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Laney eagerly jumped up to give him a kiss goodbye. I turned toward my desk to close my laptop and put my books away.
I heard the door close and turned to face Delaney. “Sorry, Lane, it’s just…” I trailed off.
Delaney held her hand up to ward off my apologies. “No, it’s fine, honestly. I shouldn’t have blamed it on you like that. It would have been super uncool of me to assume you’d suddenly be okay with Drew sleeping over. It’s just…I’m always looking for ways to feel more secure in my relationship with him, so that’s why I was tempted to ask you to reconsider.”
“He likes you a lot, Laney. You can tell,” I said supportively. “It seems like he really pays attention to you, that he knows who you are and likes you for it,” I said, thinking back to his joking comment about China patterns. Drew does understand and appreciate Laney, I think she was just having a hard time believing it.
She shook her head. “He sure doesn’t look at me like Ivan looks at you,” she said.
If she knew I could barely get Ivan to look at me at all right now, she’d probably be viewing Drew in a different light.
Chapter 12
Ivan
I drove home, my teeth gnashing in frustration and my cock aching from continually denying myself. I have never been ruled by my dick, but I wasn’t going to lie, it took everything I had not to throw Emmy in the backseat of my car and take everything she so obviously wanted to give me.
Crossing boundaries and letting lust cloud my judgement had led to her using her fucking feelings to make the decision not to call me when her roommate wanted alone time with her boyfriend. I knew I needed to keep this professional, but when she looked at me with those half-lidded, cloudy blue eyes, agreeing to every fucking thing I might do to her—fuck. The fact that I was so tempted—an impulsiveness that was wildly out of character—was like a red flag waving in my brain.
Caution. Danger. Run.
And now I had this professor to worry about. Everywhere I turned, there was some dickhead sniffing after her. I was waiting for Drago to get back to me. I needed to run a background check on all these assholes so I could take them off my radar.
I pulled onto my street, grateful to be living close by. When I realized I’d be up on the far north side protecting Emmy, I moved up to northern Rogers Park, a neighborhood only ten minutes away from her campus. Nobody realized I’d moved, and that’s exactly how I planned to keep it. I’d caved to the paranoia and anxiety that gripped at the thought of being too far away to protect her if something happened.
I got in the door of my barely furnished one-bedroom apartment and pulled a beer out of the fridge, drinking nearly half of it in one gulp. My dick was still pounding so I pulled my clothes off as I headed for the shower, beer still in hand, half tempted to use only cold water to get my unruly body back under control.
I hadn’t fucked anyone since returning to Chicago, and it was beginning to take its toll. I could go down to The Trinity Club, a club run by the Bratva, and get laid, but every time I went down there, I lost interest. I wanted to believe it had nothing to do with Emmy, but I knew I was lying to myself. There were even dancers who had a passing resemblance to her, but it didn’t fucking work. They weren’t her and the more I tried, the more it felt fucked up, so I just stopped going.
I stepped in the shower and braced my hand on either side of the shower head as water sprayed directly in my face. My body was still pulsing. My mind continued to focus on the curves of Emmy’s body, the softness of her skin, her sweet, submissive replies to my orders—I knew I could have done anything I wanted to her and she would have let me. She would have loved it.
After grabbing the soap, I reached for my dick, thoughts of Emmy racing through my mind—all the sexy, dirty, fucked-up, things I wanted to do to her. How I wanted to strip her down, tie her up, force her to beg me to fuck her, then make her scream with pleasure.
I wrapped my soapy hand around my desperate flesh, carnal images of her rolling through my mind as I stroked. Thoughts of Emmy’s light moans in my ear, her scent permeating my senses, her sexy as fuck body squirming against mine as her soft, unsure hand stroked my over-eager dick had me shooting in seconds.
Christ, I got off to the image of her giving me a hand job. I was in worse shape than I fucking thought.
I turned off the shower, toweled off, and threw on a pair of sweats. I grabbed another beer as I headed to the living room and collapsed on my couch, one of the few pieces of furniture in my living room besides a coffee table and a TV that I never watched.
I rubbed my face, remembering that I promised to take Emmy to a fucking frat party. Goddammit. She was probably going to look hot as hell and have all these fraternity assholes drooling on her. I was probably going to have to kill someone.
My phone chimed distracting me from my thoughts—a message from Mikhail. Stress needled my brain as my thoughts turned to him. He’d been reaching out to me lately, asking when I was going to return to Russia, but I’d been stalling him. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. I dashed off a quick text that I’d contact him tomorrow.
My phone rang this time and I sighed and took another chug of my beer, thinking it was Mikhail, but it wasn’t. It was Drago.
“Hey,” I answered, assuming he was returning my call.
“My guy heard something on our tap in Armstrong's office.”
I sat up, a chill running through me. “What did he hear?”
“Not much, just her name, but I knew you’d want to know about it.”
“You’re right. The timing couldn’t be fucking worse. Fuck.”
“Agreed. Thomas Armstrong is a bad motherfucker.”
That was a fucking fact. Another worry to add to the growing list. Thomas Armstrong was going to be a problem.