Page 14 of Her Rustanov Husband (Ruthless Bullies #2)

The Condition

YOM

She was here.

Lydia.

She was here. And she was kissing him. And she was real. Real .

The idea that she might be a hallucination, or perhaps a dream he was having after passing out drunk in a bar, slipped away the instant she climbed into his lap.

Her kiss tasted of fruity drinks and anger, and her body was heavier than it had been the last time he’d pull her into his lap and kept her there until she whined , “ Volfie , c’mon, we can’t…

. Not in the chair… We’re not that kind of porn cliche” before surrendering with an “Oh… okay… Maybe we are that kind of porn cliche” and letting her ravenous Russian wolf have her.

This woman kissing him with her breasts pressing into his chest, and her legs dangling on either side of his waist, was real.

He knew because of the little things that never showed up in his wet dreams. The way her fingers curled in his hair, sparking down his scalp and spine.

The sharp pain of his cock, not slowly swelling as in dreams, but hardening all at once.

He welcomed the pain. Welcomed the fact there was now even more of her to hold, to touch.

She was real.

Most of all, he knew this because of the ache—the gnawing emptiness he’d carried even in the dreams where she returned to the Gemidgee lake house, smiling, saying, “I’m sorry, Volfie. It was all a big mistake. Of course, I never left you.”

That ache vanished the moment her mouth met his. Gone like smoke.

In its place: a new pain. The pain of elation. The pain of getting what you’ve been starving for. She was real. It hurt to have her back, but Yom bore the hurt. Gladly.

When they came up for air, he pressed his forehead to hers and murmured, “ Zayka, zayka, zayka. ”

Like a prayer finally answered.

Phones were out in the background, lights shining, people recording.

He couldn’t care. His entire world had collapsed back down to Lydia. He trusted Stepan to handle the rest.

His lips and hands roamed, skimming her arms, her chest, her neck. Any bare skin he could find.

“Please, please, Yom.” Her voice broke as she tilted her chin, baring her throat to his kisses. “I don’t want to think. Please just fuck me. I want to feel again. Only you can make me feel this way….”

His chest clenched at her words.

“I have suffered terribly without you,” he confessed, pressing his forehead to hers.

“You’re a monster,” she whispered. A reminder. A lament. For herself, for him, maybe for both.

“I am a monster who suffered terribly without you,” he edited, then kissed her again. And again. God, how he had forgotten how addictive her lips were? So plump, so sweet—again… again… again.

He shoved his tongue past her lips, fucking it into her mouth as he hiked her cheap little dress higher, grinding her against him. His cock, so long a dormant, disinterested thing attached to his body, throbbed back to life, heavy and insistent against her belly.

He wanted inside her. Needed her. In his suite. In the shower. On the private Rustanov jet. In his Minneapolis mansion.

Six years …

He’d spend six days straight making every single one up to her.

But— nyet . Not like this.

He forced himself to pull back.

“No, don’t stop!” Her blurred eyes locked onto his. “Come back to my room. Fuck me. Fuck me all night like you used to. Let’s pretend like it’s summer after college again. Just for one night. Please.”

She was devastating when she begged. And there was nothing he wanted more than to give in. But…

“You’re drunk, zayka . So am I. Neither of us can give consent.”

These were the hardest words he’d ever spoken, with his cock threatening to break through his trousers like a runaway train.

“I don’t care! I don’t care!” she insisted, pressing cute kisses to his mouth that made Yom want to do very not-cute things to her right there in the crowded sports bar. “I just want you. I don’t care!”

Her potent desire tugged at Yom like a rope tied straight to his gut. But between being a pro athlete and a trillionaire family scion, the rule of never fucking drunk women had been drilled into him. Even if she was the love of his life.

“Tell you what, zayka . Let us wait until we are sober.” He undid a few buttons on his shirt, reaching inside for the chain he always wore close to his heart. “Then I will give you whatever you want. As many times as you want. On one condition…”

“One condition?” she repeated, breathless.

“One condition,” Yom confirmed, pulling the chain into the bar’s dim light.

Her eyes widened when she saw what dangled from it—the wedding ring she had given back to him six years ago.

“Okay, I think you might have been right about me being a little drunk,” she admitted on a giggle a couple of hours later, after they walked into her room to pack her things.

Well, he walked. She stumbled, shedding her crossbody purse and the light-gray blazer he’d draped over her shoulders when she complained that the chapel Stepan had driven them to was cold.

