Dirty Damage: Chapter 42

OLEG: Meet me at the boatyard. I want to get away with you.

We’ve been back from Sardinia for a few weeks, but the vacation haze has lingered. The way we’ve been falling into bed together every night, rarely coming up for air, it’s hard to feel like we’ve come back at all.

Now, he wants to leave again?

OLEG: Plan on staying on the ocean for a couple nights. Pack accordingly.

I want to believe we’re getting close. I want these past weeks to mean something.

Of course, if they did, Oleg would tear up our contract and set it on fire.

He’s been clear about what this “relationship” is: It’s business.

Which is why I send him a picture of the positive ovulation test I took this morning.

SUTTON: This is going to be a work trip for you. Just saying.

I’m softening the blow of my own disappointment, setting boundaries before he can slash through my fantasies.

But my heart still does a flutter when I see him texting back.

OLEG: I’d send you a dick pic to show how ready I am, but that would be crude.

I laugh and jump up to pack a bag. As I stuff a swimsuit and enough lace nighties for him to shred through one at every meal and still have some left over, I can’t stop from wondering if this is what it’s like for Sydney.

When Paul called Sydney up and apologized for sending her away—when he requested Drew bring her to meet him in London—was she giddy?

She sounded giddy. I’ve spoken to her every day on the phone since that call in Sardinia. We tiptoed around the abusive boyfriend of it all until the day she told me Paul was taking her shopping in London.

“He said he’s sorry, Sut. He meant it this time, I could tell.” She was lying to herself and to me, and we both knew it.

But there wasn’t anything I could say.

I’m not like that, though.

Oleg isn’t like that.

This may not be a real relationship, but he isn’t cruel. He doesn’t hurt me. As far as the Palmer women’s luck goes, that’s just about as good as it gets.

The yacht rocks gently under my feet as I walk towards where Oleg stands at the helm.

Salt air whips my hair around my face, carrying with it the briny scent of the harbor. Behind us, the city stretches like a glittering pearl necklace along the coast.

Oleg’s hands grip the wheel too tightly, his knuckles white with tension.

But when he turns to look at me, his golden eyes are dark with hunger.

“Come here,” he growls.

Just like when he asked me to come to Sardinia, when he’s taken me to bed every night the past few weeks, when he texted me an hour ago—I can’t resist.

Because that’s what Oleg does to me. He pulls me in even when every survival instinct screams for me to run. He makes me want to believe in fate.

In the possibility that sometimes, broken things can fit together to make something whole.

His mouth latches onto mine before we’ve cleared the breakwater, desperate and demanding. My back hits the sleek console, and somewhere in the back of my mind, I register the bite of chrome against my spine, the whir of the autopilot engaging.

But most of my attention is focused on the way Oleg’s hands shake as they push my sundress up over my hips.

There’s an edge to his touch today, a rawness I haven’t felt since those first desperate encounters.

He’s not just hungry.

He’s starving.

I should slow us down. Should ask about the shadows in his eyes, the tension thrumming through his powerful body.

But then his fingers find me, and all coherent thoughts dissolve.

“Already wet for me,” he growls against my throat. His teeth scrape my pulse point. “Such a good girl.”

I don’t think “good girls” let Russian billionaires bend them over their bow in full view of several yachts close enough to see everything.

But if that’s what he calls good, then I want to be good for him.

He enters me in one brutal thrust, and I cry out, my nails scrabbling for purchase on the polished teak decking.

Anyone could see us. I should be mortified, but it just makes me wilder.

I push myself back against him, taking him deeper, smiling as he groans. “That’s it. Take what you need, princess.”

I ride him in deep, even strokes until my legs begin to shake. My orgasm is building so fast.

Too fast. He grips my hips and drives into me. Instantly, the pleasure crests.

I cry out a second before Oleg follows me over the edge. His body shudders against mine.

For a moment, we stay locked together, panting. The yacht’s engine thrums beneath us, as steady and powerful as my own heartbeat.

I’m still recovering when Oleg grabs my wrist and pulls me towards the stern.

“Where are we going?” I ask as he pushes me against the railing.

“I’m not done with you yet.”

There’s something frantic in his words. Like he’s running from something by burying himself inside of me.

I know the strategy well.

I lean against the railing on shaky legs, watching the way his shoulders bunch with tension under his fitted shirt. The polished deck is warm beneath my bare feet, and the wind whips harder here.

He bends me over the railing without ceremony. The metal is sun-warmed against my palms, and far below, turquoise water churns in our wake. We’re fully out of the harbor now, nothing but ocean ahead.

This time, when he takes me, it’s slower, but no less intense. His chest presses against my back, one arm banded around my waist while the other grips the railing beside mine. He’s caging me in, protecting me from the pitch and roll of the waves.

