25. Katya
CHAPTER 25
KATYA
I wake up to the worst headache God was ever cruel enough to bestow upon a person. My legs hurt in a way they haven’t in a long time, but it doesn’t end there. Every breath aches and burns, and my raw throat feels like it’s been cleaned out by sandpaper.
What the hell happened?
The bed is far too comfortable, and it takes me a minute or two to realize it’s not the bed, although I think that might be different too. It’s the six-foot-five warm, cut man draped around my back. Fuck, does his skin feel good against mine. Fyodor holds me to him with a delicious possessiveness, and my pussy explodes with lust as it begs him to take me again.
I wiggle my ass against him without realizing I’m giving myself away as being awake, but I’m enjoying the way it feels.
The previous night comes back to me in little bursts, and it takes some time to put it all together, but I think I remember most of what he told me. With all of it, I have a much fuller picture of the man I’m stuck with. I don’t blame him for his past mistakes because he seems to regret them so truly, but at the same time, his amends don’t need to be made with me, but instead his sons. If we’re going to be together in some sense, I can encourage him to do just that.
“Kotyonok, stop rubbing that sweet ass on me. We have a lot to talk about before I give you anything you want.” I’m tired of wrestling with all this, with wanting him. Part of what makes this so delicious is him removing the choice from me, and what better to help with that than a little pointed temptation? Doesn’t he need to fuck me with that thick and delicious cock?
“Didn’t we talk enough last night,” I tease. “Though I admit you did all the talking.”
He’s quiet and stiff as hell for an uncomfortable minute, and my ass stills. I knew he wasn’t that comfortable confiding in anyone, and that’s why he waited until then to tell me, but I didn’t realize he would be so uncomfortable.
“You’re not embarrassed.” I laugh. “If anyone should be embarrassed, it’s?—”
A hand comes up to tighten around my throat. He cuts off my words, but he doesn’t scare me. Not after last night and everything he did to keep me here, everything he told me.
“I thought you were half asleep and wouldn’t remember,” he speaks into my ear, and the words are a little stab to my heart. I don’t think I’ve ever felt less alone than I did last night, and I wanted that to be something he’d chosen to give me, not a miscalculation.
“You’re to forget what I told you.”
His words are in direct disagreement with our position. His hold is safety and possession rather than aggression, and it doesn’t matter that I can barely breathe, and he’s owning me. I’ll never forget a word this man has ever said to me.
His hand flexes, and I sense he’s trying to control his temper. He is embarrassed about what he told me and the imbalance in our dynamic he created when he confided in me, but that’s what I’m here for. I’m his to take everything out on. I want him to force it on me so I never have to feel guilty for asking.
I can’t help it. I grind my ass against his cock, begging him to want me.
“You won’t get an inch of that until we discuss last night, prior to me finding you nearly drowned in a bathtub.”
While I remember what he said to me and the sweet night in his bed, the prior events are still coming together slowly and in cloudy pieces. He’s right that I tried to kill myself. My reasons even make sense still.
Fyodor could never give me more than sex, and without that chance, there wasn’t anything left in the world for me. Now there’s something . It might not be healthy, but the fact he may actually care for me is worth living for, at least for the moment.
Despite all of that, the course of events up until that feels strange. I didn’t feel like myself after Marta came in to give me my meds. While it’s been a long time since I felt like the old Katya, there’s at least a baseline for normal, and I know that wasn’t it.
I think she did something to me.
I let my suspicions wash over me, and I hate to admit it, but I’m not even upset with her. All I can think is how did I manage to fail? How the hell am I so inept I couldn’t manage to kill myself with help?
I’m getting ahead of myself. It wasn’t help, was it? Marta hates me, but it’s not like she left that stuff on purpose. She wouldn’t do something expressly against Fyodor’s wishes like that without some gain. What would be the point? I can’t think of a single piece of motivation that makes sense to me.
But she was especially cruel to me before she left those things on the table, and I didn’t feel the same as I normally do with the painkillers. What the hell did she do to me?
His hand softens enough that I can speak. He grabs my chin, turning my head until black eyes stare into mine. “What were you thinking, Kotyonok? You like to let me take the blame for all your filthy little sins, but how would you have pinned this one on me?”
“I…” I don’t actually know what I can say for myself. How does he read me so well? “I couldn’t have blamed you for that, and I wouldn’t have tried.”
A frisson of relief passes over his features, and I wonder if he’s been thinking he’s to blame for how I’ve been. He should know I want to die by now, and that it has nothing to do with him—well, not much to do with him.
“Then what the hell was going through your head?”
“You knew I wanted to die, and she left the drugs in the room.”
I don’t say that I think she gave me a little too much medicine first, or maybe something I wasn’t supposed to have at all. It sounds too paranoid when I’m so clearly the one who tried to harm myself, not Marta.
“No, she didn’t. How the hell did you get the Dilaudid?” The strangest expression sits on his face. Like he’s asking me a question he knows the answer to. Does he think I’m lying? What suspicions does he have about how last night happened?
