Wicked Pursuit: A Black Rose Auction Book
Wicked Pursuit: Chapter 12

The Romanovs don’t have a foothold in Carver City. I don’t know if they ever tried to, but to the best of my knowledge, when they sent over their people from Russia to put down roots in the States, they stuck to the main port cities. Our power structure is older and more insular than a lot of other cities in the country. That remains true to this day.

But that doesn’t explain what he’s doing here. With me.

I open my mouth to demand answers, but he slaps my clit before I can speak. His voice is harsh in my ear. “Do it, Ruby. Come for me right fucking now.”

Even as my mind rails at his arrogance, at his determination to make me fold, my body is primed and ready to submit. It’s everything I can do to clamp my jaw shut and keep his name trapped on the right side of my teeth. I can’t stop myself from coming, though. My body is too eager for the pleasure he gives.

He curses against my ear. “Stubborn to the bitter end.”

Wolf—Luke—Casimir pulls out of me. I don’t have a chance to figure out what I’m supposed to do next, because he throws me over his shoulder and starts carrying me to the bed. “Time to talk.”

That snaps me out of it. “You son of a bitch.” I beat my fists against his lower back. “You lied to me. You’ve been lying to me.” For two fucking years. He must have known exactly who I was in that bar that night he hit on me, when we took shots together and ended up fucking in the parking lot. He took me home that night, and within a week, we were official.

A lie.

Casimir pauses in front of the huge trunk of toys, but I don’t have a chance to twist to see what he’s doing before he’s on the move again. He drops me onto the bed. I bounce, and then he’s on top of me, straddling my stomach.

I almost—almost—get distracted by his massive cock right in my face. He’s still hard and coated in my orgasm. I’ve seen his cock like this before, but it’s not the same. It will never be the same again.

He slams a cuff around one wrist and, in one smooth move, clips it into a bar connected to the rings hanging on either side of the headboard. I gasp, but it’s too late. He already has my second wrist bound and clipped in. “You motherfucker.”

He ignores me and moves down my body to give my ankles the same treatment. I try to twist and kick him, but he easily avoids the blow. Within seconds, I’m bound spread-eagle on the bed.

Helpless.

No one even knows where I am, thanks to my lies. I didn’t book the plane ticket with my credit card, so there’s no record of it. I turned in my phone when I arrived at the estate, and I watched the Concierge turn it off, so I can’t rely on location tracking.

I’m fucked.

Casimir climbs off the bed and pulls on his pants. Then he turns back to me. “Now. Speak. Get it off your chest so we can move on.”

His audacity leaves me temporarily speechless. He’s talking as if this has a foregone conclusion, as if this is a little bump on the path to our future. Delusional. I rattle the cuffs against their rings. “Untie me.”

“No.”

I open my mouth to use my safe word but hesitate. Do I believe he’ll ignore it? Or that he’ll actually let me go if I use it? I don’t know which is worse, and that speaks volumes to how fucked my head is right now. But, damn it, I want answers. “How long did you stalk me before we ‘met’ for the first time two years ago?”

He lifts a single dark brow. “A few months. You made it easy. You put every thought in your head on social media.”

My breath whooshes out. The question was a hunch; to have it verified feels . . . complicated. But he’s answering my questions, so I don’t linger on the emotions clogging my chest. “Why me?”

“You know the answer to that.” He moves around the room, making the same circuit I did when I first got here, examining the toys and tools, poking his head into the bathroom.

Yeah, I guess I do. He picked me because I’m heir to the Belmonte territory—not because he took one look at me and was overwhelmed by wanting. It shouldn’t matter. He’s Casimir fucking Romanov. He’s a fucking stalker, a murderer, an enemy; the answer to why me shouldn’t make my chest tight and hot.

Carver City has had peace for a long time, and the territory leaders are—mostly—still in their prime and not easy pickings. But us heirs are coming of age, and most of us are taking on more responsibility, training for the roles we’ll one day fill.

It’d be smart for an enemy to plant the seeds of dissent now. To target us. Whether to tee us up to be perfect victims later . . . or to merge with us in a more traditional format. Marriage.

I swallow hard. “How many Romanovs are in Carver City right now?”

He gives me a wolf’s grin. “Smart girl.”

Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Michelle hasn’t said anything about suspicious people in her life, but she’s definitely been acting strangely. I was dating a damn Romanov for two fucking years and I had no idea. She might have someone close to her. She might be in danger. And Zayne . . . and the others. Fuck. “Who?”

He just stares at me, expression stony.

A slow-dawning horror takes up residence in my chest. “Tatiana. She’s one of you.”

