There. She’s all shiny again. Except for the cut and bruises, but those will fade.
She’s staring up at me, her whole body covered in goosebumps and her nipples contracted. She’s confused. Probably wondering why I’m not dunking her head in the bucket instead. And we’ll come to that, but not like she thinks.
My cock is already hard from touching her, from seeing and smelling her, from feeling her warm breath on my face. I’m tempted to free it and sink into her, right here in the chair, but not like this.
A loud thud on the door yanks me from the moment. Ilya’s voice filters through the wood. “Open up.”
In his dreams. “Leave the food by the door.”
“What the fuck?”
“Do you have a hearing problem?”
He calls me every lowlife name he can think up. When he finally runs out of insults, there’s a sound of clinking cutlery, and then the angry stomping of receding footsteps.
I wait a good few seconds before I go to the door and peer through the crack. The guards have their backs turned to the door. No sign of Ilya. I open the door and retrieve the tray before locking it again. Mina gives me another one of those wary looks as I carry the tray over and leave it on the floor.
“Hungry?” I know the answer, but she hasn’t said a word to me since she brought up the killing bit and I have a craving to hear the sweet, birdlike sound of her voice.
“Thirsty,” she says on a croak.
Twisting the cap off the bottle of water, I tip it against her lips. She drinks greedily, taking everything she can get. In her position, there’s no knowing if another such mercy will be granted.
A quarter way through the bottle, I move it away to indicate she should go slower. She’ll vomit it all up if she drinks too fast. Understanding, she takes smaller sips. When half of the water is gone, I put the bottle aside and reach for the sandwich. I turn the bread sideways to check the filling. Ham and cheese.
Fucking Ilya. Couldn’t he have come up with something a little more interesting?
Stepping between her legs, I offer her the bread. She opens her lips a little too wide, like the starving kitten she is. Her cut splits anew, but that doesn’t stop her from biting off a huge chunk of the corner.
“Small bites,” I remind her.
She chews and swallows, watching me as she eats, probably wondering if there’s poison in the food. I don’t bring the bread back to her lips. This time, I stand and wait. She leans toward me without taking her eyes away from mine, carefully taking the bite from my hand. It’s like winning the trust of a small, wild animal, teaching it to eat from your palm. I like it way too much. Then again, I can’t forget that wild animals, no matter how cute, won’t hesitate to bite the hand that feeds them. It’s in their nature.
The cut on her lip is bleeding again from all the stretching to accommodate the sandwich. Visions of those lips around the tormenting hardness of my cock assault me, but I push them away. I won’t allow my hope to grow until she’s passed—or rather failed—the test of disguising me.
Breaking off small pieces of the bread, I feed it to her to spare her further discomfort from the reopened wound. I alternate it with sips of water until she’s finished everything, except the last bit of water. I give her that to rinse her mouth after I’ve brushed her teeth and tell her to spit on the ground.
She looks infinitely better after eating, although still weak. There’s even a bit of color in her cheeks, the same peachy glow she had when I rocked my cock into her. Before she regains her strength and decides to put up a fight, I untie her, dress her in my shirt, and tie her up in the chair again.
Her gaze follows the path of my hands as I fasten the buttons. “It’s yours.”
Like I’d dress her in another man’s clothes. I swallow down a vicious laugh.
“Why are you doing this?” she asks.
“You prefer I leave you naked?”
She shuts her mouth at that.
The hem reaches her thighs, but her naked pussy is only an arm’s reach away. I straighten and ask brusquely, “What do you need for the disguise?”
Her answer is tentative, as if she’s reluctant to do this. “The usual. A wig. Beard. Stage makeup.”
I glare down at her. “What were you hoping to achieve the night you let me take you?” I can’t let it go. I can’t wipe it out of my head. “Information, perhaps?” You never know. Some information is a valuable commodity.
“I told you. Nothing.”
I laugh. “You expect me to believe that?”
She glares right back at me. “What about you, Yan? What were you hoping to achieve? I heard you and Ilya. I heard what you said about keeping me.”
“Is that why you ran?”
She looks away.
I grip her chin and turn her face back to me. “Answer me.”
“There’s that, and…” For a second, she looks guilty. “And who I am.”
“Ah. A killer, you mean. I wouldn’t have judged you for that, princess, but framing me as a terrorist? Now that’s a different story.”
“It wasn’t personal,” she whispers.
My smile is mean. “Is that so?”
“It was a job.”
A job. I was a job.
Fuck me if I know why the knowledge slices me up ten different ways inside. Maybe because she’s not the waitress she pretended to be, and what she is makes her all the more perfect for me.
Under different circumstances, we
