Chapter 3

Hadrien didn’t bite, at least not in the conventional ways.

That was his name, Hadrien, I learned, in the days that followed the time that I woke up. From there, I pieced together that he was a hired gun – one that had obviously been thrown to the sharks to spark up a war between my father and Viktor’s, or an otherwise very stupid one for getting the wrong mark.

As the days wore on, I got the suspicious feeling that it was the former of the two choices; Hadrien was smart, or at the very least paranoid. He checked and double checked everything. Every time he got a phone call, he left the room if we were in the same space. He didn’t want me knowing what he was planning, at the very least, and it was a pain trying to listen in on his conversations. From what I gathered, he was trying to figure out where he had gone wrong with his job.

Aside from that, he kept a very watchful eye on me, and oh, did he like to watch. That was the first thing that I noticed. He kept his eyes on me, roving, and he was hardly ashamed of it. It was… irritating, at first. In many ways it made me feel uncomfortable. No man had ever dared look at me so boldly. My father never would have had it, and neither would Viktor. But he was unabashed entirely, and once the irritation wore out, I began to think.

What if I used that against him?

He was like any man, attracted to a woman in front of him. Perhaps that was why he spared me initially, I couldn’t know. I wasn’t going to ask him, on the chance that it made him rethink his position and decide he was better off without a witness rather than in luck for having a bargaining chip.

I had never been intimate with a man before. It was the highest taboo in a good Italian family to have a woman know a man like that before her wedding night. I never held a true issue with this. I was curious… I wondered… but it wasn’t what I was allowed, it wasn’t what my father expected of me.

So I never tried. It went against my duty to my family and my future husband to do so.

I was nervous, on the third night, following the evening shower he at least allowed me. I ran through it again and again in my head, how I would do it. When I was done with my shower, I would come out in my towel, as I always did. And when he looked at me and smirked I wouldn’t scoff at him and call him a pig – I would smile and run my hand over his chest. He was always bare chested in the evenings just before he locked up the whole house, I think he liked showing off his body in the hopes I would take notice.

I would make him think I took notice, entice him to his room. It couldn’t be hard to get him on his back, kiss him, make him think I was interested… And then strike him with the hardest thing near us. I could steal his phone, perhaps tie him down, and call my father. I might not know where I was, but it wouldn’t take my father long to track me down after telling him what happened, whereabouts I was. I could also find Hadrien’s gun and keep him under my control until that happened. He clearly thought he was going to get my cooperation easy, but he had kidnapped me, and killed my fiancé. I wouldn’t wait for him to make his own moves.

I finished washing up my hair, my body. Hadrien had no feminine smelling washes, so I washed with one of his own. A clean body was a clean body either way, and he wouldn’t be able to say no to me when I started. I shut off the shower, pat my hair dry. The towel went around me, and I braced myself with a sigh. Before I pushed the door open, I plastered a smile on my face, channeling the charm that I learned and mastered throughout my younger years.

Hadrien was standing outside the bathroom door, leaning against the wall, scrolling on his phone. He’d never given me an opportunity to take it, but with any luck, it wouldn’t be hard for me to get a hold of it if everything went well tonight. I glanced down at the phone, and then up to him, giving him that smile.

“You finally done, Princess?” He looked up from his phone, to me, and paused at the look on my face. “You’re in a good mood,” he said, the suspicion evident in his voice.

My smile didn’t waver as I walked to him. I tilted my head, tossing my hair back. Just as I had run through in my head, I walked close to him, got in his space. My fingers brushed over his bare chest, and I tried not to let the nerves get the better of me or show in my voice.

“You can’t expect me to take short showers. It’s practically the only comfort out here in the middle of nowhere.” I hoped my voice was innocent enough, unwavering enough to pass for flirtatious. His head tilted, and his brow rose. He looked me up and down before he smirked.

“Plenty of comforts, but all you do is turn your nose up at them.”

I could feel the heat on my face, but I didn’t back away. I already decided to commit to this plan, and I was going to see it through long enough for me to get away from this man. I kept my eyes on him, looking him dead in his own, and trailed my hand down his body.