“My . . . sister.”

The horror inside me grows claws and teeth. His sister. I had his sister’s mouth and fingers all over my pussy. I sent him a picture of it. Oh gods . . . “What the fuck, Casimir?”

“I told you to leave her alone. You didn’t listen.”

I stare at him, trying to see the man I fell in love with. The features are the same—his handsome face, sensuous lips, pale eyes—but Luke never wore a cold expression like Casimir does now. They don’t even move the same. “What was your endgame? Because from where I’m standing, it looks like you never planned to tell me the truth.”

He shrugs. “Once we were married, I would have mentioned something.”

“Mentioned something,” I repeat numbly. “You lied to me. You’ve been lying to me from the beginning.”

He gives me a long look. “Keep throwing stones, baby. You were so quick to tell me who your parents were to Carver City—who your aunt was. Oh wait, you weren’t. You never did.”

Because I thought he was outside the life. I thought he was something just for me. I hadn’t planned on us getting so serious, moving in together, the whole nine yards. It just kind of happened, and it never felt like a good time to explain that my parents were overprotective because we’re in organized crime. I tucked that conversation away in the same place I’ve tucked my thoughts and feelings about being heir. “That’s different.”

“Sure.” He doesn’t say it like he agrees. “Then let’s do one easier. I might have lied about who I was . . . but so did you.”

“No, I didn’t. You knew my name from the start.”

“Come on, Red.” He picks up a flogger, and my whole body goes tight. But he doesn’t approach the bed with it. He just runs it lightly over his palm, almost contemplatively. “We wouldn’t be here if you were the good girl you pretended to be for years. You’d still be sleeping next to Luke, the nice guy who’s perfectly safe.”

“Perfectly boring,” I snap.

“You never thought so when you were coming on my tongue.”

I flinch. It’s true. During the first year of our relationship, we were insatiable. I was insatiable. I’m still not sure when it all changed. “Not recently.”

“No,” he agrees. “Not recently. I’ve been distracted with work, with things back home that required my attention. I would have course corrected, but you took that option away when you . . .” His fist clenches around the flogger. “You cheated, baby. So before you get on your high horse about lies, consider that I haven’t touched another fucking person since we started dating. You’ve done it three times.”

My body flushes with shame, which only makes me angrier. Yeah, I cheated, but would I have if I’d known who he really was? The logic is deeply flawed, but I’m too mad to care. “I cheated on Luke, not you. Once.”

“Semantics.” He drops the flogger and moves to stand at the foot of the bed, his cold gaze raking over me. “Once on Luke, twice on Wolf. It all amounts to the same thing.”

He’s right. I hate that he’s right. I could argue that I was never in a relationship with Wolf, that we never agreed on anything at all, but that doesn’t feel like the truth. “If you were honest with me⁠—”

“Then you would have gone running to your precious parents.” He crosses his arms over his chest. “And your fathers would have taken exception and tried to do something about it. So I would have killed them, and we still would have ended up here.”

He says it so calmly. It’s not even a threat. It’s just fact. I stare. “No.”

“Yes.” He shrugs. “This is better.”

He’s been four steps ahead of me this entire time. What the hell am I supposed to think of that? I don’t know. I can’t think at all. “Did you hurt Tatiana? Threaten her?” Her text hadn’t seemed worried but I was a stranger. It’s no like she’d confess to me.

He actually has the nerve to look insulted. “We’re family. She might be a bitch, but she’s blood. And she hardly forced you into that little threesome. That’s not on her.”

“Funny how you make an exception for her when you didn’t for the others.”

“Life isn’t fair, baby. You know that better than most.” He drinks me in with long sweeps of his gaze. He finally stops at my pussy. “What’s your safe word?”

“No.”

“That’s not it.” He moves back to the cabinet of toys and tools. “You use it, this stops. But you want me as much as I want you. You wanted me as Luke, even if you weren’t honest about what you needed. So I gave you what you need in the form of Wolf. You liked our fucked-up little games, or you would have put a stop to them. So, now that there are no more lies between us, we’re going to keep playing.”

“No.”

He turns back around, a few things I can’t quite see clearly in his hands. “Keep telling me no while that pussy practically gushes in anticipation. You might have a lying mouth, but your body knows who owns you.”

“You don’t own me.” I wish I sounded more confident, especially as he climbs on the bed to kneel between my spread legs. I jerk on the bindings, but they hold me steady. Worst of all, it doesn’t hurt. He’s been very careful with me, and I love and hate that realization in equal measure. “Stop, Casimir. I mean it.”

“No.” He parts my pussy with rough fingers, and then something snaps around my clit. I jerk, but there’s nowhere to go. I can’t see the thing either.

