbled nub gently with my teeth and he arched his back, groaning as if in pain.

“Pussycat,” he hissed, beginning to grind against me. “You're killing me.”

I raised my head, stilling his distracting movements with firm hands on his thighs beneath me. “Truth,” I said softly. “When was the first time you saw me? Because I know for a fact that it wasn’t after we…accidentally had sex.”

Nikolai’s gaze devoured me, dissolved me from the inside out with its intensity. “Your graduation.”

I exhaled the breath that I’d been holding. “You were there?”

“Briefly,” he said quietly. “My brother couldn’t make it and I went on his behalf. Little Mikhail needed at least one family member there, right?” Taking a deep breath, he said, “I felt like a pervert, getting hard for someone so young, but God, it wasn’t just sexual. You were laughing during your valedictorian speech and I wanted to…to I don’t know what. It scared me and when I got back here, I tried to force you out of my head.” He gave me a small smile. “I didn’t count on having to force you out of my bed. What were the odds of you falling into my bed when I wanted you so fucking badly?”

I swallowed, knowing that I should never have started this dumbass game. A flurry of emotions threatened to knock me out. This wasn’t what I had expected to hear. It didn’t feel even close to being real.

“So that night? At the end? You pretended not to know me,” I said, but it was more to myself than to Nikolai. “You made up a story about thinking I was trying to seduce the king. And then that time Mikhail properly introduced us? You deserve an Oscar.”

Out of habit, he pulled at his restraints again. “No, Ophelia. I knew it was you the minute you opened your mouth,” he murmured. “There was no fucking way I could have forgotten that voice.”

For a second, I was speechless. Then, “Reward,” I mumbled absently, bending and laving Nikolai’s other nipple with my tongue. I bit down harder than I’d intended and he growled low in his throat, jerking his hips.

“Stop this, pussycat,” he pleaded, his chest heaving beneath my mouth. “I know you're mad, and you have every –”

“I’m not mad,” I told him truthfully, tracing the contours of his pecs with the tip of my tongue. I paused, lifting my head and meeting his blazing eyes. “I’m…overwhelmed.” I sat back up, sucking in air before hoisting myself off him and ambling to his vanity table. “Another truth. What are these?” I held the stack of photographs I’d stumbled upon and watched as heat stained his upper chest and face a deep red. “Oh, you’re a blusher. I would never have guessed,” I muttered sarcastically, walking over to him and flinging the snaps at him.

“Trust me, this is a first,” he said under his breath.

“Trust you? Right. Trust the guy who’s basically admitted that he’s stalked me for the past six years. Got it.”

His eyes narrowed up at me. “Stalked you?” He snorted. “I’m not that far gone.”

“Then how can you expect me to not be creeped out by this? I thought you were normal. I thought you were – God, I don’t know – a player. But then you drop this on me and act like I’m overreacting?”

“I guess you’ve never Googled yourself,” he said, sounding like the soothing voice of reason to my high-pitched hysteria. He sighed with defeat. “You’re not going to let me loose until I tell you everything, are you?”

“No.”

Nikolai’s nostrils flared. “I suppose you're waiting for me to admit that I spent the last six years jerking off to your college photos, pining away for you like a lovesick fan,” he growled through clenched teeth. He tugged at his restraints for good measure. “I’m sorry to disappoint. You obviously don’t know this but” He didn’t look away from me and I didn’t look away from him. “After that night, I just didn’t want to forget your face.”

I swallowed and sat down beside him, on the edge of the bed, processing everything. Firstly, how could he have been at my high school graduation without my knowing? Wouldn’t I have noticed someone as…well, as freakishly hot as he was? Back then, that’s all that mattered to me – looks, then congeniality. Shallowness aside, I would’ve noticed him and besides, Mikhail had never mentioned that his uncle was coming to graduation. Then again, I’d been in my own world during that time, afraid that Natalya would gatecrash that ceremony and further destroy my life. Secondly, why me? He could’ve wanted – and attained – any woman. Yet he was stuck on me, an unemployed wannabe actress whose life was spiralling out of control…

I picked up a photo from the Zara Paulsen shoot. “This is recent.” I was stating the obvious but deep down, I felt the beginnings of a stupid warm feeling because a guy – a prince, for fuck’s sake – cared enough about me to keep tabs on me over the years.

Nikolai surprised me by letting out a laugh. “I never thought you’d come to the wedding. Wasn’t that obtuse of me?” His laughter died. “In my head, I had claimed you. Fuck, you have no idea what you do to me, Ophelia.”

“Truth, Nikolai,” I said softly, turning to face him. “Do you think I should be scared of you?”

His eyes clouded over with…distress. He made a weak attempt at freeing himself again.