I had only ever seen such things in movies. Sultry women seducing the men of their dreams – or men they were trying to use. I let my finger hook in his waistband, and let the erratic beating in my heart be the driving force that moved me to do more. I tugged him there, insistent, sure my supposed intentions were clear. Shockingly, he put his hand over mine, and that smirk on his face never left.

“You sure you know what you’re doing, Princess?”

I didn’t answer him, because I was certain that if I did, my voice would crack and reveal that… no. I wasn’t sure of what I was doing. Instead I did the only thing I thought would give him incentive to stop asking so many questions and go along with my ploy.

I slid my hand down, lower, cupping his groin with more confidence than I thought I would be able to muster. My eyes never left his, and that seemed to be the trigger that he needed.

He leaned forward, his hand going into my hair, fingers tugging. He brought my face to his, and I couldn’t even register a ‘wait’ before he was kissing me, backing me insistently back to his room. There wasn’t much space between it and the bathroom, and I was honestly taken away by… how passionate he was, how hungry the kiss felt against my lips. The only person who had kissed me openly was Viktor, and he had been as inexperienced as I had been. But Hadrien had my mouth parting before I could think to make him fight for it, and all I could do was respond by allowing his tongue entrance to taste and I… found that I didn’t hate the way it made me feel, lighting warmth in the pit of my stomach.

He picked me up easily, and a shocked noise came from the back of my throat before I could stop it. I fell back to his bed and bounced a little before he was on me, and it didn’t take him long to be at my lips once more. This wasn’t how I had planned for things to go. I was supposed to be on the top, be able to get him caught unexpectedly. But I couldn’t move from him as he towered over me and kissed me again, and I couldn’t find the will to try.

My head swam. I was finding it harder and harder to concentrate, even more so as he pressed solidly between my legs. I gasped against his lips, feeling the hardness of his member against my own sex, which I realized with embarrassment was completely exposed against him.

So much screamed in the back of my mind that I needed to stop this now. The plan wasn’t going the way it should. I was out of my element; I was gone too far into something that I didn’t know how to handle. But there was a fire in my body as his hands came to my towel and pulled it from around my breasts, exposing me further. I couldn’t help but tremble as Hadrien’s rough hands came to them, touching as he kissed me deeply and squeezed and felt my flesh. It wasn’t fear though, oddly. Perhaps that’s what truly kept me from stopping his actions. It wasn’t fear that coursed through me. It was curious, cautious excitement. Viktor had never touched me like this, and as Hadrien’s hands roamed over me, I found myself doing the same. I encouraged him in my reciprocations, and no thoughts of what I had intended to do when I tempted him in the first place. My hands went from his hair, tugging, to his shoulders, his chest. I wasn’t sure where I should put them, so they simply went everywhere.

“Skin hungry, aren’t you, Princess?”

I had no idea what that was supposed to mean, but I rolled my eyes at him, and bit at his lips.

“Don’t call me Princess,” I snapped.

“Ssh, Princess, and let me do what I want.”

There were no more protests from me as he covered my mouth once more. He took my wrists in his hand, pinning me, and I could feel him press harder against my sex, which fluttered hot and wet against him. It was such a foreign feeling, but not as much as the feeling of Hadrien’s fingers suddenly against me there, too.

I gasped. Not even with Viktor, in our many heated kisses had touched me with his fingers. We’d never been naked with each other. We vowed to wait. But Hadrien’s slipped inside me, and it felt so full, having them pressed deep. He seemed to know exactly where to touch, the pads of his fingers caressing a sweet bundle of pleasure inside me. My eyes popped open, starbursts twinkling in them, and my nails dug into his arms.

“Oh… ah…”

I had to know it was too far, much too far. But I still didn’t stop him, didn’t even try. I felt his grin against his lips as he worked his fingers in and out of me, and my legs stayed open and willingly spread for him. It didn’t even occur to me, in the heat of the moment, in the passions that flared, how wrong this was – this wasn’t a part of the plan. I just felt everything building and building within me. I didn’t know how to react to it or stop it.

