Chapter 10: Bibliophile's Claim
The silence in the car was thicker than the library’s dust. Jennie stared out the window at the blurred streetlights, her sketchbook clutched too tightly on her lap. The imprint of Leonid’s chest still burned on her palm. She could still feel the vibration of that low growl in her bones.
Rosé had mumbled an excuse and fled almost immediately after the lights came back on, her torn sleeve fluttering like a white flag of surrender. Jennie hadn’t even tried to stop her.
Leonid drove with a focused stillness, one hand on the wheel, the other resting on the gear shift. He hadn’t spoken a word. The car, a silent black sedan that smelled faintly of his cigarettes and leather, carried them through the neon-drenched city toward the manicured hills where the mansion stood.
“Why did you make that sound?” The question left Jennie’s lips before she could stop it, small and brittle in the quiet cabin.
His eyes remained on the road. “What sound?”
“That… noise. In the dark. You growled.”
A muscle ticked in his jaw. “You were crowding me. Both of you.”
“Rosie was just startled.”
“Was she?” His tone was flat, leaving no room for argument. He turned the car onto the long, private driveway, the wrought-iron gates swinging open silently.
The mansion was a monolith of glass and steel, mostly dark. Her parents were at a gallery opening, a fact Leonid was always meticulously aware of. He parked in the grand portico, the engine cutting off, leaving a vacuum of sound.
“Get inside,” he said, not looking at her as he opened his door.
She followed, her heels clicking on the marble floor of the vast, echoing foyer. The housekeeper had left a single lamp on, casting long shadows up the minimalist staircase. The usual sanctuary felt cold, alien.
Leonid walked to the sideboard and poured two fingers of amber liquid into a crystal tumbler. He didn’t offer her one. He drank it in one slow, deliberate swallow, his throat working. Then he turned, leaning back against the sideboard, finally pinning her with his dark gaze.
“You use people,” he stated, his voice calm and terrible in its clarity. “You use Rosé for companionship when you’re bored. You use your parents for money. You use me for everything else.”
Jennie flinched as if slapped. “That’s not—”
“It is true.” He pushed off the sideboard and took a step toward her. “You walked into that library dressed like a fucking fantasy. You leaned over that table, breathing your perfume all over me. You pressed against me in the dark. You are not a child, Jennie. You know what you do.”
Tears of outrage and shame sprang to her eyes. “I didn’t mean to! I was just scared of the dark!”
“Liar.” He was in front of her now, close enough for her to see the flecks of darker grey in his irises, close enough to feel the heat coming off his body. “You are never scared with me. You have never been scared with me, not once in nineteen years. You were excited.”
She tried to step back, but her heels hit the bottom step of the staircase. Trapped. His scent, smoke and something uniquely him, flooded her senses.
“You want to know what that sound was?” he murmured, his voice dropping to a low, rough register that vibrated straight through her core. “It was the sound of a leash straining. Of a man who has spent too long watching a spoiled little kitten play with matches, finally feeling the burn.”
His hand came up, not to strike her, but to cradle her jaw. His thumb swept over her bottom lip, a shockingly gentle gesture that contradicted everything in his eyes. “You have no idea what you’re playing with.”
A desperate, confused heat pooled low in her stomach. Her earlier fright was gone, melted into something else, something liquid and dangerous. “Leonid…” His name was a whisper, a plea for something she couldn’t name.
He made that sound again, softer this time, a rumble deep in his chest. Then his mouth was on hers.
It wasn’t a kiss of tenderness. It was a claiming. Hard, demanding, punishing in its intensity. His tongue invaded her mouth, tasting of whisky and a dark, feral promise. She whimpered, her hands flying up to push against his chest, but the strength was gone from her limbs. Her fingers curled into his shirt, holding on as the world tilted.
He broke the kiss as suddenly as he’d started it, leaving her gasping. His eyes were black, pupils swallowing the grey. “Count the shelves, котёнок,” he growled, the Russian endearment a sharp, sensual blade.
Before she could process the words, he spun her around to face the staircase. Her front pressed against the cool, polished wood of the banister. One of his hands clamped on the nape of her neck, not hurting, but holding her firmly in place. The other hand slid down her back, over the curve of her ass, and gripped the hem of her tiny skirt.