“Look how far we are from shore.” He grips my chin, forcing me to look back over our shoulders as he drives into me. “No one to hear you scream. No one to save you.”

I wonder if he’s trying to scare me, but then I see the haunted look in his eyes. It’s like he’s somewhere else, on another boat, another day, another ocean.

The dying sunlight turns his scars gold, and I remember where he got them.

The water has always been his escape, but it also took everything from him.

That’s how most love goes, in my experience. In Oleg’s, too.

The things you hold close can hurt you the most.

Which is why I’m determined to prove him wrong.

His arm tightens around my waist as we rock together, using my body as an anchor against whatever he’s wading through.

“I’m with you,” I whisper, reaching back to tangle my fingers in his hair. “I’m here.”

He stiffens for a moment, his rhythm faltering. Then he growls and snaps his hips harder, as if trying to drive the tenderness from my voice with the force of his thrusts.

This orgasm builds slower than the first, but it’s deep, rocking me to my very core. When it takes me, I scream into the wind. Oleg buries his own sound in my shoulder, his breath warm against my skin.

We slide to the deck together. The wood is smooth against my back as I stare up at the cloudless sky.

Beside me, Oleg’s breathing is ragged.

“Five minutes,” he says roughly. “Then we go again.”

I turn my head to look at him, noting the way his jaw clenches, the tight line of his shoulders. “Are we going for some kind of record?”

“You’re ovulating, aren’t you?” he barks. “We should make the most of it.”

Right. Business. This is still business.

But I can’t quite convince myself of that now. Oleg didn’t bring me here because of a contract.

Something else is happening.

“And we have,” I say softly, watching his profile tighten. “But getting pregnant takes time. We already talked about this. For some couples, it can take months or⁠—”

“Years?” He tears away from me, surging to his feet. “No. I don’t have fucking years.”

The sudden violence of his movement makes me flinch, old instincts kicking in. I pull my dress around myself like armor as he paces the deck.

The silence looms between us, broken only by the slap of waves against the hull and the distant cry of seabirds.

I wait, hoping he’ll explain what’s really bothering him, but he just keeps pacing, each turn bringing him closer to the edge of something I can’t quite see.

Finally, I pull myself up, gripping the railing for support. The metal is still warm from where we just⁠—

But I push that thought away. Right now, I need to focus.

“Do you want to tell me what’s really going on?”

“Nothing’s going on.”

“Right. Because this little boat trip of yours has no ulterior motive other than the pleasure of my company.”

He stops pacing and stops a few feet away from me, his eyes flashing. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“It means that the ocean is your safe place. You come here when you need to think, when you need space. So if we’re spending days out here, something’s wrong.”

He stops pacing to glare at me, a vein pulsing in his forehead. “Maybe I just wanted a good fuck.”

I flinch but refuse to back down. “Well you got one. Two, actually.”

“Third time’s the charm,” he grits out.

“Or we could try something revolutionary. It’s called talking about what’s actually bothering you.”

“I don’t need to talk about anything. And I certainly don’t need you to take care of me.”

I straighten my spine, refusing to let him see how much it hurts. “Right, because you’re the big, bad Beast, aren’t you? Too strong to need anyone?”

“That’s right,” he snarls, baring his teeth.

“If that were true, I wouldn’t be here in the first place.”

His nostrils flare, and for a moment, I think he might actually throw me overboard. The yacht rocks beneath us, and I grab the railing tighter.

“You’re only here because you can cook and my chef is out for the week,” he spits. “The fact that you can fuck, too, is just a bonus.”

I’ve heard worse—from foster parents, from my own father.

But this cuts deeper.

Because it’s Oleg.

Because I thought, for a stupid, naive second, that he was different.

Because, despite everything, I’m starting to love him.

My hands shake, but my voice is steady when I say, “You think I don’t see what you’re doing? You think I’m so stupid I can’t see right through you?” I step forward, jabbing my finger into his chest. He’s a wall of muscle, immovable as granite, but I don’t care. “You want to push me away, so you say evil shit to hurt me. But newsflash, Oleg: I’ve been hurt before. That won’t stop me from being there for the people I care about.”

Something flares in his eyes.

As if me caring about him is the most terrifying thing of all.

I take a step towards him. “Oleg, you can… If you want to, you can talk to me.”

For a moment, the mask slips. I see the lost boy beneath the Beast, the one who couldn’t save his sister, who thinks he doesn’t deserve to be saved himself.

Then his face hardens, and he spins away, storming below deck.

What was I thinking?

This is Oleg fucking Pavlov.

He’ll break before he bends.

And I’m starting to worry I’ll break way before he does.