14. Titus
TITUS
Her hands are so soft and warm in my hair. She runs her fingers through them as she lifts her hips up, pressing her pussy into my face.
“Don’t stop,” she whispers. She moans my name as my tongue flicks her sweet clit.
This moment is strange and new. Somewhere I’ve never been with her. My Princess is giving her all to me in the most vulnerable way. I’m holding onto her thighs, soft and slick with sweat.
I could live here. Oh, my darling Sofia…
My eyes open in the darkness and I shudder, cool air chilling my damp skin. It takes me a moment to reconcile that I’m in bed, my sheets half covering my body.
Fuck. That was some dream. It felt so fucking real.
I lie in bed, trying to let reality bring me back from that dream moment in time.
The things that I’ve never done to Sofia in her time with me are haunting me for some reason.
This arrangement means that I have to remain detached, but lately, it’s getting harder to remember why I started this whole thing.
The last few times, she’d made the punishments… fun. Every slap to her ass, every time I grab her by the neck while we’re fucking, she just gets wetter and her moans get more enthusiastic. It’s a problem, but it’s also not the only problem.
She’s been opening up more to me. The times when we’re not fucking—over dinner or just randomly during the day—she gives me bits and pieces of who she is.
The other day when I found her in her pajamas—dumpy, oversized things that she insisted on having even though I’ve objected on more than one occasion—there was an air of comfortability about her.
It was the sort of thing that I’ve missed all these years.
I lean into my pillow and try to think of something else outside of fucking her right now.
She plays with my control in a way that I can’t always get a handle on…
but that dream has made me so horny. I close my eyes and try to get my mind off it, but my rock-hard cock rubbing against the sheets isn’t making it any better.
I usually don’t wake her in the middle of the night, but I need relief. Perhaps a quick and hard fuck will do the trick. Just a few minutes to get this feeling off my back so I can sleep.
I get out of bed, throw on my robe, and make my way to her room. The house is as quiet as it usually is in the middle of the night. It’s almost too quiet, actually. I can hear the ticking of the grandfather clock in the living room downstairs from here.
I can also hear… talking?
I pause about halfway to Sofia’s room, listening. It’s Luka. What’s he doing up this late?
I turn and walk in the opposite direction, toward his room.
For a while, when Luka was around four or five, he’d wake up pretty consistently from nightmares.
During that time, I’d just bring him to my room until he finally fell asleep, then I’d take him back to his own bed.
It was arduous and left me irritated in the mornings, but he was comforted and the nightmares eventually stopped.
I guess they must be back now. Poor thing.
His door is cracked. I pause in front of it, focusing on the low, amber light from the lamp on his nightstand. His voice is soft, like he doesn’t want to be overheard.
“But what if the dream comes back? What do I do then?”
A soft sigh, then Sofia’s voice says, “Well, then, think of spaghetti.”
I can almost hear the smile in his tone. “What?”
“I know, but hear me out. When I was a kid, I used to have bad dreams all the time. Like all the time. It’s crazy that I even got sleep at all.
But I realized that whenever I started thinking about something completely different from what I dreamed, usually food like spaghetti, then that seemed to work enough so that when I fell asleep, I’d dream of something else. ”
“Really? Why spaghetti, though?”
“I don’t know. But it doesn’t have to be spaghetti, I don’t think. Just something really different from the bad dream.”
Luka doesn’t say anything for a few seconds. “What about something fun? Like the Fire Starters?”
“Oh, no, it can’t be that. It’s got to be something boring.
” I hear the bedsprings jostling slightly and suddenly, I imagine her sitting on the bed with him, her legs crisscrossed under her.
“So what I used to do was tell myself a story about spaghetti. Like, ‘once upon a time, there was a bowl of spaghetti that no one wanted. It just sat in the corner of the kitchen all day surrounded by the best foods. Donuts, cookies, pie—’”
“Pie? I hate pie.”
“Doesn’t have to be pie, then. Cake. ‘So, the bowl of spaghetti decided that it wanted to be something else. And it rocked and rolled until it got to the block of half cut cheese on the counter.’”
