“You saved my life,” I murmur, eyes wide as I gaze at my captor-turned-savior. He is beginning to turn into quite the Renaissance man in regard to me. He was my unwilling, unsuspecting captor. Then my comforter. Then my protector. My lover. My savior. My captain.

My everything.

I still have that nagging voice in the back of my head reminding me of how little time we have actually spent in one another’s company. It has only been a couple of days, right? The clock in my heart is stopped, though, frozen and paralyzed at the moment of our first encounter. Nothing before him seems to matter very much to me anymore. He is all I think about; all my body craves.

I can’t remember the last time I felt truly thirsty or hungry for something other than Vladimir’s touch. It’s like I’m crystallized in time, fixed at this particular juncture in space, hanging between the beige expanse of my dull, empty, dusty life before him, and the uncertain white horizon of my future with him.

That last thought jolts me, shakes me to my core at how naturally it occurs to me: a future. With him. With Vladimir. The tall dark stranger who has come booming and looming into my world with his great height and his muscles and his soft growling voice. A future? I can hardly think past the next minute or so lately. It’s hard to picture what my life could turn into from here, when everything I once knew has fallen away like so much detritus, like old clothes that don’t fit me right anymore.

A trail of breadcrumbs wiped away and erased by the unrelenting waves of the sea. Washing me clean but stinging me with salt at the same time.

It is the way out and away from the girl I used to be, the version of myself I once felt was so clear and well-defined but who now looks like a transparent wisp of my true self. I am learning more and more about my own heart, my body and its wild, forbidden desires, every single day. And Vladimir, my gentlemanly hero and ravishing dark prince all at the same time, is the one ushering me through the halls of transformation into this new, blushing, fresh version of Autumn Hart no one has ever seen or heard of before.

I am changing, whether I like it or not, for better or for worse, and he is the catalyst.

My heart is still pounding. The adrenaline of a near-death experience pumping through my veins like some illicit drug, exciting and frightening me simultaneously. I stare at the side of my hero’s face, charting the sharp lines and jagged curves of his rugged, handsome features.

I could look at him forever, walking around him in a slow, mesmerized circle, studying his every aspect as though he is the pinnacle of male beauty encapsulated in marble and held on display in some ritzy ancient gallery.

He is every nude male form in the Louvre, every frowning, gorgeous old oligarch in the lush paintings of crimson and gold and dark, dark gray. He is the face gleaming in the midst of the chiaroscuro, the one pinprick of light in my shadowy world. I know if I allow things to progress as they have so far, I will never stop following him, entranced by the illumination he gives off, addicted to the pleasure those wise, calloused hands can give to me.

He is a work of poetry, only words seem to fail me when I look at him. He goes beyond language, beyond English and Russian or even the ancient languages of incantation and magic like Latin. I have never met a man like him, and I suspect there has never been one like him in all the eras of bygone times and those still to come.

I cannot believe my luck. I get to exist in the same time and place as Vladimir, and for that I am endlessly grateful.

There is a handsome scowl on his face as he pilots the yacht, his massive hands white-knuckled on the ship’s mottled wooden wheel, his dark eyes watching the GPS coordinates rapidly shifting as we careen across the Mediterranean, escaping the men who would hunt us down and do that most heinous of heinous acts: separate us.

I will never willingly part from him again. I know now where I belong. Maybe that old version of Autumn was not ready for it. Who knows if I ever would have thought myself ready, anyway? I was always afraid to move forward, still clinging to my dusty books and my notes and my studies of the dark past.

I was always crunching myself into cobwebby corners of some classical library, burying my nose in a book so that I would not have to face the real world that fell around me like the cape of a dastardly villain. I just wanted to be hidden. I hid behind my poems. I hid inside my studies. I kept my body hidden under layers and layers of dowdy clothing, a librarian crone before I even reached twenty-one years old.

What was I so afraid of back then? Getting hurt again?

I suppose it makes sense. I never felt especially loved or even liked. Every classmate was a rival. Every professor was yet another in the long, long, never-ending line of authority figures to prove my worth to.

Well, except for Ms. Hardwick.

She was an outlier. In all my years as an adolescent and a young adult, she is the only one who ever even came close to understanding me, to knowing the real me. And even with her, there were vital aspects of my persona I kept under strict lock and key. I made myself an un-sexual being. But why? To protect myself?

Or to protect everyone else?

Because now that I am learning more about what I want and who I am and in what direction my desires point, maybe I’m realizing that I don’t fit the mold. I don’t want the things my classmates and fellow young women wanted.