“Because I am,” I admitted. “It’s not about the pictures. I was freaked out at first but I’m flattered that someone like you would…” My voice trailed off and I shook my head, clearing my thoughts. “It’s the things you say that scare me. They scare the shit out of me because you sound so…serious and I-I’m going to remove the cuffs now. I don’t want to play this game anymore.”

He sat motionless as I snatched the key that would open the cuffs around his right wrist and unlocked them. Without waiting for any further assistance, he unlocked the second pair on his left wrist, leaving both pairs on the bed.

“Ophelia, look at me,” he prompted, cupping my cheek with one hand.

I caught sight of the marks that were already appearing on the inside of his wrist and winced, snagging his hand before he could move away. “I’m sorry,” I told him, pressing my lips onto the pink welts across his skin. His pulse thrummed in his veins there and I raised my head again, meeting his eyes. “This was stupid. This whole thing was stupid. I wish I’d never asked. I was better off not knowing.”

He dragged his free hand through my hair and tugged me to him, our mouths now inches apart. “You invade my dreams, my thoughts, my fantasies. I don’t know why so how can I begin to explain it to you?” he said, his voice laced with frustration. His breath fanned my lips, making them tingle in anticipation of his kiss.

My eyes snapped shut. “You’ve fucked me. Why isn’t that enough?”

Nikolai’s hold of my hair tightened. “Because I’m not lusting after you. I don’t want your body. I want you. Tell me you understand that, pussycat.”

And then I felt his lips, softer than I always expected them to be, on mine. I parted my lips instantly, allowing myself to be swept away by the heat and intensity Nikolai constantly provoked. Gently pushing me flat onto my back, he sat astride me, never breaking his mouth away from mine.

He slid open my gown, his mouth creating a trail of molten lava as it descended down the side of my neck and into the valley between my breasts. I held in a moan, choosing instead to thread my fingers in the thick, velvety hair of his head and pull for all I was worth as he moved lower and lower, dangerously lower. He hissed, his tongue flickering into the hollow of my navel, and I arched my back, able to smell my arousal in the air.

“So responsive,” he murmured into my skin, pulling me to the edge of the bed and kneeling before me. Parting my legs, he skipped my dripping apex, his mouth landing on the inside of my thigh, sucking gently; hard enough to leave a hickey. “You’re so beautiful in your ecstasy.”

“Nikolai,” I gasped. Pulsating. Aching. Needing.

I felt his mouth move to my other thigh, giving it an identical love bite there, and I writhed, desperate for more. It didn’t matter that I was still filthy from our earlier lovemaking. I didn’t give a damn that I reeked of me, that I reeked of him – I wanted his mouth there…

And eventually, it was.

He kissed the throbbing bud, slowly, as if he were kissing a mouth. I yearned to shove his face into me but held back, knowing that Nikolai’s way was the better one. With steady fingers, he further parted my cunt, his tongue leaving my clit and exploring my parted folds. This time, I couldn’t suppress my moans of pure ecstasy. The faint stubble on his jaw brought added pleasure when the pressure of his tongue intensified. He licked me thoroughly, tasting me, tasting himself. And all the while I was floating, drifting into nothingness.

A finger slid inside me, joining his darting tongue. His nose bumped against my clit. The squelching sound of his entry and retreat intermingled with my breathy cries of his name. I was climbing, climbing high on my way to yet another delicious orgasm à la Nikolai Alvonich.

But then he raised his head, emerging from my cunt with a face that was glistening with my juices.

I shuddered when he rose above me, his breathing ragged as he appraised me, his eyes dangerously dark.

“Do you trust me?” His voice was rough, gravelly.

Against my better judgment, I did. Nikolai would never hurt me. “Yes.”

“Then I’m going to cuff you.”

My breathing sped up, sweat trickling down the place where my breasts separated. I needed to come, needed to have him inside me. How had I lived so long without crippling arousal like this?

Nikolai didn’t wait for my assent. He reached above me and dangled a pair of cuffs over my head.

“Okay,” I whispered. “Okay.”

His face softened. Running a finger along my bottom lip, he whispered back: “I like you.”

“I like you, too,” I said, and I did. Despite how crazy he seemed, despite how intense he was coming off, despite how badly I wanted to stay and turn a fling into something meaningful…

“Didn’t doubt it,” he lied, getting off me. “Robe off. Ass up.”

I slipped out of the nightgown, my entire body alight and perspiring. Nikolai instructed me to get on my knees, to hold my forearms against the headboard. The unfamiliar circling of metal around my wrists followed, and I was bound to the wood, unable to get away.

“Good?” That was Nikolai, his voice coming from behind me.

I inhaled, knowing that he only wanted to know if I was okay. I was.

“Yeah.”