It was the distraction of his fingers and the taste of his lips on mine that kept me from registering that he was wriggling himself out of his sleep pants. Thin cotton things, it wasn’t too hard. I was so close, so sweetly close to the build of pleasure within me bursting, his next actions nearly went unnoticed.

I felt him – it – nudge against my sex and his fingers still expertly strumming and stroking inside me. Hard and fleshy, hot. When it registered that he intended to take things farther than merely kissing and… touching inside me, it all came back to me what I had intended to do. Why I had intended to do it. It was an involuntary yelp that left me, and I wriggled away from the impending intrusion.

“No!”

It was the first denial I had given him since I thought of this endeavor, and it was a surprise that he actually listened to me. He paused, his member just outside me, and he pulled back a little to look down at me with a customary raised brow.

There was small comfort in the fact he didn’t look angry.

“No?” He seemed puzzled. I nodded, glancing away.

“No. I don’t want… You can’t… I’ve—”

For some reason I felt embarrassed to tell him I had never had sex before. That I had never done what I had attempted to do to him, and he had so easily turned it on me without even realizing. Even without my confession, however, he pieced it together easily. He laughed.

“You’re a virgin, aren’t you?” He even had the audacity to laugh before he pulled away completely, sitting naked with his legs crossed at the end of the bed. I sat up as well, gathering my discarded towel around my body. I had to be blushing furiously; my face was so hot. He didn’t bother to cover himself, either, and when I looked over to him next, his member was still up, and proudly so. I cleared my throat.

“Yes. Yes, I am. Is that a problem?”

“Hardly a problem, though I find it amusing you went and tried to get some and then copped out. What, already missing the idea of having your fiancé’s piece in you on your wedding night? Kinda desperate if you ask me.”

I fumed, and chucked the only thing within my vicinity at him, which happened to be a pillow. He easily batted it away, and continued to laugh.

“For your information,” I said angrily, “I was going to seduce you and then incapacitate you so I could call my father and get out of this hell hole, and let Vladimir deal with you for killing his son! Stupid man, you fell for it, too, thinking I wanted to have sex with you just because I bat my eyelashes at you. Typical.”

“Aw, Princess, you wound me. I figured you were up to something but I can tell you it wasn’t the batted eyelashes that had me thinking you wanted to have sex with me.” He held up his fingers, glistening still with my wetness, and I watched with renewed, extravagant embarrassment as he licked them clean in front of me. He was like a cat with milk, even going as far to lick his lips when he was done. “It was definitely how soaked you got when I started to touch you. Though I can tell why now. Did little Viktor never touch you like that? I wouldn’t have pegged a bombshell like you for a proper prude, but I guess daddy couldn’t sell you if you weren’t, ah, intact, huh?”

My fists clenched in their grip on my towel.

“How dare you,” I said. “You… you violated me, and you think it’s funny? You killed my fiancé, and you dare to insult my father! I wasn’t sold, I was doing my duty, and you ruined that, and I hope when my father finds you, he kills you just like you did Viktor!”

I had expected some sort of… proper reaction out of Hadrien. Anger to match my own might have been nice. It’d have meant that I, too, go under his skin. But he gave me no such reaction. He laughed, as carefree as he always did.

“And your daddy kills people just like Viktor, just like Viktor’s daddy kills people just like Viktor. Don’t be all high and mighty, Princess, just because you have your name under your belt, and don’t get uppity because I’m right. That sweet little thing was about as much of a bargaining chip as me taking contracts is, don’t act like that’s not where your value is to your daddy. Duty and servitude ain’t really all that different, cupcake.”

I didn’t know what to say. His words… infuriated me to the point of silence. But they also stung me with their implications, with what he assumed. I didn’t know what to say, so I clenched my jaw, and turned my face away from him.

“I want to go to bed.”

“You sure? I dunno about you, but there’s a mighty ache I’d like to get rid of before I go to sleep.”

My face snapped back towards his.

“I would never willingly have sex with you, you complete ass.”

Again, he laughed.

“Tell that to the mess between your legs.”