Fortune (6 page)

“Are you okay?” he breathed against her ear.

“No,” she gasped. “No, no…no…”

No, she was shocked. She was annihilated.

She was not okay at all.

Okay, so maybe he’d come on a little strong, Ryan thought to himself as he held her. Maybe he’d gone a little further than he’d originally intended. But god, she’d really needed a spanking. She’d looked up at him with that lost, pleading look, the look subs got when they were out of control, when they needed tending. He had tended her all right. And after that, well, she’d really needed to be fucked.

“Are you okay?” he asked her again a moment later while he did up his jeans. She turned and looked at him as if to say
are you nuts?
He tried to kiss her but she turned her head away.

“No.”

“Why not?”

He ran his hand up her thigh, pulling her panties back up, smoothing her skirt down over her ass, caressing those gorgeous scarlet globes one last time. She was still trembling and her legs were shaky. He cupped her face in his hands, trying to catch her gaze.

“Look at me.”

“No,” she moaned.

“I don’t like to be told no. What’s wrong?”

“What’s wrong? What do you think is wrong? How can you ask me that?”

“Kat, I think something is very right between us. I don’t think anything’s wrong at all.” He finally got her to look up at him, only to find the walls in place again.

“I have to go,” she said, pushing at him. “You really have to let me go now. Right now.”

Poor little girl. He knew he’d freaked her out and he understood the agitation she felt. He knew he needed to give her space and time to think about things. Hell, he needed to do some thinking himself, but he had made one decision for sure. Ekaterina Argounov was worth the trouble after all.

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll let you go, but I’m walking you to the door. You’re leaving here alone tonight.”

She fussed with her skirt, checking herself all over as if someone might be able to tell from something besides her shell-shocked expression what had just gone on. He leaned to kiss her again before he unlocked the door.

She looked up at him. “No—”

He muffled her refusal by pressing a soft kiss to her lips.

“Don’t,” she warned him.

He held his tongue. He had and he would and he was going to again. Not right now. He wouldn’t push it now while she was freaked-out and skittish. She had every reason in the world to be scared. For fuck’s sake, he was scared too. He had planned to bring her back here, give her a good talking-to in private and send her out of his life for good. He wasn’t sure when those plans changed, but they had changed drastically and irrevocably. She was going to be his. His mind was made up.

He led her through the nightclub to the door, his hand still wrapped around her elbow.

“Let go of me,” she said, looking around them.

“Nobody knows, you know.”

“I don’t care.”

At the door, out in the cool night air, he kissed her again, but she shied away so his lips pressed beneath her earlobe.

“I’m going to call you tomorrow.”

“I won’t be home,” she said, taking off down the street.

“I bet you will,” he replied to her retreating back. God, that beautiful ass. It was going to haunt him until he had it in his hands again. Her reactions to him had been amazing. She had responded to his touch like a finely tuned instrument. Behind her walls, beneath her reserve, she was vibrating with passion. More importantly, she took to submission like a natural. He couldn’t wait to Dom her again, really train her up to the good stuff.

She didn’t make it easy for him, though, just as he’d suspected. She didn’t answer any of his nightly calls to the Argounov household the following week and she didn’t return to the club. No matter—he had a secret weapon. He dialed the Argounov number, this time during the day while Kat was at work. “Hullo?” came the strident voice he remembered.

“Mrs. Argounov,” he said in his most polite, eligible-bachelor tone, “this is Ryan McCarthy, Kat’s friend from the hospital. I’m so sorry I haven’t called before now. I’d love to come to that dinner you offered and meet Kat’s father. How is Kat, anyway?”

He could hear the excitement in her voice when she replied, “Oh, Dr. Ryan McCarthy! Katya is doing just fine. How wonderful you call here. You come see her and have dinner with us. This is great!”

“I’d love to surprise her. Just show up to dinner, you know? Kind of blow her mind?”

“Okay, yes.” Her mother chuckled conspiratorially. “Blow the mind. Yes, that is a good idea. You come tomorrow night and Katyusha, she will be surprised.”

Ryan thought surprised might be an understatement. But he was a goal-driven person and now he had a goal. He sat down and absently started folding cranes, lost in thoughts of thick dark curls, deep green eyes and Kat’s skin against his cheek.

* * * * *

Nope. Surprised wasn’t the best word for what Kat seemed to be feeling when he showed up at the Argounov home the next night. Elena pulled him in, enveloping him in a smothering hug. Over Elena’s shoulder, Kat pinned him with a murderous glare.

“Ekaterina,” Elena snapped. “Come and greet your visitor. Look! Look who has come.”

“I see him,” Kat said.

“Well, come give a hug to him. This man who help you when you banged your head very bad. He helped you.”

Helped her
, thought Ryan.
And spanked her and fucked her silly in a storage closet last week.

“Come, come greet him,” Elena crowed, pushing Ryan toward her. “She is looking well, no, Ryan?” She said it like Ry-
ann
. “Completely her old self.”

He gave Kat a huge smile. “Ekaterina. You do look great. Really, completely wonderful.” He hugged her, holding her close and whispered in her ear, “Don’t grind your teeth.”

“You’re kidding me, right?” she whispered back. “You’re here for dinner? Very nice.”

“Yes, it was very nice of your mother to invite me. It was terribly rude of me to wait so long.”

“Katya, go,” interrupted Elena. “Go in the kitchen and help your sisters. I introduce Dr. Ryan McCarthy to your father. He has wanted to meet Dr. Ryan and say thank you.”

“Yes, we know he’s a doctor already, Mama,” Kat muttered before turning on her heel to obey. She disappeared into the back of the home, her family’s wonderful home that was crowded, cluttered and absolutely resonant with life. Ryan waded through playing children and toys to where Kat’s father sat in the TV room off the living room.

