Page 14 of The Brutal Arrangement (The Ivanov Syndicate #2)

LUCY

N o!

I shook my head, bringing my hands up to shove this gag off my mouth. He was too fast, though, grabbing my hands and wrenching them down.

No! This isn’t supposed to be happening!

Katerina told me. She lied to my face that these brothers were “decent” criminals. She had looked me in the eye and told me that the Ivanov brothers would just accept me and dismiss me.

I wasn’t supposed to be raped.

I wasn’t supposed to be taken in the most literal sense of two people coming together in a union.

I’d been able to talk myself into dealing with this because I had been told I wouldn’t be expected to sleep with my husband.

And here I was.

Trapped and caught in the worst way imaginable.

He stood behind me, his thick arms around me as he fought with me. Holding me against his rock-hard chest, he didn’t let me escape. With both my hands in one of his, the skin so gritty and rough against mine, he forced my arms up and out of reach of my face.

I had to get this gag off and scream. It built inside me, roaring to rip free. But I couldn’t release it. It was stuck in my throat, wedged there as my mouth was stuffed. No matter how much I resisted and bucked, twisted and squirmed, I couldn’t get out of his grasp.

Panic pushed my heart to race faster, and I couldn’t suck in a deep enough breath with this gag. Dizzy and delirious with this need to get away, I was torn with the urge to sob and shout for help.

No help would be coming. Even if I could call out for anyone, I doubted these Mafia men would save me.

Ripping off my veil, he still couldn’t see me.

It was too dark in here, and somehow, not having proper light to witness this horror made it worse.

That white, gauzy layer became another binding on me.

Too quickly and with too much ease, he coiled the veil around my wrists and secured them together in a harsh cuff.

He’d gagged me.

He’d bound me.

I couldn’t scream or protest.

I was prevented from fighting back or warding him off.

I’d never been so defenseless in my life, but it wasn’t that feeling that made me nearly break down.

It was what was coming.

“You signed that paper,” he growled into my ear as he leaned over me.

I only did because I was under the impression that I wouldn’t have to face this . I only signed anything and agreed to come here because it was a ticket to have my mother cared for.

“You are my wife.”

Hot tears leaked down my cheek as he shoved my dress up.

No, no, no.

I never wanted this.

She told me that they’d dismiss me.

That it was just a business arrangement, in name only.

“And from day one, Wife , you will learn that you obey me.” He lowered, hunching over to shove my panties down. No matter how rigid I kept my legs, I noticed the rough caress of his fingers on my thighs. The harsh push of his hand over me.

This wasn’t the dismissive treatment I was supposed to get.

Please, no.

“Starting right now.” Movements followed his statement, his hands busy behind my ass. The zipper of his pants sounded too loud in the silence of the room, and I squeezed my eyes shut.

It was too dark to see anything. But I had to double down on closing my eyes, anyway.

I had to block it all out to get through it.

There was no avoiding the sensation of touch.

Not when he yanked my dress up high and bared my ass.

Not when he pushed his bare, hairy thighs against the backs of mine. Not when?—

Oh, fuck.

He was huge. Long and hard, so thick and stiff.

The feel of his dick behind me was something I’d never experienced before.

I was a virgin, and limited in any sexual sense of adventure.

The hand job I’d given my boyfriend in high school wasn’t anything like the naughty push of my husband’s shaft by my ass.

Oh… fuck.

It was so different. So wildly wrong and sinful.

He had no right to take me like this—married or not. I hadn’t given him any consent. I agreed to be his wife in name, but not his thing to fuck.

Yet, as he bunched up my dress with one hand, he rocked that huge thing against me. Each time he touched me, I was overwhelmed with morbid curiosity.

No!

I shook my head as if I could clear out these stupid thoughts.

This was wrong.

This was horrible.

When he reached around me, pushing his hand between my legs and roughly rubbing over my mound, I stiffened even more.