Maybe there is a perfectly good reason as to why I never felt more like a blip on my radar when I turned my eye to boys my own age. They were never enough. They were so green, so unripe for the plucking. Why would I ever want them to touch me? They don’t know how to play a woman’s body like a mystical instrument.

They don’t know how to make me feel things I never thought possible. They have no idea what dark desires a girl’s heart can crave. I heard their stupid jokes and watched them nudge shoulders and elbow each other’s sides when they talked about the shape of a woman’s body. I know all about how they size her up and pick out the flaws, guffawing to each other like insensitive, immature little children because they’re too weak to acknowledge how deeply afraid they are.

I am twenty-one years old, and yet I carry more knowledge, more wisdom, more pain, more depth than any of them combined together.

They could never know me.

They could never handle my secrets.

I am too much for them, and that is why I never gave myself up to them.

But Vladimir is wildly different. He is a breath of fresh air, even as my body trembles and shakes at his touch. He knows me before I know myself. He alone can plumb the depths of my needs and secret wants. He understands how to touch me and turn my flesh into gold. He makes me strong and weak and vulnerable and guarded all at once and I will never again find a man capable of such magic.

And besides that, he saved me. Again. He didn’t have to do that. I am more of a liability to him than an asset. I don’t need the details of his reality, his line of work to know that. I am a chink in his armor. A leak in his ship. And yet he continues to protect me and patch me up. I belong to him and him alone, and I have never felt safer or more secure in that fact than I do now, as our stolen yacht, our precious little universe of chrome and gold and private luxury spins out across the Mediterranean toward salvation yet again.

I am so scared. But that fear can’t hurt me anymore, not with Vladimir around. He lets the demons come just close enough for me to feel the ecstatic pleasure of their flames licking my body, warming me up so that I bloom like a flower for him to touch and taste. But he won’t let anyone or anything harm me. I trust him the same way I trust that the sun will rise every morning and set every night.

I believe in him the way I believe in the wind and the rain and the tectonic plates shifting slowly and violently beneath us all. And most importantly, I believe that he will not turn away from me when things get difficult. When I get difficult. His stoic patience warms and calms me even as his fiery passion ignites me from the inside out. I can hardly wait for him to steer our ship away from harm so that I can coax him back to bed again. I want to feel him inside of me. I want him to fill me up and make me whole. I ache for him. I yearn.

And finally, once we have spun out a great enough distance between our ship and the ships of those who threaten to tear us apart, he turns away from the steering wheel and gives me that dark glowering look that tells me everything all at once. All I need. All I want.

It is a promise he gives me in that gaze, and I hungrily accept it.

“You saved me,” I tell him again, my voice soft and trembling.

“I will always protect what belongs to me,” Vladimir growls, sauntering over to me like a predator closing in on his delicate prey. I open myself up to him. I peel back for him.

In the captain’s cell in full view of the choppy waves and the sinking-sun sky, he grabs me by the hips and hoists me up into his arms. I wrap my legs around his waist as he spins me around. I giggle with exhilaration, tilting my head back so that my long brown hair twirls in the free, balmy air. He walks me backward to the captain’s chair; a gilded thing of beauty made my masterful hands.

Vladimir tears down my skirt and panties while I gladly peel off my blouse. We toss it all aside. Goosebumps pop up along my exposed flesh, my nipples stiffening into sensitive peaks as the breeze passes over them, making me whimper with need. My pussy is aching, pulsating with the dark desire to be filled and fucked hard.

“Vladimir,” I gasp as he kneels down before me and wrenches my thighs open with one powerful hand. He leans forward and breathes me in deeply, savoring my sweet scent as I look down at him with lidded eyes, my heart hammering away like mad in my chest.

“You almost lost me,” I murmur, the fear still rippling around me.

He looks up at me with a fierce, wolfish gaze. He shakes his head slowly.

“No, malyshka. I will never lose you. Nobody will take you from me. That I can promise you for certain. I will always save you. I will always hold you close. And I will cut off the hands of the next man who dares try to take you away from me,” he snarls.

“I’m yours,” I whisper. “Now and forever. As long as you’ll have me.”

“Oh, my sweet little girl,” he growls, “I will have you. Oh, I will have you.”

There is unspeakable desire in his tone, which he proves to me with his tongue as he dives in and starts to devour my slick, fragrant cunny. I lean back and moan, draping my legs over his shoulders while his tongue flicks up and down my wet flower, lapping up every drop of my desire.

I roll my hips, wiggling ever so slightly so that I’m rocking against his face, letting his tongue toy with my overstimulated little clit. Shockwaves of incredible pleasure rocket up through my body as I clench the arms of the captain’s chair.

