The rejection hurt.
A lot.
More than growing up never really knowing where she came from or what she was.
The tears she’d been desperate to cling to burst free all at once, leaving her sobbing as she went to where his jeans were on the floor. She held the figurine and the bear to her with one arm and lifted the jeans, holding them out to Rurik. She couldn’t make eye contact with him, and the formation of words was difficult. “I don’t…know if I’m right. If you’re really him. But either way, thank you and good-bye.”
“Good-bye?” he echoed, lowering his hands. “You want me to go?”
A tiny tip of her head was all that she could muster as she stood there continuing to hold his jeans out to him with one hand while she clutched the figurine and bear to her body. They still provided comfort as they had all her life, even though the man she associated with them wanted nothing to do with her. “Y-yes?”
With one large step he was in front of her, easing the jeans from her hand and throwing them over his shoulder and into the air. They bounced off the door and slid to the floor. He never took his eyes off her. “You’re Little Paw?”
Averting her gaze, she nodded, wanting to get dressed and forget this night ever happened. It didn’t matter that she’d spent her life looking for him and that he was now before her in the flesh. It was clear he regretted what they’d done—that they’d had sex. To her it had meant everything, but to him, it evidently didn’t. The search for answers to questions she’d had for what felt like forever died in its tracks. She didn’t want to discuss it all with him. She just wanted to be alone.
She put her back to him.
Rurik’s body was suddenly pressed to the back of hers.
Try as she might, she couldn’t ignore the way her body responded to his presence. It was like her lady parts hadn’t gotten the message that the Russian pleasure train had left the station.
He slid his arms around her waist, dragging her against him fully. He nuzzled his face in her hair and inhaled deeply. “Cinnamon, nutmeg, and vanilla. I should have known.”
Liberty kept her head bent, crying silently. “What?”
Rurik eased her hair to one side and kissed her bare shoulder before his lips found her ear. Whatever he said in Russian left her knees feeling weak. He splayed a hand over her stomach and eased it down her with painstaking slowness.
Her mind shouted for her to step away from his embrace. To put distance between them. Her heart and her hormones had other plans. Sinking back against him, she cried more all while her body craved more of his touch.
“I didn’t recognize you,” he said, his voice deep yet barely above a whisper. “Aside from being grown now, your face is—”
At the mention of her injury, she winced and tried to dart away from him.
He held her in place, his hand sliding lower until he was cupping her sex. “Liberty.”
“Go, please,” she begged while her damn hips betrayed her and began to move enough that his fingers rubbed against her clit.
He parted her folds and took over, causing her to gasp. He bit at her earlobe, growling as he did. “You’re mine.”
“I’m not anyone’s anything,” she said as she moaned from the pleasure that he was causing to jolt through her.
His finger dipped into her, and her body tightened around it. “Rurik.”
He spoke in Russian again as he eased his finger in and out of her at a steady pace. The act sent pulsating waves of pleasure through her.
With a possessive growl, Rurik spun her around to face him. Boldly, he lifted her, and her legs wrapped around his waist instantly. The Statue of Liberty figurine and the stuffed bear were pressed between them. Neither of them seemed to care.
His mouth reclaimed hers as his cock nudged at her soaked entrance. With one swift movement he drove into her and she cried out in his arms, mostly from pleasure but also from the slight bite of pain in her chest as the figurine’s spiked plastic crown dug into her flesh.
Rurik pounded into her, taking her body to the edge of culmination. He broke the kiss and said something else in Russian before locking gazes with her. “Come for me.”
And just like that—she did.
Her orgasm took hold of her, leaving her jerking on his cock and tightening her legs around his waist.
He nodded slightly, his approving gaze soaking her in just before his body shuddered. Liquid warmth filled her, and she laid her head against his shoulder, still cradling the figurine and bear between them.
Rurik held her there and it took her a second to realize the way he was doing so had changed from a man holding a woman for sex to a man holding a woman in a loving manner. He tilted his head against hers and stood there for what felt like forever, buried in her, their combined juices beginning to leak.
It was then she remembered what they’d talked about at the diner. He’d been hurt a few weeks back. He’d undergone more than one operation. “Rurik, put me down.”
He withdrew from her and did as she asked but caught her elbow, keeping her in front of him.
Her breathing was heavy as she looked him over. “Did I hurt you?”
“Hurt me?” he asked, seeming lost.
“You were attacked and hurt,” she reminded, though she didn’t see any signs of surgery scars.
“I’m fine,” he argued.
She gave him a stern look.
He kissed the tip of her nose. “Little Paw, I’ll admit I was sore when the day started out, but now—this—you—I’ve never felt better.”
She wasn’t sure she believed him.
He touched her scarred cheek. The man had the nerve to chuckle.
She flinched.
“Shh, no,” he said, dipping his head and kissing each of her scars tenderly.
