Chapter 26
26
LUCY
T o love, honour, and obey. The words replay in my head as I take another short sip of my champagne and admire the way the diamonds on my wedding band sparkle in the setting sun.
It’s been a beautiful day, even if it’s flown by with the quick ceremony taking barely an hour. The drive to and from the quaint chapel in the nearby fishing village seemed to take longer than the service itself, but then Tomasz made it very clear to the priest that he didn’t want the pomp.
“You don’t like it?” he asks, taking my hand in his and admiring the errand he ran while he left me to say goodbye to my mother and my old life.
The touch makes my pulse race while I look up to find his narrowed gaze on my finger.
“It’s perfect,” I tell him as he tugs me to my feet.
The rose gold stands out against my milky skin. Much like us, the surface is rough. There’s no apparent shine, but it makes the brilliance of the hard stones even more alluring in its contrast.
“You look,” he murmurs with a slow smile tugging at his lips as his eyes trace the jewelled bodice of my dress, “really fucking beautiful.” When I sigh at his compliment, he adds, “Breathtaking.”
This man is one big contradiction. His love is deadly, and his protection is dangerous. I know I shouldn’t care for him, but it’s impossible to fight it anymore. It’s become abundantly clear to me that today is the start of the rest of my life. And while he leads me down the small path, through the rose garden, towards the private patio where I met his mother for the first time, I can’t help but stare at the way our hands look twined together.
When we reach the walled space, Tomasz spins me to face him, causing the long veil still pinned to my half-up and half-down hair to tangle around me and the tulle skirt of my wedding gown.
Brusquely, he picks the offending fabric from my hair, releasing it into the breeze that carries it into one of the rose bushes nearby.
“It’s safe to say that you are not a virgin,” he says in a low grumble that makes me giggle with the swoop of my belly and the heat that rushes through me at his devious smirk.
“Safe enough,” I tell him as he threads his fingers with mine, holding me steady while I find my footing in my high heels.
It surprises me when he wraps an arm around my waist and holds me flush to him, swaying me from side to side as the music from the wedding dinner murmurs around us. He’s an excellent dancer, far better than I am even after years of finishing school. But then, Tomasz is brilliant at most things he does. I’ve noticed that once he sets his mind on something, there’s nothing that can stop him from getting it.
Much like my submission. He’s the only man that I could ever vow to obey, and it’s only because it seems like such a natural thing to do where he is concerned.
“Can I ask you a question?” I whisper up at him, unable to stop myself from admiring the way his dark hair has lightened from the dark brown at the roots to a burnt caramel at the tips from our time in the sun and sea.
Oh Jesus. I’ve seen nothing like it before. Every line of his body is sharp as I trail my hand from his, all the way to his chest. The impeccable tailoring does nothing to disguise the hard muscle beneath the rich fabric, and my body instinctively nuzzles into his.
When Tomasz finally nods, both of his hands anchored around my waist, I ask him, “What happens now?”
“Now,” he scoffs lightly, “you’re my wife.”
“I need a purpose… I can’t simply sit around, waiting for my life to unfold. It’ll send me crazy…”
“You swore to serve and obey me, yes?”
“Yes, and you promised to care and protect, so?—”
“That is what I’m doing, malyshka.” He smiles softly, leaning down to kiss my lips as though he vowed to love me too.
My chest tightens at the thought because he didn’t. Love doesn’t factor into any of this for him, which baffles me why he brought it up at all the other night. Why would he ask me if I love him when it’s such a mundane thing to him?
“Trust me.” As soft as they are, his words vibrate through me when he licks over my lips.
With his tongue pushing into my mouth, all I can do is nod and let him take what he wants while I hold on to him as tight as I can—for dear life, because my legs can barely hold me up when he deepens the kiss, humming into it as though it’s the best thing he’s ever tasted.
Before I know it, he has me in his arms and is carrying me up the stairs to our room.
“I’m pretty certain that we’re not meant to be the first people to leave tonight.”
“Technically, we’re not leaving. Besides, it’s our wedding…we can do whatever we like, and right now, I want to get my wife naked, and I want to put her vows to good use. I hear she needs purpose, and I need an heir.” He must sense the sudden panic that has my heart punching into my ribs because he pauses at the top of the stairs and frowns at me. “Your only duty is to keep the Vassily name alive.”
I don’t tell him that the thought terrifies me as it fills me with excitement. The last few days I’ve watched him with his cousin’s children, and I’ve imagined what our future might look like. What kind of father he might be because he’s playful and soft with the kids. Still, I didn’t expect him to broach the subject so soon. I thought maybe it would take some time, especially since he left the morning-after pill for me that first time we?—
“There’s no need for you to think so hard about it,” he says matter-of-factly, interrupting my thoughts. “It will happen eventually.”
We reach the room, and while he sets me on my feet and then goes about stripping me of my dress, Tomasz twists my hair to one side, brushing it over one shoulder as he trails open-mouthed kisses over the other.
My body is melting into him while my mind is spinning. A myriad of thoughts scrambles my senses until he turns me to face him, watching as my dress slowly falls down my body, revealing my naked form. Exactly like he instructed, the only other things I’m wearing are the blue garter, my jewelled sandals, and the choker he clasped on my neck the other night.
I expect him to tell me to undress him, but Tomasz helps me out of my dress and sits me on the edge of the bed before he pulls back. A thought darkens his eyes as he stands to his full height while he toes off his shoes and clumsily strips his socks by treading on the toes. The action is so unlike him that it makes me chuckle.
