Page 123 of Ruthless Rustanovs

“YOU’RE quiet tonight,” Dexter commented the following Friday. His hands were at ten and two on the steering wheel as they drove to the private airfield.

“Yeah,” she agreed, fingering the postcard in her hand. It had arrived at the theater early this afternoon. Just a few hours later and it would have missed her. If Sola weren’t so organized, the paper rectangle might not have reached her until Monday.

But the intern had pressed the postcard into Thel’s hand just as she was leaving with a careful, “I’m pretty sure this is for you. It’s addressed to a Thel. But the return address says Virginia. That’s where you’re from, right?”

Yes, that was exactly where she was from, and the woman who’d barely raised her had always been the queen of perfect dramatic timing.

“I was a struggling actress in one of my past lives, dear,” she once explained to a teenage Thel while they were walking in the woods near their house.

“Always hungry for more lines, never getting the big role. Too bad for me, but lucky for you, oldest daughter. You’ve got your siren grandmother’s voice and my acting sensibility.

You’ll be thanking us for that one day. ”

Thel hadn’t known what she meant back then, but then Bair had enrolled her in opera school, and she’d found herself at the top of her class.

Certain to be a future opera star according to all of her teachers, and she’d understood why her mother had wanted credit ahead of time for passing on her past life acting gifts.

“Usually you’re asking questions about where you’re going this weekend by now,” Dexter said, drawing her eyes up from her mother’s postcard.

“I already know we’re going to San Francisco,” she answered.

“Oh, did Rustanov B tell you?” he asked, sounding surprised. Probably because it had never happened before.

“Not exactly…” she answered, and her eyes drifted back down to the postcard.

To the San Francisco address scrawled across it.

And the words written below, “Tell Trevor hello for me.”

He should have taken the time to beat someone up before coming here. Bair found himself pacing the floor of the hotel suite like a pent up tiger. Back and forth, wishing like hell he’d brought his punching bag.

“No more fighting with the bag, okay?” she’d murmured into his chest as they’d fallen asleep in the wee hours of Sunday morning.

He could have pretended he hadn’t heard her. He could have ignored the request. Hell knew, it hadn’t been in the plan to try to endear himself to her.

Instead he’d left his old friend on the plane, telling his guards not to bother with it at the last minute.

So now he was in the hotel room, unable to calm himself enough to sit down.

However, Sirena’s flight from New Mexico to San Francisco was relatively short, so he hadn’t had time to hit a boxing gym after his day of meetings with the San Francisco office of Rustanov Enterprises and the appointment with the doctor Alexei had found for him here.

You could have gone to the gym, too, a mean voice pointed out inside his head. You could have made her wait, but you couldn’t wait to see her.

Da, that much was true. He’d been thinking about her and little else all week. The way she’d felt in his arms that last night. How natural it seemed to share a bed with her again after all these years.

He now understood why addicts never just fell off the wagon a little bit, but tended to hit rock bottom, destroying everything they’d managed to achieve in the years they’d been sober.

She was his drug, and he was already jonesing for another taste. Unable to stop himself from the rock bottom she knew she’d bring along with her.

“Hey, Bair!” she called out, bursting through the door with the strap of a large Boudin Bakery bag in her hand. “Dexter drove me to this place and I got us a couple bread bowls for dinner. I hope you don’t mind.”

He watched her go over to a counter and begin to remove the bio-degradable take-out containers.

“I would have asked first, but Dexter told me there wasn’t any such thing as somebody who didn’t like these clam chowder bowls, so I took a chance. And we beat the rain that’s supposed to be coming down soon. So I got lucky…”

She was talking a mile a minute, and he frowned, recognizing her mood. She was trying not to be sad. Manically unpacking the dinner the same way she used to throw herself like a mad woman into her summer studies, adding on hours of unneeded rehearsal for a two-week stretch every August.

“But it looks like they f0rgot to pack the napkins and silverware,” she said, digging around at the bottom of the bag. “I don’t know, maybe we can call down to room service for some spoons.”

He came up behind her, his lips finding her ear at the same time he bent her slightly forward at the waist. One hand on her wide hips and the other undoing the top button of his suit pants.