“Oh my god,” I gasp, “your mouth… feels incredible.”

He groans his approval into my folds, making it thrum and vibrate deliciously. I whimper and mewl, arching my back and riding against his lips as he suckles my clit and plunges his tongue inside my clenching little hole.

I bite my bottom lip, my eyes fluttering open and closed in ecstasy as he rocks my world, hungrily pleasuring me as though he can’t get enough of my specific taste. His hands squeeze my soft thighs and slowly move their way up, making me shiver as they trace up my ticklish pelvis and hips, then I hold my breath and shudder out a long moan when his fingers find my nipples.

He tweaks and massages them with his calloused fingertips, the friction adding a depth of delight that nearly makes me collapse out of the chair. But Vladimir holds me up, keeping me steady while his tongue lathes up and down rhythmically, the stiffened tip teasing my clit until I’m almost incoherent and babbling with need.

“Oh my—oh fuck, I need it—oh Daddy,” I splutter between gasps, my pleasure mounting higher and higher beyond my control. “Please, Daddy, let me come.”

He groans ferociously against my clit, focusing his full attention there, nipping and suckling that tight little bundles of overwrought nerves until I’m spasming and convulsing in the chair as though possessed by some wild spirit.

My body thrashes and grinds against his tongue as he moans and laps me up, careful to savor every last drop of my gushing honey as I come all over his handsome, perfect face.

He licks my cunny unrelentingly as I come again and again, hot tears rolling down my cheeks as my hands white-knuckle the sides of the captain’s chair. I can hardly keep a single thought straight in my head, I’m so overwhelmed by affection and pleasure. Never before has anyone given me even a fraction of this sensation. Not even at my own inexpert hands.

“You taste like heaven, my sweet little Autumn,” Vladimir snarls as he pulls back and crudely wipes his glistening lips. He stands up and looms over me while my chest heaves up and down, and my heart skips a beat when I see the enormous bulge straining at the front of his pants. I lick my lips and reach out to massage the bulge with both hands, gazing up at him with a silent, desperate plea.

“Don’t worry, malyshka,” he hisses. “I am going to fuck you senseless.”

“Please don’t make me wait. I need it. I need you,” I beg.

“I know, my princesa. I know you do. And I am going to give it to you. But first you must promise me something,” he says, his voice rough as gravel.

“Anything. I will promise anything, sir,” I pledge softly.

“Get on your knees,” he commands with a snap of his fingers.

I hurriedly slide out of the chair and sink down to the floor, trembling as I stare up at him open-mouthed. There’s something so deliciously dirty about being naked in front of him while he is fully-clothed. It makes me feel scandalous. Like I’m some wanton nymphet he plucked out of a magical forest. Like I was brought into this universe just to please him.

And honestly, is that not the truth?

“Promise me you will never run away. Promise me that you will be mine forever,” he demands, those dark brows furrowed in such a way that shows me he is deadly serious.

I nod vigorously. “Yes, yes. Of course, Daddy. I’m yours. You can have me whenever and wherever you want. I belong to you alone. No one else. Ever,” I assure him, rambling.

“Good girl,” he says, and my body floods with warmth. His approval is more nourishing than the glow of the sun, more comforting than a blanket around my shoulders.

“Can I touch you now? Please,” I beg him, biting my lip.

He nods. “Da. You deserve to suck my cock, malyshka. You have earned it. Show me your loyalty. Show me how much you desire to be mine,” Vladimir rumbles.

His fingers slowly, tantalizingly unbutton his pants. I’m nearly frantic with desire when he tugs down his pants and boxers just far enough for his massive, stiff cock to spring free in the open air. I’m already salivating when I dart forward and capture the swollen, silky head of his member between my plush lips.

I wrap my hands around his thick length and pump up and down while I suckle the round head, letting my tongue flick around the underside. I moan and whimper with satisfaction as I feel him stretching out my cheeks, filling my dirty little mouth with his glorious cock. I begin to bob up and down, taking in inch after inch, my eyes still rolling up to stare at his face.

He looks stoic as always except for one little tell—that muscle twitching in his jaw. That tells me he is trying to restrain himself. I don’t want him to hold back, though. I want all of him. For better or for worse. I need it. I need him to give me everything.

So, I suck his cock with gusto, taking him down to the hilt, until his engorged head is brushing against the ticklish back of my throat, until I’m nearly gagging myself to the point of tears. I groan at the taste of his salty precome, desperate for more. I slurp and suck his cock eagerly, letting my hands slide down to fondle his heavy, thick sack. Vladimir starts to give in a little, losing himself to my machinations.

