Chapter Forty Four
Aleksandr
I wake up to a cold cup of water dashed into my face.
“I thought you were dead!” Katya screeches at me. The cup meets a swift demise as she throws it against the wall, and it shatters into hundreds of tiny shards. “You let me think you were dead!”
This. This is why I refused her last night. Now, with the last of the wine gone from her system, she is not the soft woman she was. There are too many words left unspoken between us. Too many betrayals. Too many secrets and lies. I knew she was going to be angry—even if she did not.
But this is also good for her. This is a good anger; a cleansing anger. An anger she owns instead of one which owns her.
I scrape the water from my face and shake off the last remnants of sleep. Jetlag is a bitch.
“More tantrums, koshechka?” I like her spicy.
I had forgotten how much. And it is a notable change from the despondence in which she has been mired.
Her anger, I know how to deal with. And Katya burns so brightly when she is furious.
Water drips from my hair, and I use one hand to slick it out of my eyes.
“I have told you before. You want to smash things? You do not do this barefoot.”
“You don’t get to give me orders anymore!” Her shriek could raise the dead. Almost certainly it would result in complaints from her neighbors…if she had any close by. Fortunately, the houses on either side of hers are owned by shell corporations, which Anatoli now controls.
“Wrong again.” I let my gaze rake her from head to toe, noting her disheveled hair, the thin sleep shirt that comes down to the middle of her thighs.
It is still cold in the room; there is the prickle of chill bumps along her arms. She does not know that I have seen her every day she has been away from me, shrouded in cozy flannel pajamas like they are armor.
She does not know that I know she bares herself to me like this deliberately.
Katya always has to push. She likes it when I let her—but she likes it more when I don’t. She likes to be dominated, just a little.
I thump my chest with my palm. “Come here, koshechka.”
Her eyes flare. There is anger there, yes, but there is also desire. Her nipples are hard little peaks beneath the thin fabric of her shirt. That stubborn chin notches higher. A dare. A challenge.
I rise to the bait, just as she intended.
My reflexes are swift; I can see she has forgotten just how well-honed they are.
Jetlag is not enough to throw me off. Fortunately, her side of the bed is free of glass shards, and she gasps as her shoulders hit the wall behind her, pinned with the length of my naked body.
An exploratory buck of her hips; she wants to know if I can be thrown off so easily.
My fingers grab a handful of her soft ass, dragging her hips into the thrust of mine.
“Ah, Katya.” I press the words into the softness of her throat.
“I had such plans for you. I was going to be gentle with you, but now I think maybe you don’t want this.
Maybe you want it hard, hm? Maybe you need me to fuck all the sweetness back into you?
” Christ, I can feel her heat just inches away from my fingers.
I press a lingering kiss against her throat, and she shivers.
I know that shiver well. Aggravated arousal.
“Get off me, you asshole!” It’s a clipped, tart sound, and she bucks again—which only serves to push her hips against my cock.
“You had your chance for sweet, koshechka,” I chide, and my palm slides down the curve of her ass.
“Will you be wet when I touch you, I wonder? If you are—” My fingers creep closer, and her whole body catches in a sinuous arch.
“If I find you wet, I will know what it is you want.” Her needy whimper sears the air between us as I nip her earlobe.
“And then I will give you what you need.”
She’s beyond wet. She is dripping for me, hot and tight and so fucking ready. But she can be both angry and turned on, and she shows it by kicking her leg out, a feint with her knee toward my balls. I deflect the pitiful blow easily with a short chuckle, and back a step away.
Color burns in her cheeks; passion, fury. She is glorious. Beautiful. I have missed this. Missed her.
“This morning I feel generous. I will give you a head start,” I say, rolling my shoulders.
“One.” And then I lunge. Like a startled rabbit, she leaps away, and I let her slide through my hands as she careens through the door.
Her footsteps shear down the stairs, and I am already hot on her heels.
I like the chase—but I like it best when it is over.
Her sleep shirt is loose, fluttery. It is easy to snare a shred of the hem between my fingers and drag her back toward me as she flees through the living room.
I have timed my catch well. The paper-thin fabric shreds in the brutal clutch of my hands and as she struggles to free herself from the threads of it, she trips over her own feet.
I use her momentum to shove her over the back of the couch.
She is small—possibly, if she were just a few inches taller, she would have a fighting chance.
But the back of the couch hits her in the stomach, and her legs flail, unable to find purchase.
She tips forward, and this is to my advantage.
Now she has only enough leverage with her arms to shove her face out of the cushions.
She shrieks her outrage, her fists pounding the cushions.
But her flailing is good for something; it is not hard to wrench her thighs apart and step between them.
I cannot help my groan as my cock slides through the copious wetness there.
She gives a ragged gasp. Her thighs tremble in my grip.
Her hips tilt, and my cock nudges against her entrance.
It is everything I can do not to press home. This is a heaven a man like me should never have been allowed to touch. I lean over her, rub along her spine. “Submit, koshechka.”
She wants to. That part of her that needs me in the way I need her wants to soften. “Fuck you, Alexei!” She muffles a screech as my palm slaps her upturned ass, then rubs away the sting.