“Aren’t you hungry?” she gasped out when he lifted up the skirt of her dress and positioned himself at her tunnel’s entrance.

“You will feed me this way, and then you can feed me the other way,” he answered.

“Yeah…” she said with an aching moan as he eased in between her legs. “Yeah…oh, Beast, I missed you this week…”

He leaned down over her back, bracing his hands on top of hers as he stroked into her from behind.

His nostrils flared against the side of her neck, taking in her scent.

She no longer wore the expensive perfume he’d regularly bought for her back in Germany, but she still used the same product in her hair.

Something fruity with an underlying sandalwood.

It drove him crazy. Made him push in deeper, with the feeling that even though he was all but pasted against the back of her body, he still wasn’t in deep enough.

“Touch yourself,” he snarled into one ear. “Feel how wet you get when I’m inside you.”

A helpless whimper, then her elbow dug back into his hard stomach as she reached down. His cock jerked, his mind nearly coming apart when he felt her brush the underside of his dick, before settling into a circular rub at the top of her pussy.

“I bet the other men gave you things you wanted, but they never owned your body. Not like this. Not like me. You would not be able to stop yourself right now even if you wanted to, Siren, and even if I stopped.”

His hips went still, and her reaction was immediate. “No, please don’t stop,” she panted, grinding her hips back against him. “Please don’t!”

“No, the other men did not fuck you like this, Sirena,” he said with a nasty laugh at her ear as he started moving again. “No one has ever or will ever fuck you like I do. Think about this as I take you.”

She whimpered, her head falling into her chest. “You’re right. Nobody. Nobody but you. Beast, please…” Her hand fell away from her clit, unable to keep up with his unrelenting pace.

He unleashed a cruel smile. She’d always been terrible at rubbing herself after she was too far gone. Like an insistent teacher, he had to reach down and guide her hand over her clit. His large hand on top of her much smaller one, forcing her to rub her own juices over her engorged button.

“Beast…!” she moaned before coming apart with a shudder beneath him.

That was his cue. The red light that kept him caged up came off.

He barred an arm diagonally across her body, heavy forearm mashing her cleavage as he fucked her harder and faster from behind.

His hips slapping into her backside until his heat flooded her core, and they came as one, the orgasm freezing them both into a rictus of pleasure.

Like a photograph of what used to go perfectly between them.

But not exactly like before.

The breasts…they hadn’t been there before. Before his large arm had fit perfectly into the space between her breasts, and now…

His heart went cold, and it felt as if his stomach had frozen over.

“How much?” he asked, pulling out of her and putting himself back into his pants.

“What?” she asked. Still dazed as she turned around to face him with a blissed out smile.

But when she reached up to curve a hand around his neck, he caught it, with an angry nod toward her chest.

“I cannot stand these fake things. How much to reverse the surgery?” he asked. “What do you want to make your breasts way they used to be?”

The smile died on her face, and suddenly he didn’t have to keep her from curving a hand around his neck, because she was taking it back with an angry tug.

“Don’t Bair. Just don’t…” She started around him, trying to get away.

But he got in front of her. “If it is matter of time, that can be arranged. I will have Alexei work it out with your production this week—“

He cut off, however, when he saw the look that came over her face. It was laced clear through with fury, and she shoved him with a strength he wouldn’t have thought her capable. He actually took a step back, not because of her push, but because he was so surprised by it.

She’d never looked at him like that before. Even when he’d offended her, she taken it in a laughing way. Even when he’d claimed her in front of others, she’d covered up her true feelings.

But not now. Now she shoved at him and screamed, “You know what, fuck you! Fuck. You!!!” Now she looked like she wanted to punch him, and her voice raspy with emotion as she said, “You are such an asshole, Bair.”

Yes, he knew that. But she’d never seemed to care so much about that before. Or at least she hadn’t shown it.

And before he could open his mouth to ask why she’d suddenly decided to do so now, she cut left, going out to the balcony, and sliding the glass door closed behind her. The universal sign of ‘don’t follow me.’

Leaving Bair behind, his mind in a whirl, trying to figure out what in the hell had just happened.