"I decide when to stop", he warned me hard and adamant. "I want to make you cum again."
"I can't", I gasped in exhaustion, as my body was once again letting itself be seduced by Aleksej's touch.
At one point I felt him cum inside me.
I sighed with relief, thinking that the torture was over and instead I found myself still bent forward, with one hand of Aleksej on my breast and the other still on my clitoris.
Aroused by his orgasm still throbbing inside me and his fingers sliding between my thighs, I finally felt a new orgasm rock me deeply.
"Good my babushka ", he smiled, freeing me from his body.
I dressed quickly, trying to erase from memory what we had just done.
The thong was unrecoverable, so I threw it away.
Meanwhile Aleksej opened a desk drawer and took out a small box.
He handed it to me.
"What is it?" I asked, grabbing the package and sitting on his legs.
"Open it."
I obeyed and inside I found a ring in white gold and diamonds. The brilliant cut center stone was framed between two pear cut diamonds. It was a spectacular ring. The most beautiful I've ever seen in my life.
"What does it mean?"
"You decide."
"I'm not a whore", I cleared, putting the ring on my right ring finger greedily.
"I didn't say this is the payment for your performance."
"No, but you thought so."
"I think what I want and you can do the same in this case."
"Then I'll take this ring as a proposal", I challenged him, determined to make his life hell, like the one I had spent in those months by his side.
"A proposal?! About what?" Alexey suddenly frowned.
"Of marriage", I exclaimed, unable to believe my own words. How had I come to think of such a thing? Was I going crazy or was the closeness of that man making me want things I had never wanted in my entire life?
"What?!"
"Yes, I do, Aleksej. I'll marry you", I continued, fully savoring the disappointment that appeared on his face, before bursting out laughing.
In response, he chased me away. "Get out. I'm busy."
"Me too. I have a wedding to prepare", I chuckled.
Aleksej grumbled something in Russian that I could hardly interpret. He had just said that he would only marry me when he was dead.
"Aleksej, honey, you know I don't understand Russian. Speak my language, please."
"I told you to leave. I am waiting for a person and I want to be alone with him. We need to discuss business."
His serious tone and his determined gaze immediately made me realize that the guest he was waiting for was very important.
I really needed to know who he was, so I decided to stall and I tried to kiss him to buy time, but he pushed me away again.
"Don't make me use bad manners, Danielle."
"Okay, you've won", I sighed in surrender. When I got to the door, all I heard was Aleksej answer the phone and tell the guards to let the guest in. He spoke in Russian, but I understood every word perfectly and I knew that if I wanted to catch that person, I would have to find an excuse to go downstairs through the hallway and main staircase.
Slowly I made my way to the door and went out.
Instead of returning to the room I had been assigned, I continued down the central corridor which opened onto an imposing staircase that forked symmetrically in two opposite directions, both towards the ground floor lounge.
With great satisfaction, I saw Aleksej's guest come up.
He wore sunglasses that obscured his face, but there was something familiar about him.
I stalled further, waiting for him at the top of the stairs to pass him by.
He sent me a quick glance that did not escape me, but went on pretending nothing happened.
I wanted to approach him and talk to him, but I knew that my attitude would be too suspicious and I couldn't play that occasion with the very man with whom Aleksej smuggled diamonds or exchanged them for something else.
I've been waiting for that moment for eight months.
I even went as far as going to bed with that Russian only to enter his private home, where I knew his most interesting and profitable encounters were taking place.
And now my chance had come!
The man passed me and I feigned indifference, but just as I was about to go down the stairs, I inhaled his aftershave.
It was a very peculiar and expensive perfume.
I only knew one man who used it.
A man with whom I had been in a relationship that lasted almost a year, but made up only of sporadic and quick sexual encounters and short chats, almost always centered on work or our dreams of glory.
It had been almost a year since I last saw him, but now, in a moment, my mind outlined the profile of my ex.
Blond hair, blue eyes, square jaw, hook nose, average height and weight ...
