Page 72 of Charmingly Obsessed
And I’m just in his hoodie. One of his ridiculously soft cashmere hoodies. Kindly provided late last night. Which means, of course, that I don’t even have underwear on. Again!
I tug at the door handle again. What the actual hell!
I sit carefully on the edge of the enormous, rumpled bed, my bare feet dangling in the air, not quite reaching the plush sheepskin rug.
He locked me in. In his bedroom.
He talked about locks that can only be closed from the inside. For privacy. For security. And last morning, he talkedabout abductions. About contingency plans. About emergency contacts.
So this is how it is! This is his idea of protection?
Well, and where’s my goddamn emergency contact list? The one I’m supposed to use to tell them about the ransom demands?
I laugh. A hysterical, slightly unhinged sound that echoes in the silence of the room. I lean back against the mountain of pillows, staring up at the coffered ceiling.
This is my life now. Apparently.
27
Chapter 27 Diana
The tray, laden with what I can only assume is Frez’s attempt at a romantic breakfast-in-bed, appears first.
Then he comes into view, his face scrubbed clean of battle grime but still bearing the faint, purplish evidence of a broken nose. His sandy hair is damp from a shower, clinging to his temples. He looks… domesticated. Almost.
And with every deliberate, impossibly graceful step he takes towards the bed where I’m currently hiding beneath a mountain of expensive duvet, my laughter grows.
It starts as a small, quiet tremor in my chest, then bubbles up, quiet but uncontrollable, escaping my lips in soft, helpless giggles.
“Oh, so you haven’t even taken a single bite yet, and you’re already laughing at my culinary prowess? Harsh, wife. Very harsh.”
I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I can’t stop. The sheer absurdity of it all – the fight, the courthouse, the wedding, the mind-blowing sex, and now this, a billionaire with a broken nose serving me breakfast in his palatial bed – it’s all just… too much.
I keep laughing, and Mykola, with a predatory glint in his eye, pushes me gently onto my back, his body following mine down onto the mattress.
He steals every last bit of laughter from my lips with a kiss. A deep, thorough, possessive kiss that tastes of coffee and mint and him. Some rich man, huh? Stealing a woman’s laughter. I don’t even try to catch my breath when he finally lifts his head. He just looks down at me, his eyes filled with an amused, almost tender persistence.
His hands, large and warm, settle on my waist, gripping me through the soft cashmere of the hoodie.
“My hands are cold,” he murmurs, his thumbs stroking circles against my skin, sending shivers chasing down my spine.
“I’ll warm them up,” I whisper back, surprising myself with my own boldness. I pull his hands towards me, sandwiching them between my own, rubbing them with an exaggerated, playful determination.
He presses me deeper into the mattress, our faces now impossibly close, his breath warm against my cheek. “I know you’re scared, Diana. Still. But you shouldn’t be. Not with me. Never with me.”
His hands slip beneath the hem of the hoodie, his fingers splaying against my bare skin. Moving higher than they did yesterday in the kitchen, higher than they wandered last night in the intoxicating darkness.
Slow, unhurried, almost reverent touches spread across my ribs, the sensitive skin of my stomach, the underside of my breasts. Chaotic. Effortless. Unplanned.
“I’m just… used to it,” I whisper. “To being scared. It’s… it’s always been this way. With… with everything. Now it… it always is this way, and I’ve never… I’ve never…”
“You’ve never been married before either, right?” His nose grazes the sensitive shell of my ear, his breath a warm caress. “And now you are. To me.”
His thumbs brush over my nipples, which are already tight, aching, straining against the soft cashmere.
His palms trace agonizingly gentle, almost torturous circles around them. The contrast between the unexpected roughness of his calloused fingertips and the exquisite tenderness of his touch sends a deep, molten ache through my veins.
Overwhelmed by a fierce surge of sensation, I instinctively press closer to his tense body. His voice is a low, husky rumble against my skin as he teases, “What a diligent, insatiable little thief I have here.”
