Page 42

She hums around me in answer, and the vibration nearly finishes me. When the pressure at the base of my spine starts to pull too tight, I tighten my fingers in her hair and ease her off before I come.

She looks up at me, lips wet and shiny, breathing hard, eyes dark with the same need I feel.

“We’re not done,” I say. “Not here.”

I stand and help her up, pulling her dress back into place only enough that we can walk through the house. My hand stays at the small of her back as I lead her out of the library and down the quiet hallway toward the east wing. Neither of us speaks much on the way. The air between us is already too charged for small talk.

I punch the code into the panel and push the door open. The warm light is waiting for us. Dark wood shelves. The padded bench angled toward the mirror. The rope on its hook. The implements arranged with the same deliberate order as always. I lock the door behind us and turn to her.

“Everything in this room is yours tonight,” I tell her. “But I get to decide how we use it.”

She nods, already reaching for me again. I catch her wrists and walk her backward until the backs of her thighs hit the edge of the bench. I undress her the rest of the way without hurry, then do the same with my own clothes. When we are both bare, I take the length of rope from its hook and bind her wrists loosely in front of her, tight enough that she feels the restraint but not enough to hurt.

“On the bench,” I say. “Facing the mirror.”

She obeys. I position her so she has no choice but to watch herself, then take the light flogger from the shelf. I start slow, letting the soft falls kiss the insides of her thighs, the curve of her ass, the sensitive skin just below her breasts. Each strike is measured, warming her skin rather than marking it hard. She gasps and then moans, the sounds growing richer with every pass.

“You look so fucking beautiful like this,” I tell her, watching her reflection. “Tied up, wet, waiting for me. I could keep you here for hours.”

When her skin is flushed and she is shifting restlessly on the bench, I set the flogger aside. I step between her thighs, grip her hips, and push into her in one deep, controlled stroke. The tight heat of her draws a low groan from my throat. I give her a moment to feel it, then start to move in a steady, powerful rhythm, deeper and harder than I was with her on the couch.

“Watch,” I order, nodding toward the mirror. “Watch how well you take me.”

She does. Her bound hands rest against my chest as I drive into her. The wet sound of our bodies fills the room along with her open moans and the rougher ones I can’t hold back. I keep one hand on her hip and the other at her throat, not squeezing, just holding, the same possessive weight she has always leaned into.

“Harder,” she demands, voice breaking. “Please, Artem, harder.”

I give it to her, the pace turning almost relentless while still completely under my control. I can feel her starting to tighten around me again. I angle deeper and keep the pressure steady on her throat.

“Come on my cock,” I tell her. “I want to feel it. Give it to me.”

She does, with a sharp cry that echoes off the walls, body clenching hard around me in long pulses. I work her through it, never slowing, until the last tremor leaves her. Only then do I let myself follow, driving deep one final time and coming with a low, rough sound against her neck, still holding her bound wrists between us.

I stay inside her for a long moment afterward, both of us breathing hard. When I finally ease out, I untie her wrists carefully and check the skin, then pull her against my chest right there on the bench. The rope drops to the floor. The flogger lies where I left it. The mirror shows us tangled and spent in the low light.

I stroke her hair and press a slower kiss to her temple.

Afterward, she falls asleep against my chest faster than usual, worn out from a day that asked more of her than most days do, her breathing already slowing into something steady and even against me. I stay awake long after her breathing evens out, staring at the ceiling, turning over everything the night confirmed that has nothing to do with the physical closeness itself.

Whatever I was willing to do to protect her before tonight, it isn’t enough anymore. Not after choosing her this openly, this completely, with nothing held back on either side of it at all. I lie there with her weight settled against me and let a colder resolve settle into place alongside the warmth still lingering from everything that happened in this bed tonight.

Viktor Sokolov wants a war he thinks he can win by taking something soft from me first. He doesn’t understand yet what he’s actually threatening, doesn’t understand that softness and resolve aren’t opposites in a man like me, that choosing to love someone this fully only sharpens exactly how far I’m willing to go to keep her.

He’s spent years testing boundaries because he assumes attachment makes a man weaker, easier to break through. He’s about to learn otherwise, the same way his father eventually learned it too, in a war that outlasted him.

28

HARPER

My green dress doesn’t sit right anymore, and it takes me a full minute standing in front of the mirror to figure out why. I’ve worn it a dozen times since I got here, a soft cotton thing I found in a closet full of clothes someone got for me when I first arrived here.

It’s not tight exactly. Just different, a slight curve pushing against fabric that used to hang straight from my hips, a softness low in my belly that wasn’t there a month ago. I turn sideways, studying the shape of it, my hand coming up to rest against the curve almost without my permission, fingers spreading over a shape that’s still new enough to surprise me every time I notice it fresh, a stranger’s outline slowly becoming familiar.

It’s been sixteen weeks. I’ve been tracking it the same way I used to track the days on my closet door, except now I’ve asked Yuri to look something up for me the last few times he’s brought my phone by: some pregnancy app with weekly size comparisons—and he reads it out to me like he’s mildly embarrassed to be doing it.

An avocado this week, apparently, which feels like an absurd unit of measurement for something this significant.

I’ve started reading the weekly updates out loud sometimes, just to hear the words in my own voice, testing how real they sound coming out of my mouth instead of just sitting silent in my head. Fingernails forming. A heartbeat I still can’t quite picture as real, even knowing it’s happening right now, somewhere beneath my own.