Chapter 18
PAVEL
The penthouse is quiet. I stand at the window with a drink I’m not tasting and watch Manhattan’s cold electric burn forty stories below and think about the fact that I’m married.
Me. Married. The word sits differently than I expected it to.
Molly is asleep in the next room.
She drifted off to sleep with her head resting on my shoulder around two in the morning, mid-sentence about something Carrie Ann mentioned at dinner.
Her voice faded into silence, like someone who has exhausted all their reserves and just stopped.
I stayed still for a long time afterward, unwilling to disturb her.
Eventually, I settled her carefully, covered her, and came to stand at the window with my drink and my thoughts and the city that knows nothing about any of this and cares less.
She is my wife. I’m not sure I will stop finding that remarkable. I’m not sure I want to.
The evening was more than I planned for, which is not something I say often, because I plan thoroughly, and the gap between plan and reality in my experience is usually a problem to be managed rather than a gift to be received.
But there were moments tonight that existed entirely outside of strategy.
Moments that were simply what they were, unmediated and complete.
Carrie Ann stayed for dinner, which I arranged because I know what her best friend means to Molly.
Truth is, I like her too. She’s small and bright and possessed of a laugh that fills rooms, and she watched me across the dinner table with those sharp green eyes with the candid assessment of a woman deciding what she thinks of the man her best friend has married.
I returned the assessment without disguising it, because I respect directness even when it’s aimed at me, and by the end of the evening, I think I earned her respect, even in all the chaos.
When Molly went to the bathroom, and Vet was preoccupied by the window, Carrie Ann came to me and quietly said through her sweet smile, “I know you’re some big, scary, powerful man, Pavel.
I’m sure you have enough money to make any problem disappear with the snap of your fingers, and I respect that you’ll use those powers for Molly. ”
“Without hesitation.”
Then she lowered her voice further and smiled wider. “But if you use them against Molly in any way whatsoever, I’ll kill you. Not hypothetically, not in some metaphorical way, and I’m not exaggerating. Understand that you’d never see it comin’.”
“I am unaccustomed to threats being quite so direct—”
“Good. Because my attack would not be. You see, I’m a cook.
And I have an extensive garden with all sorts of poisonous plants.
Not to mention that I’m a sharpshooter. That’s what growing up in the country does to a girl, Pavel.
Or at least, what it did to me. Not Molly—she’s always had her eyes on the city, and she stayed out of all that.
But I didn’t. So, be a good boy and treat her right.
” She grinned at me. “Or else.” Then she went back to her seat as Molly re-entered the room.
It gives me great comfort to know I’m not the only person who will protect Molly out of love.
Molly glowed through the ceremony and the dinner.
With Carrie Ann by her side, she was more herself than she is even in the quiet moments we have carved out in the past months.
She shared an incident from third grade that made Carrie Ann cry with laughter, while I watched them from my side of the table, feeling like a man outside a warm room looking through glass, longing to be inside.
I want that with Molly. A shared history, stories we can laugh about.
The warmth of camaraderie built on love.
Now she sleeps, and I stand at the window, and I think about Igor’s face in the forty minutes before the ceremony.
He found me in the anteroom off the main corridor, and his expression was the one that means he has something I will not want to hear and has decided that delivering it cannot wait. He was right on both accounts.
Fedor has someone inside my organization.
A credible report came from a source Igor trusts, which means I trust it.
Such a thing is impossible and all too obvious.
Kamila’s sudden unavailability. The timing of Snigir’s pointed knowledge.
The speed at which Fedor has been closing routes and mapping vulnerabilities.
These things have had the quality of inside knowledge.
Which means a honeymoon is not possible.
Instead, Southampton.
The house there is my real home in the way that the penthouse is not—the penthouse is a position, a statement, a place from which I conduct the business of being what I am.
The house in Southampton is the place I go when I want to be a person rather than a function, which is not often enough and has become less often as the years have accumulated.
It’s large and old and set back from the water behind an old tree line that provides the kind of natural privacy that money can approximate but not replicate. More than that, it is safe.