“Marta left it when she gave me my meds. She left everything, all the bottles and the syringes.” I’m not blaming her for anything else, even if I find her suspicious, but that part is true. She was responsible for all of that stuff.
“None of that was in your room when I came in, just the syringe on the floor in the bathroom.” The strangest expression crosses his face, and I can’t understand why he would be so sure of her. “How would they have disappeared?”
“I’m not lying,” I tell him, and with his obvious mistrust, I don’t dare tell him what I suspect about her giving me something else too.
He stares at me long and hard with a million accusations loaded, and I’m not sure what I could have possibly done. Did I learn how to break out, find the meds myself, and dispose of them before he came? It seems like an awful lot for someone who hasn’t left the bed. Maybe he’s just mad I remember all the shit he said.
“I’ll discuss that with Marta later, but that’s not really as important as what you did.”
A puff of air leaves my lips, making a popping sound. He’s too upset to be as dismissive as I would like to be, with him already angry about his own secrets and looking so damn intense.
“I don’t really know what to say about that.”
I want to tell him I’m sorry, that I regret it, or that I won’t do it again, but that’s just not true. Well, the last one might be true. That was a pretty sure death. Maybe it wasn’t failure but divine providence. The aching in my chest hasn’t eased, but flirting so hard with the other side seems to have made the whole idea less appealing. Perhaps I’m not as ready to die as I thought I was.
“You cannot die,” he says, and I work very hard to stop myself from laughing when I was already thinking something so similar, but how the hell do I start to live again when I’m just as broken as I was before?
“I will someday,” I disagree, not trying to be maudlin but honest. His love might make me feel like a god if I ever earn it, but it won’t make me immortal.
“Someday, when you’re old and have lived a full life, and not by your own hand, Kotyonok. I don’t know how to make things right for you. I don’t know how to make you happy, but what I do know is that you aren’t leaving my side ever again. Not as long as I live, and if I have to hold you in this world with my bare fucking hands, I’m going to do it.”
“So you’re not planning to leave me in that room forever and throw away the key?” It seems like a fair punishment, a reasonable thing to do with a poorly behaved pet who causes you more trouble than anything else.
“I quite liked having you sleep here in my bed actually.” For emphasis, he pushes his still hard cock into my ass.
“If I leave you in that room and throw away the key, I will forever live in fear that I’ll come back to you dead inside by your own hand.” A large hand runs so softly over my hair, and I’m so close to breaking inside, loving him with everything I am even though he bought me and won’t ever love me back.
“You would care if I died?” The feeling I had in the tub right before I lost consciousness resurfaces. The sense that he would miss me if I were gone, that my absence would mean more to him than the loss of the money he spent on my debts and care. What a wildly romantic thought.
This time, he does push back against me, letting me feel that he’s hard against my ass. “I would miss you so fucking much.” The sexual overtones make my pussy wet, but it hurts my heart too. I was hoping I was growing on him for other reasons. He senses my distress.
“Kotyonok, do not pout.”
“I’m not.”
“Naughty little liar.” He bites the skin on my shoulder. “Tell me what’s wrong.”
I won’t dare admit I hoped he liked me. How fucking humiliating. Or that I thought he wanted me to know him better, so he confided in me. I was wrong. He likes my cunt, and that will have to be enough because he’s good to me, and he makes me feel so damn alive.
“I am only waiting for you to feel well enough to endure the beating you’ve earned, and when you purse those lips like that, it only makes me want to be rougher on you. When you don’t answer me…” His hand returns to my throat.
“I don’t know if punishment is the right course of action.”
“Punishment will be the only course of action if you don’t tell me what’s wrong.”
To save myself the pain, I blurt, “I want you to like me for more than my pussy.”
My words freeze in the air between us.
Of course, Kotyonok, that’s why I call you something small and precious. I care deeply for you.
There are so many variations, longer or shorter, that would make me feel amazing, but he doesn’t say any of them. For a moment, I feel the pain of his admissions last night like another presence standing in the room beside us.
“You’re stunning.” His hand tightens on my hip as he pulls me against him. “You dance like God’s hands shape you.”
“I used to,” I answer, feeling the weight of the world’s disappointment on my bones.
I don’t know how or why it happened so fast. Maybe it was taking my virginity since the boys always joked that would make a girl clingy, but I’m in love with him, and like the first night when he told me he didn’t want me, he’s made it very clear he doesn’t love me back.
“You’re the person who sleeps in my bed.”
Just once, for this one night, but I suppose I’ll have to believe him that he intends to keep doing it, and that will have to be enough for me.
He stays in bed with me for a few more hours, talking about simple things that we like and know of. We kiss for the first time, and I wish it was because he cared for me and wanted to share that closeness, but after our lips meet he fucks my mouth with his tongue in a way I didn’t even know was possible, and I’m once again lying there while his heavy cock splits me in two.