The Player (The Game Maker #3)(56)

Over the sounds of his skin slapping mine, he bit out, “Uhn! About to give you my cum! Fucking worth it—”

His body froze. A guttural yell broke from his chest.

Our gazes locked. His was anguished. I don’t think he breathed.

Then he began to ejaculate.

With his first searing jet, he heaved in air. Hips jerking uncontrollably, cock pulsating, he gave a frenzied roar: “VICTORIA!”

He plunged furiously, his yells matching each new flood of semen. His release pumped on and on . . . until my body had drained his.

A last groan passed his lips. A shudder down to his bones.

Lost, he rasped, “Mine.” Then he collapsed atop me.

We lay for some time, catching our breath. My heart raced; his pounded in answer.

“Hurting you?” he asked.

“Uh-uh.” Hurt? I floated. “That was more than just sex.” My tone was awed.

He rose on straightened arms. Lids heavy, he looked as drugged as I felt. “Still here.”

My chest squeezed when a tear tracked from one of his eyes. “Baby?”

“You.” His throat was working, as if he was getting control of his emotions. “You don’t know what you’ve done.”

I felt alarm. “What?”

“Everything.”

I was trying to sort out my confusion when his lips curved fully, showing off even white teeth against tanned skin. His first real smile with me.

I sucked in a breath. His eyes turned molten gold, and he looked . . . jubilant. As if we’d pulled off the greatest coup ever.

Deeper under his spell. “Better?”

“Best. A world away from the past.” His cock pulsed inside me, already beginning to harden. His jubilant look changed, darkening. “Which means I have a lot to make up for, wife. . . .”





CHAPTER 24

Rain pattering against the windows woke me. Disoriented, I gradually remembered where I was.

“Dmitri?” No sign of him. The bedside clock read quarter to four in the morning.

He’d taken me numerous times, until I’d passed out with him spooning me, still inside me.

Feeling a tendril of unease, I rose and donned a robe. When I didn’t find him anywhere on the second floor, I hurried downstairs.

From the kitchen, I spied a shadowy figure across the windswept field. Lightning flashed, illuminating the scene.

Dmitri?

He was half-dressed, standing at the cliffside. What the hell was he doing out in a storm? I rushed toward a pair of french doors.

I’d never asked him about the scar on his arm. Had he been suicidal? Was he still?

Heart in my throat, I tore open a door and raced headlong into the rain, shielding my eyes.

The idea of losing him . . .

The winds howled and waves crashed. The ground vibrated beneath my feet with each impact. Thunder boomed.

He stood too close to the edge; sea spray flung by the waves lashed his ankles. He wore only jeans, his chest bare. He tilted his head back, letting the rain beat against his face, and opened his arms wide.

I blinked against the pelting drops, disbelieving my eyes.

He was . . . smiling.

“Dmitri!”

He lowered his head and turned to me, offering his hand.

Though I was nervous about the drop-off, I took it. Over the wind, I cried, “You don’t need to be out here.”

“It is a good storm, love.”

I put my palm on his warm chest. “You’re not cold, but you’re shaking. Why are you shaking?”

“I don’t know how to describe . . .” His accent was thick. “I feel . . . I feel . . . so much. And it is all new to me.” Were tears tracking down his face, or were those drops of rain? “I keep thinking about the word disintegrate. To cause to fall apart. I was integrated for more than thirty-two years, and now I am something else.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

He clutched me close, then tilted his head back again, basking in the storm. “I feel skinned alive. Raw and exposed.”

“That sounds awful.”

He lowered his face, meeting my eyes. His lashes were spiked with moisture, his black hair whipping across his cheeks. “It is pure. I live anew now.”

Were these mad ramblings? Or was he baring his heart? Why couldn’t I make sense of what he was saying? “I want to understand you. Help me!”

“I planned for this night; I prepared for it. Yet in the back of my mind, I feared my past would win—as it always had before. But I had a wife, a responsibility. Sex was no longer about me; it is about us. And I cared more about your pleasure than I cared about registering my own. If I drifted for a time, you probably wouldn’t know. If I stayed gone, you would be taken care of.”

Stayed gone? As in, losing touch with reality permanently?

“I stopped fighting it.” He covered my shoulders with his big hands. “For the first time in my life, I—let—go. My struggles ended. Because of you, I had courage. I stopped trying to bandage my mind and said, ‘Let it f*cking bleed.’” His hold on me tightened. “But it didn’t, Victoria. My wounds were seared and closed.”

When a towering wave broke before us, he looped an arm around my waist and moved us back from the edge. “You trusted me, and I trusted us.” He traced his thumb over my bottom lip. “Moya zhena, my beautiful wife. We can begin.”