Page 64 of Surrender: XXX Maxim
A raw, pained expression contorts his features, triggering an instinctive alarm in the pit of my soul. I’ve never seen him like this. In agony, but the physical wound isn’t the cause—and I don’t think he’ll ever truly heal from it.
“Dima was right,” he croaks. “Can I give you what you need? I don’t know. You are young. You will want children—do not deny it. Youwill. And… In my world, children are met with strictness. Violence. What happened to Vadim and me is typical—they are beaten into submission and traded like chattel. And you will not understand, but this did not bother me. It is all I know, and therefore I made a choice. No children of my own.”
His voice is a monotone hum devoid of emotion. I don’t even think he’s talking to me anymore—not really. This is for him—a confession of the things he can’t express, even in the dark room.
But he’s not alone, forced to use whips and knives to express the pain he won’t ever admit to out loud. Silently, I brace my hands over his chest, reinforcing my presence.
I’m here.
“I expected no different,” he adds. “Even with your siblings. I knew I would have to restrain myself from beating them if I was to keep you near. I was prepared to. But…” He frowns, and the expression breaks my heart into a million fucking pieces. He looks more confused than ever. So lost—a boy trapped in his memories with no way out. “I didn’t. I didn’t want to harm them. Not once. I didn’t want to beat them down for insolence. I felt no urge to hurt your sister when she defied you. Your brother does not deserve to be whipped for daring to question me. And the youngest…” His voice breaks, hollow and hoarse. “I couldn’t imagine hurting her. Selling her. If Dima threatened her that day, I would have killed him.”
I believe it. He practically levitates with repressed emotion. Brushing my lips along his shoulder is the only way to ease the tension from him again.
“I’ve never considered being a father,” he tells me. It is honesty delivered as efficiently as one of the blows from his whip. Devastating in its aim. “But now? You think I struggle with this life. Iletyou believe that—” He tiredly meets my gaze, and all I see reflected in his dark eyes is a man pushed to his breaking point, exhausted beyond belief. “The truth is that…I feel clearer, the more I’m with you. With them. At the same fucking time, I feel like I’m losing myself. The man I’ve been for so damn long.” He eyes his hands warily and then lets them fall into the water. “If you leave…who will I be in the aftermath?”
“You,” I whisper against his skin, curling myself against him. I take one of his hands and thread our fingers together. “This isyou. You don’t have to suppress your past with me.”
“I don’t?” He laughs, but the sound trickles from him as a sigh more than anything. I look up to find him observing our clasped hands. “Dima is a different breed of monster from me, but he is right. You will never be safe in my world. Trying to convince you otherwise was a lie—”
“I like your world,” I interject, my voice small. “Not your grandfather’s fucked-up empire, or the twisted games, or the lies.Yourworld. A beach house with rules we decided on. Lazy days and vanilla sex, with kink at night. That world.”
His expression shifts, and I choke out a startled laugh. He looks comically skeptical, an eyebrow raised. “I will have to fight to give you that world.”
“I know. Which is why you need to let me help you.” I weigh the danger of pushing him too far. But hell, that’s the only game to play with him. Reckless, Russian Roulette. “If it will make a difference like Milton said, then let me talk to Dima—”
He makes a low sound in his throat. “I will grant you anything… But I will pretend you didn’t requestthat.”
“You need his help,” I say, parroting Milton’s insistence. “I don’t want to come between you and your friend. And…” A part of me shies from voicing more, but I don’t have a choice. It’s the truth. “If he hurts me, I know you’ll kill him.”
“And if he toys with your head?” he counters, tightening his grip on my hand. “Plants devious, vicious lies? He is a snake.”
“That’s why you need to trust me. Like I trust you.”
Trust.The line of his mouth softens at the sound of that word, but in the same damn breath, his nostrils flare. “No—”
“Maybe I can help you find the truth?” I suggest, trying a different line of attack. “Learn what he really wants? It’s been bothering you, don’t tell me it hasn’t.”
“Thetruthis, he wants to destroy what I have. He couldn’t take the Koslov name, so he’ll take you from me.”
“And I won’t let him.”
His brows furrow as if the idea of my free will never factored into his thinking.
“You gave me a choice before,” I add, recalling how he questioned me in front of Milton and Dima. “Or was that for show?”
Sighing, he repositions me so that I straddle him. It’s a devious ploy only a true game master would enact to regain control. His hands feel huge against my hips, cradling me with a gentleness he rarely utilizes. Our foreheads meet, and his teeth tease my lower lip, dissolving my will to argue with every sensual nip.
“I trust you,” he confesses as my thoughts start to scatter. “My kitten who can be so affectionate when she chooses, sucking me off for all of the world to see. And ice cold the next, lashing out with her claws. But I will never trust Dima.”
Thinking fast, I slip my tongue between his lips, stealing his taste. He groans in shock, his nails grazing my flesh. As the upper hand shifts in my favor, I’m bold enough to propose, “What if we trade?”
A frown tugs on his mouth—he’s suspicious. “I am curious as to why you are so determined in this instance. Vadim seems to catch your interest more than marrying me.”
“I want to help you,” I confess, brushing off the uncharacteristic note in his voice. Jealousy? In silent reassurance, I press my lips against his skin over and over. With each affectionate kiss, his breathing quickens, and the balance of power teeters again in my direction. “I only want to help you.”
Can he really not see the toll this is taking on him? Though hell, he doesn’t even seem to feel the wound on his arm. I swipe my thumb near it in sympathy. A normal man would be rushing to the emergency room, demanding stitches.
“You think I need helping?” he wonders.
“Maybe we both do? I want a future with you.” I sound so damn tired, and I am. This is my last-ditch ploy to win this round—and not for Dima’s sake or anyone else’s but my own. And his. For him, I have no shame in resorting to selfish begging. Maybe later, I’ll let myself examine what that might mean.
“I do,” I repeat against his collar bone, cutting my brain off to any thoughts but this. “I’m willing to fight you for it, and if I’m wrong. I’m wrong. We’ve been through worse. So what do you say? At least consider a trade?”
“I will think about this.” His lips find mine before I can argue, silencing me with a kiss so deep my head reels when he pulls away. Robbing me of any chance to recover, he rocks beneath me, settling between my legs. Before I can even steel myself, he’s thrusting in deep, groaning at the feel.
“In the meantime, we will trade in this way,” he grates through gritted teeth.
A thrust for a thrust. Pleasure for pleasure. A kiss for a kiss. All of it is currency we’re both squirreling away for leverage later.
So is the way of the game.
