The Professional: Part 2 (The Game Maker #1.2)(25)

Yesterday, at a gas station in Germany, he’d been on the phone—again—so I’d wandered inside and made a purchase: a hard-core bondage magazine (it was just sitting in a rack of mags next to the motor oil!).

Once we’d gotten under way, he’d absently asked, “What do you have there?”

So I’d turned to a page I’d dog-eared while waiting for him, holding up one of the many pictures that had piqued my interest: a naked woman bound by her wrists and ankles to what looked like a padded sawhorse.

She’d worn these really cool nipple clamps; they’d looked like someone had placed one conductor’s wand above the peaks, then another below, tightening the slim bars together with screws on the ends. Recalling how hard Sevastyan had pinched my nipples in the banya—and how I’d loved it—I wanted to be clamped like that. At the mere thought, my nipples had stiffened.

Once Sevastyan had registered what he was seeing, his pupils had dilated, his knuckles gone white on the steering wheel. Voice hoarse, he’d asked, “Is that what you think you want?”

I’d nodded. “You have a lot of experience with scenes like this, right?”

“Enough for both of us, so that we never have to descend to that level again.”

Descend? “You should know—since apparently you’re the only man I’ll ever sleep with—that I want to try just about everything once. My curiosity demands it.”

He’d swallowed, his throat working. “Like what?”

In as casual a tone I could feign, I’d said, “I loved it when you whipped me with the venik.” When the stinging had turned to heat and the heat to bliss. “So maybe we should raise the stakes and try a paddle, or something like”—I’d shoved an ad for a flogger at him—“this.”

My cool Siberian’s upper lip had beaded with perspiration.

“Or this.” I’d showed him a picture of a naked and gagged woman trapped in a pillory. A fully dressed man was behind her, smacking her between the legs with a dogging bat, which looked like a leather-covered bookmark that flared at the end. “That must feel . . . electric.”

With a blistering curse, Sevastyan had snatched the mag from me, flinging it in the backseat.

I’d been certain he was about to pull the car over to ravish me on the side of the road. Yet he never had. He wouldn’t even discuss what I’d shown him—as if it’d never happened.

Basically, my relationship with Sevastyan was emotionally stunted and heading toward sexually frustrated. Two very big hurdles . . .

Now, as the lights of Paris twinkled in the distance, he turned me in his arms. “What are you thinking about?”

“The drive down. The magazine.”

He dropped his hands and drew away from me. Crossing to the railing, he rested his forearms atop it. “I’m not discussing that.”

I narrowed my eyes, filled with irritation and disappointment. But recalling his white-knuckled reaction to my choice of light reading made me realize I could wear him down. Tempt him to lose control. Maybe?

Of course, that would mean having to pay the piper. Was I ready to commit to a BDSM relationship with this man? Part of me wanted to, simply because it would at least be a defined relationship.

As we stood now, everything was up in the air, with zero stability. I was discovering that I liked stability. I’d liked living on one farm my entire childhood with steady-as-rocks parents. I’d liked settling in at one school.

Naturally, Sevastyan would feel differently after his hand-to-mouth existence as a child. But I needed more. . . .

“Talk about something else, Natalie, or we won’t talk at all.”

“Fine. We’ll discuss other things. Such as how you made so much money.” I’d had no idea he was independently wealthy to this degree, but it made sense considering he was a vor himself. Now I realized he’d lived at Berezka by choice, to be close to Paxán. The idea of that tugged at my heart. “Will you not tell me how?”

“I . . . fought.” He fell silent. I guessed he knew he’d have to give me something more, because he tried again. “In my teens and twenties, I fought in underground mafiya matches. It was lucrative for me.”

“I imagine you won lots.”

“I never lost one of those match-ups,” he said, not with conceit, but almost with . . . regret. In a lower tone, he added, “I am singularly suited to fighting, always have been.”

“How so?” Superior bone density? High pain threshold? I recalled Paxán telling me that he’d never seen anyone take hits like Sevastyan, and he’d only been thirteen at the time.

Ignoring my question, Sevastyan continued, “A few years ago, I realized I wouldn’t be able to fight forever. I had a business idea, and brought it to Paxán. He encouraged me to use my winnings to develop the scheme on my own.”

“What was it?”

“A way to smuggle cheap vodka into the country.”

“Isn’t Russia the land of cheap vodka?”

“It costs significantly less to buy it from the States, but our alcohol tariffs deter most from importing it. So I came up with a way to disguise the vodka from customs.”

“How?” I asked, fascinated.

“I had it dyed light blue with food coloring. Then we labeled the barrels as windshield-wiper fluid. Once in Russia, we reversed the dye.”