“What—”
I spin and lunge toward the voice in the shadows, only to see the moonlight fall on Molly’s pretty face half a breath later. I freeze midair, hoping not to scare her, before I drop my fist. “Sorry. I am—”
“Used to living alone,” she says knowingly as she comes to me. She wears a dark blue silken robe and little else—I catch a sliver of cleavage as she comes in for a hug. “Sorry, I scared you.”
“That is my fault. I should have known it would be you.”
“How come you’re up so late?”
“Thinking. Why are you?”
She smiles up at me. “I came to find my husband.”
Those words do something to me, something primal I don’t have an explanation for. It has been only hours, but the word feels… like it has always belonged to me. The same way Molly always has felt in my heart.
“Well, wife. What did you want to find your husband for?”
“This.” She stands on her toes to lean up and kiss me. “And this.” Her hand scoots from my chest to my suddenly hardening cock over my lounge pants.
“Is that right?”
“Mm-hmm.” She grips the elastic waistband and yanks it down, springing my cock out. “Perfect.”
“What are you—Molly, get back on your feet.”
“I’m perfectly comfortable on my knees.” And with that, her tongue slicks around the head of my cock. I let out a breath, trying to enjoy the feel of her there, but it’s hard to concentrate when my head is full of other things.
A traitor. In my ranks.
But Molly’s hot, wet mouth sucks me back into this moment with her. I weave my fingers into her hair, cupping the back of her head to guide her up and down my shaft out of instinct. That silky, wet heat puts me in mind of other things.
“I want to be inside you.”
Yet she keeps at me.
“Do you think sucking my cock will stop me from fucking you?”
At that, she looks up, her mouth still full. She shakes her head, then keeps going.
I hiss, “Fuck, pet, if you’re going to do it, do it harder.”
With that, she amps up the pressure, feeling as if she might suck my cock clean from my body. It hurts in just the right way, and I shove myself deeper into her throat. I’m on the edge—
No. Not like this.
I pull from her mouth, yank her to her feet, and rip her robe open, exposing her perfect body. Even with just the pale moonlight and the city lights, I see every soft inch of her, and she threatens to steal my breath.
This happens every time I see her naked. I don’t think that will ever change.
“This is my wedding night, pet.” I pick her up and start to carry her. “I will have my way with you.”
Her breath catches. “Am I always to be your pet? I thought I was your wife.”
“You are deliciously, confoundingly both.” Just as you always have been, if not in law, then in my heart.
I sit on the nearest piece of furniture—the den’s dark green velvet sofa—and arrange her onto my lap until I feel her in the right position. “Ride my cock, wife.”
“How crass, husband,” she teases.
I laugh, then grab her hips and thrust upward, breaching her pussy. She gasps, pushing herself toward me to take more. My wife always wants more, and I always want to give it to her.
Molly takes my shoulders to brace, and then she takes over from there, working herself down my shaft until I’m as deep as I can go. She whispers in the dark, “Fuck.”
“As you wish.” I pop my hips up while I press her ass down, making her take a fraction of an inch more.
Her gasps vibrate in my soul. We work together, wet and breathy sounds filling the room. Her head tosses back when I feel her pussy pulse against me, and those exquisite tits of hers surround my face. I bury myself there, holding her close as she comes on my cock.
Can’t breathe. Don’t care.
When she finally slows, I pull her down for a deep kiss, my tongue taking over her mouth until she’s filled with me twice. I grip those big hips tighter, shoving her back and forth to ride me now that she no longer has the strength to do so.
Her body’s gone nearly limp against me, still throbbing on my shaft. She makes these little helpless sounds, almost like pleas, as I make her body ride me.
“You’re going to come again for me, wife.”
“Can’t—”
“The first lie of our marriage.”
I pump harder and harder into her, until I can’t take it anymore, and flip her onto her back on the length of the sofa. One leg over my shoulder, the other over the back of the couch. That way, I can drive into her and press against her sweet little clit at the same time.
She’s nearly in fits beneath me. “Oh god, oh—fuck! Husband, now!” Her nails rake down my back as she comes again, and that’s when my restraint vanishes completely.
I lose myself to it. To her.
Can’t stop. Won’t stop.
I hammer her into the sofa, knowing she’s coming on me, knowing she is mine for life. The woman I love is the woman who belongs to me.
And I belong to her.