“Good,” he exhaled, his hands squeezing the globes of my ass. I pressed my face into the bed. “I don’t want to offend you. Tell me if I am.”

“What?” I was trembling, my skin heated from where he touched me.

“I’ve had your cunt,” Nikolai murmured, his palms rubbing my butt cheeks in slow, tantalising circles. “I’ve had your mouth. Now I’m going to have your ass.”

I groaned, the sound swallowed up by the pillows.

“Do you want that, Ophelia? Say the word.”

“Yes,” I panted, aware of a drawer being pulled open and subsequently shut.

My heart was hammering against my chest; frantic, excited. I had experimented a few times, of course, with dildos but just the thought of Nikolai being inside there… It made me hotter than I’d ever been.There was evidently something wrong with me. When it came to this man. Only when it came to this man.

“Tell me if it’s too much,” Nikolai was saying, gently parting my butt cheeks. His fingers were wet, smooth. I instinctively shrank away from the probing finger that wanted to breach my opening the wrong way… “I won’t hurt you, kotik.”

I bit my lip, feeling his index finger enter the tight, fist-like hole without much resistance. My sphincter muscles clamped around it, then strangled his second finger. I jumped when he pressed another finger against my clit, massaging the swollen mass of nerves in little circles as his fingers made a steady assault of plunge-and-retreat.

Oh, fuck, I thought, when it felt like everything inside me was on the verge of erupting and staining the bedroom indelibly.

Nikolai was fucking my ass with his fingers and I had never felt anything so strange, so intensely erotic.

“Nikolai,” I moaned, mentally begging him to go faster, to relieve the increasingly unbearable ache in my groin any way he wanted to.

“I need to loosen you up, pussycat,” he responded, his voice barely a rasp. “God, you should see what I’m seeing right now. I could come all over your fucking back.” And just like that, his fingers left my insides and the dip in the mattress was gone as he got off the bed.

Moments passed where I was literally on the edge of climax, imagining that I could get myself off my mashing my clitoris into the bed sheets. Chained to the headboard like this, with no way of relieving myself, was pure torture.

“I’m going to fuck your ass now.”

Nikolai’s voice was soft, guttural in my ear. I sighed with relief, feeling him position himself behind me, gripping the swell of my ass in his hands – his washed hands, I realised – and squeezing before spreading my legs apart.

“This will be the second time I wear a condom with you,” he lazily intoned, rubbing the lube into my asshole. The cold sensation literally made me jump a mile. Nikolai held me tight. “I’ve wanted to claim you in every way since the day I saw you. Relax, sweetheart.”

I wished I could see his eyes – the expressive, long-lashed pools of heated desire he had – but there was something carnal about being face down, ass up.

Nikolai leaned forward, pushed the tip of his cock up against my virgin hole with one hand. Ran his free hand down my spine, leaving goosebumps in his wake. Rammed into me with one powerful thrust, breaching my clasping muscles until he was settled deep, deep inside me.

I cried out, both from the pain and the unfamiliar, distinct level of beautiful sensation. Nikolai held himself motionless inside me, simply filling me with the thick, beating length of his cock. His fingers sank into my hips, fanning across my hipbones – and then he cracked a palm against my ass and my insides reflexively clamped around him, tearing an animalistic roar from his mouth to join the cacophony of whimpers and moans I was making.

My wrists strained against the headboard as he pitched forward, fitting perfectly inside me, and gripped a handful of my loose hair in his hand, forcing me to raise my head.

I surrendered to the sensation of almost severe pleasure, revelling in the way Nikolai seemed to grow, to swell with each brutal, rapid thrust. He released my hair and his hand came around me, thumbing my clit. I was so, so close to…

A thought occurred to me, vague and fleeting. “You're not wearing your piercing,” I sighed.

“No,” he ground out, but I could imagine the smile tugging at the corners of his lips. “I’m not.”

That was the last coherent thing I considered before my thoughts were completely and irrevocably scrambled by sensations I didn’t even think could exist.

“What’s my name?” Nikolai’s breath was in my ear, hot and tickly. His cock filled me again before retreating, then breaching my sphincter once more. “What’s my name?”

I squeezed my eyes shut, catching my breath. “Have you forgotten?”

He thrust into me, unapologetic. Hard.

I screamed his name, coming so hard I went completely limp. But Nikolai held me up, seeking his own climax. I was chanting his name, lost in the gentle aftershocks of my orgasm, and that probably sent him over, spilling his hot semen into the latex inside me.

“Pussycat,” he panted, collapsing over me. I relaxed, the feel of his sweaty body against mine familiar, and he pulled out, stretching his body out beside me.

“Can you get these off, please?” I moved my handcuffed hands and he reached for the key, easily unlocking them. I flexed my hands, averting my eyes when Nikolai rose to dispose of the condom.

