Page 24 of The Brutal Arrangement (The Ivanov Syndicate #2)

LUCY

T his kiss felt different. It was different in that he wasn’t exerting too much force in an obvious show of control and command.

While I wanted to practically swoon at the suggestion of tenderness in this kiss, I was so used to the force and roughness he always showed me that I felt like I was missing out.

“I am learning you,” he said when he pulled back slowly. This gruff man always stared at me so intensely that it seemed like he was peeling back layers of me. But this look he gave me now… It was new. Almost as though he couldn’t hold back on being mesmerized and in this moment.

“I am inclined to agree with that,” I replied. It wasn’t obedience that had me saying that. I wasn’t agreeing with him to earn his approval. It was true and the only way I could tell him that without sounding cocky or smug. “You’ve been learning how to, um…”

His stare darkened as he walked me back toward the couch. “How to fuck you?” He tugged my shirt off and over my head before tossing it to the floor, not taking his eyes off me long enough to see—or probably care—where it went.

I nodded, my nerves lighting up with desire as I knew what would be coming.

Any time he looked at me like this, his gaze so smoldering and needy, I was in for a good, hard fuck.

After the emotional reaction I had earlier today at seeing Maxim and Sloane in love, a reminder that all I had here was a physical connection to Damon, I shouldn’t have wanted to be “easy” for my husband.

But something about feeling his mouth on mine, his hands roving over my skin, was my undoing.

“You’ve mastered that,” I said as he continued to guide me to the couch.

It was his turn to nod as he shoved at my skirt, urging me to work with him and get bare as quickly as possible. This wasn’t a frantic rush of ripping off our clothes, but even this process of revealing ourselves was a hell of a turn-on.

“I don’t trust easily,” he admitted as I stood before him in my bra and panties.

I swallowed hard, touched that he’d offer up that much information. This was the most we’d really ever talked before, and for him to freely fess up something like that, it had to be a big step forward.

“I… I don’t either,” I replied.

He nodded slowly, raking his greedy gaze over me as he worked on getting his garments off, in no particular hurry. Perhaps his plan was to tease me, but it wouldn’t be a shocker that I was already wet.

“But the more that you show me how submissive you want to be,” he said as he let his shirt fall, “the more you listen to me and respect that I am in charge…”

I nodded, confused how he wouldn’t think that already. I hadn’t fought—much. I hadn’t protested—loudly. It couldn’t be a healthy way to form any sort of a solid relationship, but I had adapted to wanting him and craving him so it wasn’t even a hardship to bow and submit.

Because when he was the boss, when he was in charge and held the power, somehow, deep inside me, I knew that I was free of all the expectations and responsibilities that had shackled my soul before. With him, under his roughness, I could be freer.

“The more I want to learn about you in every way.” He dropped his pants and boxers, showing me how hard he was. He was always like this—long, thick, and standing to attention for my pleasure. For as gruff of a man that he was, he never failed to see to my orgasms first.

“I want…” I shivered under his touch as he tugged my bra, then my panties, off, all the while caressing me with his appreciative stare, like it was a tangible contact.

“I want to learn about you too,” I said softly, praying that he wouldn’t take that as my being nosy or prying.

It went without saying that secrets would be kept from me.

He was a Mafia man, and confidentiality was a must.

Yet, as I realized that I was expressing more interest in my husband, I knew that I was becoming more of a liar to myself.

If I was planning to leave him as soon as I could, as soon as Katerina gave me this ambiguous all-clear, then why would I be investing to know my husband more than I already did?

The notion that I was coming to care for him bothered me. Letting him fuck me had at first seemed like a distant, emotionless thing to get over. But letting him into my mind or heart? That was too severe of an attachment.

He didn’t give me a chance to think about it any further. As he urged me to lie back on the couch, I arched and reached up to keep my mouth against his in another drugging kiss.

Staying true to his nature, though, he took charge, albeit with more tenderness. He almost seemed… sweet.

“I want to trust you, Lucy,” he said as he took both of my hands and held them in one of his. With his insistence that I keep my arms up, my hands over my head, I felt stretched out underneath him.

“You can trust me,” I replied.

“You came here as a trick. As a lie,” he said as he lined his dick up to my already wet entrance. I was always wet, reduced to an aroused being every time he gave me one of those lust-filled stares or kissed me brutally.

“And I want to know why.” He squeezed my hands before releasing them, a silent gesture that I knew to mean he wanted me to keep them where they were. It was an invisible bond, but one I didn’t mind at all.

“I want to know what could’ve motivated you to come here and marry someone like me.”

He slid two of his fingers through my juices, smearing the stickiness as he fingered me while staring at me. “And I intend to find out.”

I nodded, understanding that agreeing to whatever he said meant that I’d need to fess up.

All this time, he’d refrained from asking me about Katerina, Anton, or anything about what I could know.

And now I saw how his plan had been working.

With sex, he’d established that he was in control.

And with my need for him, he’d managed to put me in my place.

It should’ve scared me to think about him interrogating me, but there wasn’t any real way I could change my position. He’d put me in my place. And I’d come to terms with that already.

I’d accepted that this was how it was—loveless and physical.

But it seemed that if he wanted to connect with me any further, he wanted to set the stakes of trust between us.

“I am learning to like you, Wife,” he said in that raspy growl. His voice was so deep, so smoky, that I swore he could say anything and make me burn for him.

“And I am learning to like the possibility that your submission isn’t a trick.” With his fingers inside me, holding me open and stretching me, he pushed his dick in.

I gasped, unused to this thicker invasion. Taking his cock was a stretch to begin with.

But with his fingers in me as well? I felt torn. I felt pushed to accommodate him like this, but once the sting of slight pain faded into red-hot pleasure, I was eager to push up and hump his hand and cock in that chase for relief.

“No tricks,” I replied, panting, ready to say anything he wanted to hear so long as he kept this up.

Watching me and seeming to revel in my expression of desperation, he would ram into me all the way, stuffing me with his cock, then finger me.

Adding a third finger felt like too much, but once I got used to the stretch of his fingers in and out, along with his dick, it was as if he was stroking himself, and me, while fucking me.

It didn’t take long for my orgasm to come. And with the approach of my climax, he lost his stride of maintaining that steady pattern of his cock and digits in me. Breathing hard and straining over me as he stared me down, he ended up withdrawing his hand to go faster.

The slippery moisture of my juices smeared on my hips as he held me hard. Within his grip, I was right where he wanted me so he could pummel my pussy and get us both off.

“Damon!” I cried, so battered with how different he was acting tonight. And on the tail of my cries and frantic inhales of air as I came, he growled and dug his fingers into me with a bruising intensity.

He slammed his hips to mine once more so forcefully that I had to grab the cushion, he plowed me forward so far. Fucked so thoroughly like this, he’d rendered me limbless and lax, without thought or a single thing to say.

And as he lowered over me, holding me close in a flush hug, I caught my breath and wanted to weep at the fact that he was staying with me.

He was embracing me after we’d already come.

My husband… was cuddling me.

It was the sweetest gift he could give me. A connection I hadn’t realized I’d been yearning for so badly.

Trust wasn’t a simple transaction between us, but as I closed my eyes and relished his hard body pressed against mine as we evened out our breaths, I wanted to take faith in the chance of trusting him and this security he seemed to want to give me.

Not because I was his cheap whore to hide and keep.

But because I was his wife. His wife he wanted to learn to like beyond the submission I could give him.