He snickers. “That’s stupid.”
“It’s supposed to be stupid,” she responded. “That’s the entire point. Make it as stupid as you want. It just can’t be exciting or anything. It’s got to be kinda boring for it to work.”
“Okay…” he says. “How about pencils? Will that work?”
“I think so, yeah. Try a little story about pencils.”
“Hmm. Once upon a time, there was a pencil who wanted to be sharpened, but he couldn’t find a pencil sharpener…
so… so he rolled across the desk until he…
he ran into some paper. And the paper said, ‘My edges might be sharp enough. Maybe I can help,’ and the pencil said, ‘Nah. I’m good, ’cause you’re paper. ’”
Sofia laughed. “That is very silly and very boring. I think that might work, Luka.”
I step away from the door as quietly as I can and go back to my room. So, she has been getting out of her room at night like I suspected. She’s also choosing to do it to be in service of my son.
By the time I’m getting back in my bed, thoughts of sex are long gone. All I can think about is how my enemy’s daughter was kind enough to try and help my son get back to sleep instead of a million other things she could have done… including forcing me to give her freedom through hurting my son.
She’s not playing this game correctly. Then again, neither am I.
Early this morning, I had the staff give her a note instead of breakfast. The note read to meet me on the back patio.
I didn’t leave her any instruction to get dressed as I like her to be, only to meet me.
Given her proclivity to be a brat at every opportunity, I’m curious to see what she’ll look like when she comes out here.
I’ve only been out here a few minutes. I was served my coffee and the weather’s already warm even though the sun just rose a few hours ago. I’m sitting in my robe with silk pajamas underneath, relaxing while the morning ticks on.
And in these minutes, for some reason that I don’t really understand, the idea that she’s not coming occurs to me. As if standing me up was an option.
The door finally opens and she walks out. She’s not dressed, but she is wearing a robe over her nightwear. She’s tied her hair back into a ponytail and otherwise looks as youthful and fresh-faced as ever. She smiles slightly at me.
“What did I do to deserve this?” she asks as she sits down at the table with me. A moment later, the door opens again and my cook comes out with plates of food. She sits up as she looks down at the eggs Benedict and hash browns.
“Just thought we needed to talk,” I said. “And it’s a nice day today.”
She’s still eyeing her plate. “I’m beginning to think that eggs Benedict is a running gag or something between us.” She picks up a fork and digs in, taking her first bite. I do the same.
“So… you don’t have any comment about my appearance today?”
I shake my head. “I’d rather talk to you outside the confines of our relationship, if you don’t mind.”
“Okay.” Her little smirk drops the way it does when she thinks she’s in trouble. “What’s up?”
“You’ve been breaking out of your room at night.” She stiffens.
“How did you—”
“I didn’t for certain until last night. You were in Luka’s room.”
She sets her fork down slowly, as if she doesn’t want to disturb an avalanche. “I can explain.”
“Which part? Being in Luka’s room or breaking out of yours?”
She sighs. “Listen, it’s kind of hard to sleep when there’s a child crying across the hall. Frankly, I don’t know how you manage it.” I glare at her and she flinches. “Sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“He’s been having night terrors for a good chunk of his life,” I say. “When he was small, I would let him come into my room until he fell asleep. Now, he’s older and he needs to deal with these sorts of things on his own.”
Her eyebrows deepen, but she says nothing.
“I have been at a loss as to how to teach him to be self-sufficient in that way. Chasing away nightmares isn’t something I’ve ever considered finding a way to fix.”
She tilts her head slightly. “You never worked on stopping your nightmares?”
“No,” I tell her. “When I had them as a child, I couldn’t exactly go to anyone for help. Both my parents were dead and I was in the care of my Pakhan. His job wasn’t to hold my hand when monsters came calling in my dreams.”
Her face softens to something adjacent to sympathy. I continue.
“This kind of thing, I have to admit, I’m lacking in skill. Ironically enough, Natalie wasn’t great at it either. She was very old-world tough. She’d have sooner given him a Benadryl-laced cup of cocoa before she offered a solution the way you did.”