"Ryan!" I stifled a gasp.
Suddenly I turned around in shock.
He too had turned to me and took off his glasses.
He had longer hair and an unkempt beard, but it was him.
How was it possible?
I thought back to that year together and the problems I had had ...
I remembered all the times I'd confided to him my suspicions that someone close to me was cheating on me.
"How could you do this to me?" I understood instantly. He was the person who had hindered my projects from the very beginning.
Only then did I realize how much he had used me and how he had tried to compromise my plans.
Instinctively I looked for my Beretta hidden in the pocket of my skirt, but too late I realized I had left it in my room when Alexey had called me.
Ryan did the same and suddenly I found the barrel of his gun pointed at me.
"Kendra, don't take this personally, but here only one of us can get out alive".
"It doesn't have to end like this" I tried to convince him, starting down the stairs slowly, without turning my back on Ryan.
By now it was clear that he would soon betray me with Aleksej and at that point there would be no way out for me. I had to get out of that villa and quickly!
Also, the anger at the humiliation I suffered only made me want to take my cell phone in my pocket and call my contacts immediately to warn them not to trust Ryan.
"What the hell is going on?" Aleksej's voice thundered, attracting Ryan's attention.
I had too much experience not to understand that I was burned, so I did the only thing I could still do. I picked up my cell phone and quickly wrote a message, explaining what had happened.
"Put that phone away!" Ryan yelled at me out of his mind, as soon as he noticed it, blocking me just before sending the message.
I saw Aleksej stopping Ryan with a wave of his hand and come towards me.
His gaze seemed like a thin sheet of black ice that would soon break, exploding into a thousand shards ready to hit anyone near him.
After eight months in close contact, I knew him enough to know that he wouldn't hesitate to make me pay every single second alongside him, exploited only for my own purposes.
Forgiveness was the only thing he would never have granted me.
I had no doubts about this.
He would have done anything to destroy me. But only after making me confess how far I had come to do the same with him in those months.
"Give me your cell phone" he hissed in a low voice a step away from me, holding out his hand.
I took a quick glance at the display, regretting the old cell phones that used keys, easy to recognize by touch, instead of sight.
I just had to hit the Enter key with my thumb.
I was about to press it when I saw Aleksej's swift hand reach me.
I barely had time to move my arm to avoid it, but at the same time a gunshot echoed throughout the villa.
I didn't even notice the bullet directed at me, until a sharp pain in my chest cut my breath and pushed me backwards, making me lose my balance.
The heels of my shoes lost their support and, before I could cling to Aleksej's arm, which was stretched towards me, I fell into the void.
I barely felt the touch of Aleksej's fingers before starting the descent towards my end.
The last thing I remembered was his name which I weakly pronounced as a desperate and absurd request for help and then ... the pain.
Only the pain had the power to make me feel still alive, despite the bullet lodged a few centimeters from the breastbone and the repeated blows on the steps of the staircase, on which I rolled violently to the bottom.
And finally, there was only darkness.
CHAPTER 2
ALEKSEJ
Almost forty-eight hours had passed since that delirium that was unleashed in my house.
Hours that I had spent getting angry with myself for not having noticed the deceptions of Danielle Stenton, indeed no, of Kendra Palmer.
How could I have been so stupid?
How could I have failed to notice her true nature?
Yet I had some suspicions!
Was it possible that the beauty of that woman had managed to dazzle me to the point of completely losing my mind, so much so that I became stupid and blind?
Just me who had always boasted of having a sixth sense for scammers and liars.
My God, I could not believe that I had had such a person next to me for eight very long months without noticing anything.
The truth was that I had been too busy wanting to take her to bed and to subdue her rebellious and arrogant temper!
I had been so blinded by her desire and her elusive but provocative way of being close to me that I lost my mind.
I knew that closeness could be dangerous, but it had always been so exciting that it made me hold onto her.
I kept telling myself that I was an idiot, because I had always understood that there was something underhanded about Kendra.
