Page 50 of Charmingly Obsessed

I barely pass two ornate, gilded doors before he catches up to me. He lifts me clean off the ground as if I weigh nothing.

Before I can even register what’s happening, before I can even let out a surprised squeak, he’s carrying me back towards our suite. His hand, large and firm, clamped securely over my mouth.

I let out a muffled, indignant protest, kicking once, feebly, in defiance. This is absurd. Why is he dragging me back like this? Like a goddamn caveman.

When he finally, finally sets me down, not so gently, on the edge of the enormous, rumpled bed, I realize my teeth are chattering. Not from cold. But from sheer adrenaline. And fear. I smooth down my hair, my robe, forcing myself to meet his intense, furious gaze.

Oh God. He looks… incandescent with rage.

Mykola has rolled up the sleeves of his crisp, white shirt, his face set like a five-star general about to issue orders at a military drill. His jaw tightens as he exhales sharply, another one of those controlled, dangerous breaths.

“I can’t believe,” he grits out, his voice low, menacing, “that I actually have to ask this. But, damn it, I do. Diana,” he says my name like it’s a curse, “how many men have you been with?”

I sit still, thinking, pretending to mentally count, just to piss him off. Just to buy myself a few more seconds.

The fury rolling off him in palpable waves is nearly tangible, making my head pound. My mind is a frozen, chaotic battlefield of conflicting emotions. I try to stand, to escape, but it’s like slipping on ice, falling harder, more humiliatingly, each time.

I open my mouth to answer, to tell him the pathetic, embarrassing truth. But today is not a day for that kind of bravery.

So instead, I lift a single, trembling finger.

One.

Mykola shakes his head, a series of small, sharp, disbelieving movements, as he paces before the bed like a caged, restless predator.

There’s a tension in his step, a barely contained, violent energy coiled deep inside him.

I notice, absently, that he’s moved the small, exquisite, antique crystal swan from the living room onto the desk in here.

Probably so he can snack on the ridiculously expensive, artisanal Swiss chocolates it contains while he’s brooding.

I could really use a piece of that chocolate right now.

“One,” he repeats, his voice flat, dead. He nods to himself. “One. Fantastic. Just… fantastic. I’ll have to come up with an especially creative, and particularly painful, form of death for that… one.”

“Mykola,” I say, rubbing my palms nervously over my knees. “I’m sor—”

“Not another goddamn word,” he cuts me off, halting his pacing, his eyes blazing. “Take off your jacket. And your top. Your blouse. All of it.”

“Mykola,” I whisper, my throat suddenly tight, constricted.

“I said,” his voice rises, each syllable pronounced with a sharp, chilling precision that makes my blood run cold, “take. It. Off. Now.”

This is my favorite jacket. My only really good jacket.

A structured, but still playful, blazer from a small, independent Parisian designer.

I fumble with the delicate, mother-of-pearl buttons of my silk blouse, but my fingers feel stiff, clumsy, uncooperative.

I try to pull the fine, expensive fabric apart, but I can’t seem to move properly. I’m frozen again.

“She was right,” he mutters, more to himself than to me. “Grandma was right about everything. This… this is the only way with you, isn’t it?”

I flinch at that. No! She wasn’t right! Serafima Pylypivna doesn’t know me at all!

She lives in her own world of elaborate, dramatized fantasies, assigning people roles, manipulating them as if life were her own personal stage play.

He only believes her because they’re so alike.

Both of them. Terrifyingly alike. Master manipulators.

“Diana.” His voice fills the opulent, silent bedroom, a harsh, ragged whisper now.

“I understand. I finally, finally fucking understand. Your self-esteem… it’s so low, it’s practically subterranean.

It’s beneath the goddamn floor. Beneath the ocean floor, for God’s sake!

This isn’t just… shyness, is it, Diana? This is…

you truly, genuinely believe it. Don’t you? That you’re… unworthy. Flawed.”

A strangled, broken sound escapes me as his hands, surprisingly gentle now, move to pull my silk blouse down, the fine fabric bunching, catching, as he tugs it from my shoulders.

I don’t fight him. I don’t stop him. Instead, my hands, with a will of their own, instinctively reach for his wrists, my fingers clutching tightly.

His hands are broad, powerful, the muscles tense beneath my desperate grip.

Without thinking, without meaning to, I rake my nails, hard, across the tanned skin of his forearms. Leaving angry, red marks.

“You can report me for this later,” he murmurs, his voice unsteady now, thick with an emotion I can’t decipher. “It’ll be fair. Just. I’m not asking for your permission anymore, Diana. This… this is happening. Right here. Right now. And I don’t give a good goddamn about the consequences.”

Yes, let it happen. I’m agree. Yes!