I feel proud of myself, every little sign from him only spurring me on to take him deeper and harder. Before long tears are streaming down my face, his cock pummeling the back of my throat again and again as he thrusts into my aching mouth.

I can feel him clenching, tightening up. He is going to lose control, and I’m desperate for it. I want to taste his thick spunk, feel it sliding down my eager throat. But just before he can explode in my mouth, he gently nudges me back, his cock slipping out of my mouth with a wet, filthy pop. I whimper and pout as I look up at him, disappointed. But then he gestures for me to stand up. He strips off his shirt and throws it aside, then yanks down his pants and steps out of them, both of us completely naked now, rocked on the open sea.

“Turn around, little girl,” he snaps. I do as I’m told, dutifully leaning on the captain’s chair and poking my ass out, wiggling it cheekily to tempt him further. I hear him chuckle grimly, and then he gives my ass a hard, resounding smack. I cry out with mingled pain and pleasure, my cunny dripping and slick with need.

“Oh yes, Daddy. I love it when you spank me,” I whisper, wiggling my ass at him.

“You are such a filthy little princesa,” he growls. “Tempting your Daddy so.”

“Please fuck me. I need it,” I pout and beg, turning to bat my lashes at him over my shoulder coquettishly. Vladimir gives me a predatory smile and positions the head of his cock at my slick opening. I hold my breath, waiting for him to slide inside.

He circles my dripping flower with the velvety head of his cock, teasing me until I’m keening and rolling my hips back against him, all dignity cast aside.

Then, without another word, he shoves his full, thick cock inside of me, sheathing himself in my clenching cunny down to the root. I wail his name in pleasure, clinging to the captain’s chair as he bends me over and grasps my hips so tightly I know his fingertips will leave lasting bruises.

I hope they do.

I want to see those bruises in the mirror later, as a memento of the time he fucked me senseless in the captain’s cell. I feel him bend over my back, kissing along my spine as he rears back and then slams into me again. I cry out, whimpering, biting at the soft cushion of the chair as his cock spears into my tight little pussy again and again and again. He strikes that sweet spot inside me, the place I can hardly reach myself with my tiny, girlish hands, giving me the kind of overwhelming pleasure no other man on earth can give me.

“You belong to me,” Vladimir snarls as his hips piston back and forth, fucking me so hard that I’m seeing stars twinkling in the darkness of my vision. “Nobody else.”

“I’m yours. I am all yours,” I manage to choke out between gasps of air.

He smacks my ass again, hard, and I cry out, my pussy clenching with yet another powerful climax. “Good girl. Oh, so good for your Daddy,” he hisses, giving my ass another smack.

I’m trembling all over, hardly able to hold myself up while he pounds into me mercilessly from behind. He fucks my tight, pulsing cunny harder and harder, the rhythm losing tempo and getting more erratic and wild until finally Vladimir grabs me and holds me in place while he bellows some words in Russian I don’t understand, pumping me full of his precious, thick, sticky come. I clench the walls of my little pussy, clinging to his seed, trying to hold onto it as long as I can. He pumps into me a few more times before withdrawing, and I can feel his spunk slipping out of my hole, dripping in streaks down my thighs.

I try to stand up, but my body is so overstimulated that I start to immediately collapse. Ever my savior, Vladimir deftly scoops me up in his arms and carries me, damsel-style down the stairs to the master bedroom.

I’m in a daze as he carries me to the glamorous bathroom and runs me a fragrant, rose-scented bubble bath, tossing in dried petals and salts from a glossy bottle under the sink.

I relax into the bubbles, sighing as my aching body starts to loosen up in the warm water. Meanwhile, Vladimir sits on the edge of the tub and washes me gently, caressing every inch of my body, cleaning and soothing me after our intense fuck.

He lovingly coaxes me back to life, my muddled mind becoming clearer as I recover from our scene. He is patient and soft with me, even lathering up my hair and massaging my scalp as I lay almost helpless in the tub. Soon, though, he begins to ask me questions while he washes my hair.

“Who is looking for you, malyshka? Who is trying so hard to take you from me?” Vladimir asks, his head slightly tilted to one side.

I bite my lip, my cheeks flushing pink. “I don’t know,” I whisper.

“Your parents… you say they are dead,” he prompts.

I nod, my head swimming with dizziness. “Yes. They are dead,” I confirm.

“Then who could it be? Who is after you? I will protect you always, but you must be forthcoming with me. You can trust your Daddy. Tell me, princesa. Who haunts your steps?” he coos, stroking my cheek.

I turn my head away, afraid of the question and even more afraid of the answer.

“Tell me.”