“Dmitri! Dmitri!” Elena said briskly.

The thin, gray-haired man looked up at Ryan with a confused gaze as Elena rousted him from his easy chair.

“Here is the man, this one, Dr. Ryan McCarthy. He is the one who has saved your daughter’s life.”

“Well,” Ryan said, “I just tried to stop the bleeding and got her to the hospital. I wouldn’t exactly say I saved her life—”

“Oh, I do thank you,” Kat’s father interrupted, clasping him in a smothering embrace. For an older, somewhat delicate-looking man, his grip was surprisingly strong. “You have saved my princess. I owe you my life. My many thanks are yours,” he said, backing away with some effusive bows. His English was flawless and unaccented, if somewhat clipped.

“It was my pleasure to come to her assistance,” Ryan replied, perhaps a little formally. The whole event here, his royal reception, left him feeling like nothing less than a prince. He was seated later, of course, at the head of the table in a place of honor with Kat at his right side. Too bad the princess hated his guts.

Kat was silent throughout the meal, one of the most delicious meals Ryan had ever had the pleasure of eating. Her sisters cooed over their children and listened while Elena grilled him on every aspect of his life and Dmitri nodded from the other end of the table. But Kat just sat beside him in silence, stewing and blushing alternately, which charmed him no end. After dinner Elena insisted on reading his fortune, and he was happy to play along. With the whole family looking on, she prophesied a long life and much happiness for him, including many children with the love of his life whose description sounded suspiciously similar to her daughter.

All of this seemed to pain Kat terribly. He could have said,
oh, it’s getting late, I’d better go
, but he didn’t. It was too fun watching her squirm. And he needed to find some time alone with her before he left because they needed to talk. She disappeared into the kitchen for as long as she was able, but eventually she escaped upstairs. He caught her coming out of the bathroom. She gasped as he took her in his arms.

“Your family is wonderful, do you know that?” he said against her cheek.

She gave a humorless laugh, the smile not quite touching her face. “Is that what you really think?”

“They are. Warm, wonderful. You don’t understand how lucky you are.”

She pulled away from him. “Why are you here?”

“Where is your bedroom?”

“No boys are allowed upstairs.”

“This won’t take long. Your bedroom,” he repeated.

“I share a bedroom.”

“I don’t care. Where is it?”

She led him down the hall with a sigh, into a tiny room with a twin bed on one wall and bunk beds on the other. He locked the door.

Her halfhearted
no
was silenced by his kiss. He touched her breasts and caressed her ass, enjoying the feel of her again after craving her so badly. His hands were all over her. He couldn’t touch her enough.

“No, no…” she sighed, shaking her head against his neck.

“Yes.”

He started undoing his pants. He was going to fuck her. He wished he had time for more, to have her suck him, to bury his face between her legs, but she shared this bedroom, obviously, and her parents were downstairs. He rolled on a condom from his pocket and hiked up her skirt.

“No,” she moaned, even as she locked her legs around his waist and arched against him.

“I don’t think that word means what you think it means,” he said, lowering her onto his cock. He pulled her arms up around his shoulders and then cradled her ass in his hands, squeezing it, kneading it, thrusting in her hard. His hand snaked under her shirt to pinch her nipples through the sheer lacy material of her bra. Soon enough, predictably, her sighs of “no” turned to pleas for satisfaction.
Please, Ryan, please. Please, please, now!

“Look at me,” he ordered when she was getting close. She ignored him, her legs gripping him even tighter. “Look at me, Kat,” he insisted, nuzzling her face up to his. “Come for me. I’ll hold you, Kat. Come for me now. I won’t let you go.” He held her, feeling her tense and shudder and watched the climax seize her. The erotic jerking of her body triggered his own orgasm. He came hard, pulsing explosive pleasure, joining her in her release. Fortunately he had the presence of mind to clamp his palm over her mouth to muffle her cries.

She struggled to get away as soon as she came back to her senses and he let her go with a sigh. She pulled at her skirt, rearranging herself with sharp, jerky tugs.

“You need to stop doing that,” she hissed at him.

“I can’t.”

“Yes, you can. You just don’t want to.”

“I wouldn’t have done this, come here to your house, if you hadn’t run away from me. Why didn’t you come to the club last night?”

“You said if I came to that club I couldn’t act like a whore.” She flipped her hair back, challenging him. “And I love to act like a whore, so I went somewhere else.”

“Kat,” he warned. “Watch the way you speak to me.”

“Why? Are you going to spank me again?”

“I might. You’d like it if I did.”

“No, I wouldn’t.”

“Yes, you would. You need it, I think.”

She rolled her eyes, turning away from him. “We need to go downstairs. She’ll come after us.”

He knew she meant Elena, and he was fairly sure she wouldn’t, but he followed Kat as she tore down the stairs. She took shelter in the kitchen again, only to have Elena yell for her to bring coffee and cake to her guest.

“He’s not my guest, he’s your guest,” she muttered under her breath. She offered coffee and Russian teacakes on a tray that he had a feeling she would rather have flung in his face. He took pity on her then and made his excuses. He’d accomplished what he’d come to do. She knew now that she wanted him every bit as much as he wanted her, and that avoiding him was pointless. He said his goodbyes, finding himself showered again with hugs and kisses from Elena and Dmitri. He shook the hands of all the husbands and the many sisters he still couldn’t tell apart and even fielded a few messy kisses from children of all sizes.

“You will come back again soon, yes?” asked Elena.

“Yes,” he said. “I can’t wait to come back again. I had a wonderful time.”

“Ekaterina,” Elena said, “you walk Ryan to the door and say good night.”

“Yes, Mama,” she answered through gritted teeth.

At the door Ryan kissed her again, even though he knew she hated it.