“Mykola,” I mouth the word, barely able to form any coherent sound. “I—”

I press my hand over my lips. Heat, sharp and mortifying, rushing through me as he slides my blouse from my shoulders, letting it fall to the floor.

The world tilts, my senses flickering in and out like faulty, overloaded wiring. I swear I can hear a fire alarm ringing in the distance, feel the air in the room growing hotter, thicker, more suffocating with every ragged breath I take.

Mykola moves me back onto the bed, and I could resist. I could push him away. But I don’t. Instead, I bite down on my lower lip so hard I taste the coppery tang of my own blood. And I force myself to look at him. To watch.

He follows me onto the bed, adjusting my posture with a strange, almost clinical precision, his hands firm, yet careful. Inside my head, my thoughts crash and break like waves in a violent, churning storm.

I feel disconnected from reality, from my own body. Like watching a bizarre, slightly terrifying art-house film in extreme slow motion, lagging seconds, minutes, lifetimes behind the actual, real-time events unfolding before my eyes.

He exhales sharply, his movements controlled, almost… reverent, as if he’s carefully, painstakingly handling something incredibly fragile, something priceless.

He watches me closely, his gaze intense, unwavering, as his hands graze over my bare skin with a deliberate, almost agonizing slowness.

“You’re beautiful,” he mutters, the words slipping out with each ragged breath, as if he can’t hold them in any longer. “Everything… all of you. Fucking… beautiful.”

His lips press against my skin, my collarbone, the hollow of my throat.

I stare down at myself – at him – at his dark, handsome head against my pale skin, at his large, tanned hands on my small, inadequate breasts.

And something in my brain, some long-dormant, long-broken circuit, finally clicks into place.

I haven’t really looked at myself, at my own body, in a long, long time. I’d stopped noticing. Stopped paying attention. Avoided mirrors. But now… now, through his eyes, through his touch, I see.

There’s a shift inside me. A crack in the ice. A tremor in the foundations of my carefully constructed prison of self-loathing. It’s as if I’ve been locked away, sealed in a dark, silent, windowless bunker for years, completely cut off from the world, from myself.

And now, finally, the heavy, reinforced door has been thrown open. And the light… the light is blinding.

The shock of witnessing something so blatantly, beautifully depraved in the bright, unforgiving light of day leaves me staring – staring as Mykola, my husband, my temporary, contractual, ridiculously handsome, and utterly, completely insane husband finally joins our bodies together.

“What is it, sunshine?” he murmurs, his voice rough with emotion, his eyes searching mine. “Talk to me, Diana. Please.”

He grips my legs, spreading them wider, pressing down harder.

He’s unusually composed now, almost severe, his gaze drilling a portal into another world, another dimension, deep within me. But then he takes a deep, shuddering breath through his nose, and for just a moment, a flicker of that vulnerability returns.

“I… I feel good,” I whisper, the words stumbling, tripping over themselves.

“It’s going to feel even better,” he promises, his voice a guttural growl. He squeezes my waist, shifting to a different, deeper angle, and I—

—I don’t know how much time passes. Seconds. Minutes. Lifetimes. But it feels like hours. Our sweat mingles, our bodies slick, as we occasionally, desperately, collide in messy, open-mouthed, all-consuming kisses.

Later, much later, Mykola massages my breasts, gripping them roughly now, almost carelessly, his thumbs circling my still-aching, hypersensitive nipples.

I watch, detached, almost… clinical. Like I’m floating outside my own body in a strange, silver spacesuit.

But for some reason, for the first time in a very, very long time, I feel… peaceful.

He isn’t gentle when he kisses me all over my chest, his mouth hot, wet, possessive.

I feel so exhausted, so boneless, so completely utterly sated, that I can’t even muster the energy to pull the sheet over my naked, exposed body. Movement, in general, feels… pointless. Unnecessary.

When Mykola finally rolls off me, his powerful body trembling with the aftershocks of his own orgasm, he reaches for the hotel phone on the nightstand.

His fingers, surprisingly steady, lazily trace the curve of my leg, pulling it slightly over his own.

“My wife,” he says into the phone, “wants something sweet. Yeah? Send up… everything you have, I will choose then. And some nuts. She ate all of ours earlier.”

He kisses my cheek before getting up, then starts speaking, in rapid-fire, fluent French, to the undoubtedly scandalized room service staff.

He’s walking completely naked into the adjoining living area.

His back is taut with a lingering, coiled tension, but his steps, I notice, are light. Almost… happy.

I nestle deeper into the mountain of pillows, relishing the cool, smooth feel of the expensive Egyptian cotton against my sensitised skin. It feels like lying on a cloud. A very rumpled, very well-used cloud.

Well. That wasn’t so bad after all, was it?

In fact, it was… it was fucking incredible.

I suppose , I think with a small, secret, triumphant smile, that I won’t be filing that police report against him after all.