“Oh, you will.” My hand finds her breast, my fingers pinching her nipple to a taut point. I have to stretch over her to do it, and I know she feels the heat of my body along her back. “Sashulya. Say it, koshechka.” I want to hear this soft name from her.
“You can’t make me!” she sneers. A child’s taunt.
She fists the cushions in her hands, gives a futile tug as if to pull herself away from me.
But she is pinned beneath my weight, her elbows trembling with the exertion of trying to wrench herself free.
I am trembling with the exertion of keeping myself from plunging inside of her.
She gives a devastating wiggle of her hips. It is just enough for me to penetrate her—just barely. Just the kiss of my cock inside her, and I swallow back a groan, seize her hips in a punishing grip to stop her struggles. I like them a little too much in this moment.
“You always have to win,” she says, her voice tart with annoyance.
“Yes, koshechka. I always have to win.” She shudders when I slide my hand beneath her, find the bead of her clit with my thumb, and rub in slow strokes.
“This does not mean you have to lose.” I give her the tiniest hint of a thrust as I bend to press a kiss between her shoulder blades.
“Say it, koshechka, and I will give you what you want.”
“I won’t!”
Stubborn girl. My fingers stroke her just a little faster, and I use the slippery wetness she has drenched me in to blunt the friction to a slick slide.
Her breath hitches. I hear the moan she tries to keep clenched between her teeth.
She hovers at the edge of climax, and I keep her suspended there until she groans her frustration, turning her head to the side.
And then she freezes as the light hits her face and she realizes we are naked in her living room, and there is a wall of windows that face the beach outside.
In the far distance, there are people in the water. Surfers, I think.
“Oh, God. Close the curtains!”
There is no chance of that now. “You made your choice already, koshechka. You could have come to bed with me.”
“Anyone can see in!”
“Then you are getting fucked hard in front of anyone.” She gives a strangled sob as I stroke her toward climax. “Your choice, koshechka. Be a good girl, and I will make it fast.”
A wash of color sweeps over her; the heat of embarrassment. She turns her face into the cushions. But she murmurs, “Sashulya.”
Thank God. I sink into her, and she is so tight, so hot that it takes effort not to come immediately. It is like she is a virgin all over again, and I know she needs a moment to get accustomed to me inside her once more.
Still I cannot resist the temptation to press deeper. “You take me so well, koshechka. Fuck, look at you.” My words end in a visceral hiss as she clenches around me. She is like a vise around my cock, trying to keep me inside her.
Somehow I find the strength to withdraw, fighting the tight clutch of her body.
A little whine builds in her throat. “Harder,” she demands.
Ah, yes. I promised her that. I shove inside her, holding myself deep.
I feel her tremble around me, already so close.
Her fingernails scritch across the cushions, and she buries a broken little sound in them.
I know she wants to move, but she is helpless here, dangling over the back of the couch.
She can only accept what I give her—and she likes that, too. She likes to be dominated. By me.
I know I am rubbing her inside and out, that she is trying so hard not to come yet.
I can feel the struggle in the tense line of her spine.
I soothe her with a soft stroke of my hand, a hard stroke of my cock.
Fuck, she is beautiful like this, her delicate shoulders quivering with tension, that flush of passion painting her skin.
If her knees were not pressed so tightly to my hips, I know I would see her little toes curling.
I love to see her like this, taking me so sweetly.
She takes all of my lust and twists it into love.
My breath bursts from my lungs in short gusts.
My hips jab between her soft thighs. I am pounding into her.
She is going to be so sore, her beautiful skin reddened with the friction burn from the cushions.
At last there is that telltale zing at the base of my spine, and I know I will not last much longer. It is too good to be inside her again.
I bend over her, and the new growth of stubble on my cheek rasps against the nape of her neck.
“I was such a fool, koshechka, to think I could ever let you go. You were always meant to be mine.” I find her clit with the pad of my thumb, and the moan that rises from her lips is a thing of beauty.
“Come now, koshechka. I need to feel you.”
And she does—my good girl likes to obey. I make it good for her, and she wrings my cock with those fluttering pulses until my thrusts turn brutal. Until I am holding her still for my taking. Until I plant myself deep and fill her with my come.
She is not on birth control. I know she never bothered to see a doctor and renew her prescription. Could be dangerous.
And while I pant against the damp, sweat-slicked skin of her shoulder, I think for a moment that it might be nice. Not to raise pampered little mafia princes and princesses. Just to raise children.
Long moments pass. I don’t want to pull out of her just yet.
I don’t want to ruin this quiet moment we share, where all of her fury has transformed into acquiescence.
I know it is still there, shimmering beneath her placid surface.
But just for these few moments, I want her sweet.
And she is—until I try to kiss her. Then she jerks her head from me, baring her teeth in a feral scowl.
“Let me up,” she hisses, and I think, So much for post-orgasmic bliss.
“Such an attitude,” I chide. Between her thighs I am already hardening again.
She makes me insatiable. “Good girls get fucked slow and gentle in bed. Bad girls take my cock over the couch in the living room, where anyone can see in, until I am satisfied they’ve learned a lesson. Which are you going to be, koshechka?”
If I am honest, it does not matter which. I love all aspects of her. Whichever Katya I get—good or bad—I am delighted.