Yom instantly regretted not carrying her straight to his suite in the Benton Grand’s far more luxurious second tower when, instead of heading for her suitcase, Lydia kicked off her ballet flats.

“Did we just get married?” she asked, scrunching her brow. “By, like, Prince? Or was that a fever dream?”

“I will pour you water,” Yom answered instead of explaining that the Little Red Chapel—with its officiant, the Artist Formerly Known as Perry—was the only venue willing to overlook how obviously drunk the bride was in exchange for a brick of cash and a signed indemnity waiver.

“Then you can pack your suitcase, and we can move to… better accommodations.”

Yom didn’t bother to hide his distaste as he surveyed the windowless interior box she’d booked. Until that moment, he hadn’t realized such humble accommodations even existed in Vegas.

“Or…” Lydia unzipped her dress in one fluid motion, the straps sliding down to reveal?—

Yom’s breath caught at the sight of her much curvier body, clad only in a strapless bra and a simple pair of cotton panties.

Fuller breasts, lusher hips, the kind of backside he could still glimpse even when she faced him head-on.

Her dreadlocks reached all the way to her ass now, making him think of Eve offering up an apple.

Or, in this case, a body he could not allow himself to bite into until the morning.

How…? he wondered.

How had she grown even more beautiful over the years?

“We should…” He swallowed, throat dry. “We should go to my suite now.”

“Or…” Lydia continued, reaching behind her to unhook her bra with a wicked smile. “We could fuck like animals. Like we used to. Like you promised.”

Her suggestion whispered over him like desert wind, heating his insides, as her breasts spilled free.

His hands itched to palm them, to draw her nipples into his mouth as he would have six years ago, to the day.

“Do not do this to me, zayka ,” he rasped instead. “I have explained already that we must wait until morning for me to fulfill my promise. Put something comfortable on and come back with me to my sui?—”

“Okay, so you’re not going to get me off.” She interrupted him with a noisy, disappointed sigh. “Guess I’ll have to do it myself. Like I always do back at home.”

Any satisfaction he might have taken in knowing there was perhaps no one in Canada “getting her off,” as she called it, was obliterated when she fell back onto the bed and propped herself up with a dramatic flourish…

…before slipping her hand beneath the waistband of her cotton panties.

While looking directly at him.

His blood froze. Then boiled.

“ Zayka , what are you doing?”

“What? You thought you didn’t still have the power to make me wet?” Her hand moved sensually, deliberately under the thin cotton. “I try… I try not to think of you when I touch myself. But when I’m in a hurry, you’re my go-to material.”

Her hand stilled, a small frown creasing her forehead. “Though, you’re not usually so… clothed. Mind stripping for me?”

She was drunk. Obviously.

But Yom sobered in an instant, cock throbbing as he watched her do something he would never have allowed when they were together.

“Stop.” His throat was too dry to command properly. “Stop that. Now.”

“Nooooo.” She drew the word out, mocking him, struggling not to laugh as she rubbed harder. “I’m too drunk, and getting off is the only thing that’ll calm my spinning mind down. If you want me to stop, strip for me. Help me get there faster.”

Drunk Lydia was bossier. Brazen. Yom didn’t know whether to feel bemused—or like a piece of meat she was devouring with her eyes.

Either way, he granted her request. If only to get her to sleep. He suspected sleep was the sole way he’d survive this night without breaking.

“Alright now, there we go!” Lydia’s eyes lit up with frank appreciation when he pulled off his shirt, revealing his heavily muscled chest. “That’s the Magic Mike stuff I’m talking about. That’ll get me there.”

He’d heard countless catcalls from fans, but her words seared straight through him, heating him from the inside out.

“Do you get drunk like this often?” he asked gruffly—half to distract himself, half to remind her where this reckless desire was truly coming from.

She met his gaze, hand circling, slow and deliberate. “Enough to know that flicking the bean to mental Yom Rustanov porn helps me pass out.”

Rage, pride, and arousal twisted together, creating confusion. He wanted to preen over this secret revealed. More than that, he wanted to punish her for touching herself without his permission.

But he couldn’t. Yet.

Instead, he unfastened his pants. His voice low, rough. “I, too, am sometimes forced to think of you. To take myself in hand.”

She gave him an incredulous look. “With all the attention you get, I doubt you need me for material.”

Said the woman who never knew what happened to the panties she’d left behind at his lake house.

“You doubt wrong,” he bit out. “See—even now. This is for you. Only for you.”

When he freed himself, her hand froze. Eyes widening.