“You… you overheard me.”
“I did. Thank you for being there for him. In every sense. He needs someone…” I trail off. I don’t really know how to phrase this part. Not in a way that might not be offensive to her.
“It’s no problem,” she says. “Somebody has to do it and… and it kind of looks like he’s only got one parental figure in his life, so I’m glad to step in in some capacity.”
I drink my coffee. She’s spoken the thought better than I could have.
“So, what happened to his mother?”
I pause, looking down at cup of coffee, trying to decide whether I should tell her. I suppose I can tell her part of it.
“She’s dead,” I say. “Killed for being adjacent to me in a way that… that I could not have protected her from. No matter how hard I wanted to.”
“That’s cryptic. Care to give a little more detail?”
“I would, but code of silence and all that.”
She snickers. “Am I not in your inner circle?”
I narrow my eyes at her and drink my coffee.
“Okay. So, then, she was your wife?”
“Girlfriend. For at least two, maybe three years. She got pregnant about a year and a half in and Luka was born.”
She pokes at her eggs. “So, she died and you had to take care of her son… who you keep locked up.”
“Yes. You see, no one can know about him,” I tell her. “Outside of myself, no one except you and my sovietnik is aware of his existence. And Ignat only knows because he’s the only person I could ever trust to keep my secrets.”
She nods. “So, he’s a secret child, then. Intriguing. I can also relate.”
“Oh?”
“My little brother and I were ‘secret children’ for a while,” she says.
“Our mother didn’t really want us to be a part of the Bratva.
I mean, she didn’t reject the life, she just wanted us to have a chance at something…
normal, I guess. So, when we were little, there were certain times where we weren’t allowed out of our rooms.”
She ate her food, talking as if what she was saying was nothing at all.
“We weren’t allowed to be seen with my father in any way.
So, like, when we had to go to school, Mom had to take us and we had to duck down in the car until we were off the property.
That went on until I was around ten and Adam was eight.
I don’t know how she kept it up for as long as she did. ”
“That clearly changed at some point.”
“After she died,” she says, again, casually. “Cancer took her out. Once she was gone, I guess Papa decided that he could trust in nannies and staff to hide us from the Bratva… or he could bring us into the fold. Obviously, he chose the latter.”
“I see.” I mull that over for a few seconds. “I guess you can relate to Luka in more ways than I thought.”
She shrugs. “Not his fault he’s got to be hidden. In a lot of ways, he reminds me of Adam. He used to have really bad nightmares too, so, I’m kind of used to talking little kids down in the middle of the night.”
“I’m glad you were there,” I tell her. “Angela… his mother would probably have been the one to try and show him how to cope. I don’t know if I’m the right person to handle those sorts of things.”
“Sure, you are,” she says with a little laugh. “I mean, I might be good at this, but in the grand scheme of things, I’m nobody. You’re his father. He thinks the world of you, you know.”
I tilt my head curiously. “He told you that?”
“Didn’t have to. Don’t get mad at him or anything, but he’s pretty good at breaking out of his room too. Does it all the time, actually.”
I laugh. “I’m aware. He’s been doing it since he was five. I started calling him pauchok because I kept finding him hiding in the dark corners around the house.”
“You’re not afraid of someone finding him?”
“Not anymore, no. He’s relaxed on it now that he’s older and understands that he can’t really be seen by my men. He chooses his times to escape.”
“How does he feel about his situation? I mean… doesn’t he want to go to school? Be like other kids?”
I sigh. This conversation is getting a little heavier than I expected. “Of course he does. It’s just not possible right now.”
I think she’s going to poke at me about this, but she doesn’t. She stares for a moment, pursing her lips, then she looks down at her plate.
“You don’t have any comment on that?”
She shrugs. “I don’t know the whole story, do I? You’re trying to protect him. That much is clear.”
And that’s all she says. I guess it’s enough. More than enough, actually. I feel a sense of respect from her that wasn’t there before.
“After breakfast,” I ask her, “Do you want to take a walk with me around the grounds?”
She smiles. “That sounds lovely.”