He yanked it up, bunching the fabric around her waist. The cold air of the foyer hit the backs of her thighs.
“What are you—” Her voice was a thin, high thread of panic and arousal.
His answer was the sound of tearing fabric. His fingers hooked into the lace of her panties and pulled, the delicate material shredding with a sharp rrriip. The ruined silk slipped down her thighs and pooled at her ankles. She was exposed, utterly, to the empty, dim foyer.
She heard the rustle of his clothes, the quiet clink of his belt. Then she felt it—the blunt, insistent pressure of him, not through fabric this time, but skin against skin. The thick, heavy head of his cock pressed against her entrance. He was enormous, a reality she’d never let herself fully conceptualize, and the feel of him there, rock-hard and demanding, stole the breath from her lungs.
“Count,” he ordered again, his voice ragged at her ear.
She gripped the banister, her knuckles white. “W-what?”
“The shelves. In the library. Count them out loud.”
It was a madness. A distraction. A way to separate her mind from what her body was about to experience. She squeezed her eyes shut. “O-one…”
He didn’t wait. He pushed into her with one brutal, deep thrust.
A sharp cry tore from her throat, swallowed by the vast space. He filled her, stretched her, a blinding, impossible fullness that bordered on pain. She had never taken anything like him; she hadn’t known a body could accommodate so much.
“Two,” he prompted, his voice taut with strain.
Tears leaked from her closed eyes. “T-two…”
He began to move. Not a rhythm, but a punishment. Deep, withdrawing shoves that rubbed every inch of his length against her inner walls, followed by ruthless plunges back to the hilt. The sound was obscene—the wet, slick slap of their bodies meeting, his low grunts, her choked, helpless gasps.
“Three.”
“Three,” she sobbed, the word breaking as he angled his hips and drove into a spot that sent a lightning bolt of pure, shocking pleasure through the overwhelming stretch. A coil tightened deep in her belly.
His hand left her neck, sliding around to grip her hip, fingers digging into her flesh. The other hand stayed planted on the banister beside her head, taking his weight. The pace intensified, becoming a fierce, driving piston. She could feel every thick vein, every pulse of him inside her.
“Four.” His breath was hot and harsh against her ear.
“F-four!” She was beyond shame, beyond thought. The initial burn had melted into a raw, building friction that stole her reason. Her head fell forward, her forehead pressing against the cool wood. Each thrust rocked her whole body forward, her breasts aching against the constraint of her sweater.
He was fucking her now, pure and simple. A raw, carnal act of dominance. The pretense of counting was gone, lost in the animal rhythm. He swore in Russian, low, guttural words that felt filthy and thrilling. “Такой тесный… такая маленькая сучка.” So tight… such a little bitch.
His hand slid from her hip around to her front, his fingers finding her clit. The contact was electric, rough and direct. He rubbed tight, urgent circles against the swollen nub, perfectly timed with his deep, pounding strokes.
The double sensation was too much. It shattered her. A orgasm ripped through her with violent, uncontrollable force, clamping her around him in rhythmic, milking pulses. She screamed, the sound echoing off the marble floors and high ceilings, a raw testament of her undoing.
Feeling her convulse around him broke his control. With a final, gut-deep groan, he slammed into her to the root, his body locking, trembling. She felt the hot, sudden rush of his release filling her, pulse after heavy pulse, a claiming as intimate as the kiss had been.
For a long moment, there was only the sound of their ragged breathing, the distant hum of the house, and the slow, inevitable drip of their joining down her inner thigh.
Slowly, carefully, he withdrew. The loss of him felt profound, leaving her empty and shaking. Her knees buckled, but his arm was instantly around her waist, holding her up. He gently tugged her skirt back down over her bare skin. The ruined panties remained around her ankles.
He turned her to face him. His expression was unreadable again, the savage intensity smoothed back into that familiar, impassive mask. He brushed a tear from her cheek with his thumb.
Without a word, he bent, picked her up in his arms as if she weighed nothing, and carried her up the dark staircase toward her room.