No man had ever touched me there. I had no guidance, not at sex, not at being taken without my permission. And he noticed.

“You will obey me,” he growled, sliding his hand up and down again and again as he pushed his dick against my ass.

I didn’t plan on obeying anyone. But the more he touched me, a traitorous heat filled me. My womb clenched. My pussy felt sensitive. And to my horror, I felt…

No. No, no, no.

Something was broken in me. I’d been so desperate for a break, for a friend, for any companionship as my mother forgot who I was and left me with no one.

It was the only explanation I could understand for why I’d be getting wet.

Why this monster of a man could touch me like this and make me… aroused .

“Like that,” he said with a grunt as his fingers dipped over my slit.

I hadn’t meant to step apart, but so rocked by the revelation that my body could react to him like this, I staggered forward a little. It was just enough access for him to push that much further, stroking his digit over my pussy.

And it wasn’t dry. As he leaned over me, humping against me, he fingered me and taunted me with this demonstration of how my body could fail me.

“Just like that,” he growled, pushing me over more as he pistoned his finger in and out of my slick entrance.

Stop. Stop… enjoying this. Stop wanting this.

I hated myself to crave his rough touch, but this quickly, this harshly, he’d overridden the last traces of common sense I ever could’ve claimed to have.

As he paused slightly, I moaned. Furious with myself that I could miss his touch, I opened my eyes as he released my dress.

Instead, as the fabric fell down, I lowered my gaze to just barely make out the sight of his big hands gripping the material.

A long, steady rip rent the air as he tore the dress.

Like it was nothing. As though it were mere tissue paper.

I didn’t want a lesson in how fiercely strong he was. I wanted to learn more of how he could touch me and make me lose control. To surrender to the nothingness of raw lust and this tensing need to explode.

Before my dress could slide to the floor, he raised his hands again and ripped my bra in halves.

The clasp bent under his strength, and as that dropped to my feet, the smear of my juices on my breast excited me more.

His fingers had only brushed against my aching nipples, but I had no chance to think about hinting for him to touch me there.

He was back at my pussy, holding me open as he lined up the wide, domed head of his cock.

With one hand on my back as he pushed me over slightly, he crouched behind me, his chiseled chest rubbing over my back as he pushed into me.

A sharp split threatened to overwhelm me. Just the tip of him was an invasion I’d never readied myself for. I sucked in a sharp breath, locking my muscles as I braced for all of him.

In another push forward, he thrust into me. The agony of his thickness penetrating me stole my breath. For just a moment, as he claimed my virginity, he robbed me of sanity. Stretched like this, he gave me such a wicked force where I’d never been taken.

But as I exhaled, desire charged through me, replacing that instant spike of intense pain with such a burning fire of need. Of want. Of desperate lust to be filled like this always.

It was indescribable, this pain and pleasure border he forced me through, but as he pulled back and slammed into me again and again, he fucked me like he intended to brand me.

He wanted to stamp me inside and out, marking his claim and sealing the deal that I was his wife in every way a woman could be a man’s.

Giving in to the brutal intensity of him taking me so hard, I sagged under him and took it all.

The urge to cry for help faded. The need to resist him ceased.

Instead, as he pushed me to splinter under a potent orgasm moments later, I was tormented with the urge to shriek with impossible relief.

Tension snapped. The wait was over.

That abrupt and confusing climb to bliss had finished, and I damned the tears that streaked from my eyes. I hated that I had him to owe for such a blinding climax that made me soar and drown at the same time.

Loose and spent, I tried to breathe through the tremors that racked my body.

Over and over, he dragged his dick in and out of me, further prolonging my release.

Until he drove in harder with one rough push and roared, his cock jerking deep inside me, he made sure to show me that I was his in the most literal sense of a marriage there could be.

This wasn’t just a contract.

It wasn’t only an arrangement.

He’d fucked me.

He’d made me his.

And with how good it felt—when it should’ve only been a traumatizing hell—I wasn’t sure how to move forward now.