There’s no time to figure it out. Not when he pulls a small plug out of his pocket and smears lube on it. I struggle. It’s no use. Casimir holds my hips down and presses the plug against my ass and then carefully inside. I haven’t done much anal, and the intrusion is strange. But not awful.

He brushes the base with his knuckles, and it shifts inside me. “I like this,” he says.

“I don’t.”

“Mmm.” His touch moves up to where my clit is pulsing strangely. Understanding rolls over me in waves. He put something on it, a clamp maybe, to restrict blood flow. It’s going to hurt like a bitch when he takes it off.

Casimir lifts his attention to my face as he presses three fingers into me. I arch off the bed, the intrusion almost too much with the plug in place. He plants his free hand on my stomach, holds me down as he keeps fucking me slowly. “Like I said—your body always tells the truth.”

I can’t quite catch my breath. “Physical response . . . unintentional.”

“Is that why you can’t manage a full sentence?” He curls his fingers, brushing them against my G-spot. “Because you hate what I do to you so much? Give in, Ruby. Admit that you’re mine, that you want me as I am, want to be with me honestly, not as watered-down versions of ourselves.”

“No.” I can’t think. It’s a blessing that I’m tied down, because I’d be riding his hand fully if I weren’t. Gods, but I’m a horrible person—even as my brain is screaming at me that this man is using sex to manipulate me, that he lied to me, that he’s going to do something to hurt my family and the city I love, there’s a large part of me that simply wants to beg him to fuck me again.

I don’t realize he’s not holding me down anymore until I lift my hips to take his fingers deeper. His brutal smile almost makes me come on the spot. This is a game, and I’m losing.

Casimir moves before I can fully process what he intends. He unhooks the cuffs at my ankles and flips me onto my stomach. The bar my wrists are cuffed to rotates with me. Though it’s positioned in such a way that I still can’t lift my upper body off the bed—I’m too spread out to get leverage.

That doesn’t stop him from lifting my hips. It doesn’t stop me from arching my back more to practically offer him my pussy. Gods, what is wrong with me? It’s like he’s got some kind of drug coming out of his pores that turns me into a sex demon.

Liar. You know who’s responsible for your actions, and it’s not him.

I’m not ready to face that truth. Not now. Maybe not ever.

But when his cock presses to my entrance, I don’t try to jerk away. I just bite the sheets to keep from moaning aloud. With the plug in place, he has to fight his way inside me. He keeps squeezing my ass cheeks, spreading them and then pressing them together, making the plug shift inside me.

It feels good. Better than good.

If I’d known this is what anal could be, I would have changed my mind about trying it again sooner.

“There’s my good girl. Take my cock. Just like that.” His Russian accent gets thicker. He presses my cheeks together again, and this time I can’t stop myself from moaning. “You’ll take me here too. Properly this time. You don’t give a fuck who I am as long as I make you feel like the little slut you are. Isn’t that right, baby?”

“No,” I gasp. I don’t register that I’m moving, squirming on his cock, until he thrusts a little. “Casimir, stop.”

“Make me.” He leans down to press his hands to the bed on either side of me, his chest against my back, his cock buried achingly deep inside me. And, worst of all, his rough voice is in my ear, stripping me bare. “You’ve always been able to stop me, baby. Right from the beginning. But you never did. You aren’t stopping me now. You want my cock deeper, want me to fuck you harder, need me to make you come.”

It’s a testament to the truth of his words that I can’t replace any of my own. “No.”

“Prove it.” He reaches between me and the bed and touches my pulsing clit. Even the light stroke is almost too much. I cry out, shoving back onto his cock as much as I’m able to.

The only warning I get is a click before the clamp falls off my clit. The blood rushes back in an agonizing sensation that makes me scream. Casimir is already moving, urging my hips higher as he fucks me hard enough to shift me up the mattress.

Gods help me, but I come all over his cock.

He pulls out of me, and then his mouth is there, eating me from behind, soothing my throbbing clit with his tongue. He teases another orgasm out of me just like that.

Then it starts again.

Casimir fucks me with his tongue, his fingers, his cock, barely giving me any time to recover before he starts winding me up again. And all the while, the bastard’s voice is in my ear, telling me I know how to make this stop, all I have to do is speak that one little word, how I won’t say it because I’m his perfect little slut.

And I come for him. Again and again and again, until my world narrows down to his touch, to him.

Even as I tell him no, tell him I don’t want this, I don’t want him, I keep my safe word trapped firmly behind my teeth.

Which just proves my worst fear. I really am a monster.

Just like him.