When he returned, I was more or less lucid. More or less.

“Thank you, Nikolai,” I declared, watching the way his brow furrowed, like he knew I was going to say something he wasn’t going to like. Which I was.

“For what?”

I snagged my gown and pulled it on as gracefully as I could, seated on a bed with my legs ungracefully spread. “For the awakening. I needed it. You were good, and for that, I’ll be eternally grateful.”

“The awakening?” he echoed, cupping my chin in his hand and making me look at him. “What the fuck are you on about?”

“It was always a dream of mine to be with a prince, just like it was always your dream to fuck a girl you idealised and put on a pedestal because her voice sounded great, I guess.”

“Don’t mock me,” he growled, inching his menacing face toward mine. He schooled his face into a mask. “You make me want you. That’s all there is to it.”

“No, that isn’t all there is to it!” I snapped. “What about what I want? What if what I want isn’t you? What then? You're going to force me to stay with you after nearly two weeks of sexual tension and six years of weird obsession?”

Nikolai released me as if I’d electrocuted him. In essence, I had, and God, wasn’t I the one burning? I ignored the momentary regret as Nikolai found his boxers on the floor and yanked them on, all the while avoiding eye contact with me.

What the hell did he want from me? Promises I couldn’t make? I was too young for the things he clearly wanted. He was too deep for me, way too romantic. Maybe I’d believed in romance once upon a time but reality had quickly set in and I threw away my rose-coloured glasses. He needed to dispose of his, too.

And besides, we don’t love each other. We can’t.

What did I know about love? What did he? He was a playboy, a guy who could literally get any girl he sniffed at – yet he wants you, the voice in my head emphasised.

I brought my knees up, wincing at the slight twinge of pain I felt where Nikolai had just been. Hugging myself, I watched him pace the room, his hands firmly locked behind his back. The muscles of his back bunched and flexed with every roll of his shoulders and I barely managed to stop myself from drooling. This was how I knew what was going on between us was purely physical.

Finally, Nikolai stopped pacing and my eyes stopped with him. He looked at me.

“How do you feel?”

“Uh, what?” I knew I sounded like an idiot.

“How do you feel? Did I hurt you? A little soreness is nor-”

“I’m fine,” I cut in, blushing for some inexplicable reason. But come on, we were talking about my ass. “Thank you…for asking.”

He nodded before resuming his pacing. Maybe that was my cue to leave. Maybe it was best that I leave.

“I’ve always been an idealist,” Nikolai said suddenly, still pacing. “I don’t come across that way because men like me? We’re supposed to be like my father – hard, seeing the worst in everything, never dreaming – but I could never be like that. My mother’s probably to blame. She saw the glass as half-full even when we never had a glass to begin with.” He smiled, a genuine smile that wasn’t directed at me. “I could never be king because I could never be an out-and-out cocksucker. I love my brother but that’s what he is – a money-grabbing cocksucker who doesn’t have his people’s best interests.”

“I think you’d make a great king,” I said candidly.

He paused mid-step, arching a brow at me. “Why?”

“Because…because you’re decent. Because you're idealistic. It isn’t a weakness.”

“Believe me, it is,” he scoffed, running a hand through his wild just-been-sexed hair. “I rarely think before I act. I mean, I didn’t think about what it would look like for you to find pictures of yourself on my bookshelf did I?”

I allowed myself a small smile. “No, you didn’t. What were you thinking?”

“That the paparazzi clearly love you,” he muttered, and I actually laughed.

“Not as much as they love you.”

“I’ve never Googled myself,” he said soberly, continuing his stride across the room. “I find that narcissistic.”

I felt the exact same way but that didn’t stop me from blurting out, “You should. Most bloggers seem to have a thing for you getting a tan in Ibiza.”

He stopped pacing. “You’ve Googled me?”

For the second time that morning, I felt heat creep up my neck. “I…might have.”

“You’ve Googled me.” It wasn’t a question anymore.

“Well, of course I did!” I pushed myself off the bed, glad to note that I didn’t instantly collapse once I was on my feet. “I was eighteen and had just slept with my best friend’s uncle, who also just happened to be royalty. Of course I Googled you. Wipe that fucking smirk off your face.”

He humoured me by literally wiping it off his face with one big paw. “Do one thing for me, then,” he said softly, in that tone I was beginning to recognise as his I’m-going-to-screw-with-your-motor-functions voice.

“What?” I croaked, warily watching him approach me. I looked up into his stormy blue eyes and flinched when his hand stroked my cheek.

“Tell me you don’t want me.”

I couldn’t freaking say it again. I couldn’t say it again because it would’ve been a total bald-faced lie.