“You need to laugh more,” he says with a light chortle of his own.
The sound is so light that it makes my insides buzz with the happiness I’ve been trying to contain all day. I can hardly breathe through the butterflies fluttering from my belly to my chest, sticking in my throat as I watch him undress.
Piece by piece, he takes his tux off, his shirt…everything, until all that’s left is the ring on his finger. The black rhodium band is edged in the same copper-tinged gold as mine that glints in the soft light.
Trailing my stare up his forearm, I take in every line etched onto his skin from his chest all the way down his sculpted stomach to his thick thighs. I’ve never appreciated tattoos, but I’m intrigued by each one on his body. There’s nothing delicate about them. Some are dark and haunting, but on him they are a thing of beauty.
Tomasz comes closer. His hulking presence makes my skin break out in goosebumps. When he cups my chin, lifting my gaze from his hardened length to his eyes, he tells me, “You will laugh for me at least once a day…it’s a new rule, pet.”
“Do I have to be your pet right now? Can’t I just be your wife?”
“From today…the moment I put my ring on your finger…you are always my wife, my pet, and you will be the mother of my children.”
There’s no room for argument, and in my bemused state, I snap, “Why give me that fucking pill if it means so much to you?”
In a swift, inescapable move, he grasps my throat and lifts me to my feet. Anger marls the blue of his eyes a stormy grey.
“Mind your fucking mouth.”
The grit in his words makes my blood pump faster, a disconcerting conflict of emotions and sensations taking over me. Violence has never felt so good as it does with him. Fear has never been so empowering as when he makes me feel it. It makes little sense, but my body goes from a heated longing to an overwhelming ache that only intensifies the longer he holds me in his tight grasp.
“Why give me the pill?” I rasp, gripping his shoulders.
“What pill? What the fuck are you talking about?” Setting me on my feet, Tomasz looks me over, confusion pinching the chiselled lines of his face.
Maybe it’s wishful thinking, but he doesn’t seem to have a clue about what I’m saying.
“What fucking pill?”
“I thought you—” I pause, tilting my head back to get a good look at his face as I edge closer with my heart thumping in my throat, right where his hand was gripping me. “The morning after…you…we…”
“Spit it out, Red. You thought what?”
“Elif made it seem like it was from you. I assumed you told her to give it to me because of what happened.”
“What happened…” The echo of my words sounds ridiculous to my ears. After everything that’s gone on between us, it seems silly not to state fact.
“You came inside me, and I’m not…I’m not protected, so it made sense at the time…”
“Really? It made sense for me to send someone to do my dirty work for me?” Even with rage twisting his face, Tomasz is by far the most dazzling man I’ve ever laid eyes on. And when our naked bodies press together, neither of us can resist the need to hold on to one another. “How many times have I come inside you?”
“It was different that time.”
“Was it, Lucy?” It’s the way that he says my name that cuts through me, seeped in disappointment even through his fury. Never mind that it’s not the usual way he addresses me. “I fucked you then the same way I’ve fucked you every time since.”
“But you didn’t love me then.” The words escape me as I stroke my hand up his chest to cup his jaw. It strikes me then that I’ve been waiting for him to tell me the words that I already know. For him to tell me something that he’s shown me repeatedly.
“She’s lucky she’s already dead,” he says, venom coating every word even as his hands mould to my arse and he hitches me up his body with ease, his cock stroking down my belly to my slit.
My heavy breasts press to the top of his chest as I look down at his face. Every perfect line makes my breath catch, and the depth of his stare makes it impossible to ignore the fact that he hasn’t rubbished my statement.
Before his lips devour mine, I pull away to tell him, “I didn’t take it.”
“Good.” That’s all he says before I kiss him.
With my hands trailing his stubbled jaw all the way to his nape, he allows me to take control of the moment, even as he carries me to the bed and keeps holding me while he crawls over the mattress to the heap of pillows and cushions. Slowly, he lowers us until he’s braced over me.
Our bodies perfectly aligned.
“Do you love me now?”
Tomasz nips the tip of my nose with a groan when he shallows inside me, stretching me in that glorious way that is pleasure and pain all at once. A hiss pushes out of me at the sensation of his cock pushing deeper.
“Love…” he growls so low that I shudder at the gut-wrenching gravel of his voice. He pauses, holding still while his hands comb through my roots. “There’s no such thing, malyshka.”
Tears pool in my eyes, my heart threatening to shatter with every word he utters because there is nothing but sincerity staring back at me. Affection gilds the depths of his silvered stare.
“It’s just a word.”
A sob escapes me as he sinks deeper inside me, every part of me pulsing and clenching to steal all of him for myself. I’ve never needed to own someone the way my soul demands to capture his own.
“Then say it,” I say, holding his face between my hands. “Tell me, master.”
Of course, he sees straight through my ploy to disarm him with the reminder that I have given him everything, including my free will. I made the choice to stay with him because my heart doesn’t exist without him anymore.
“If I pray at your feet for eternity,” he says with a hoarse gravel to his voice that has my entire being shivering to be encompassed in all his heat. “If I worship at your altar for a lifetime…” Trailing his lips to my ear, he sucks my lobe into his mouth, biting down as he thrusts into me, one hard shove that makes my heart skip a gazillion beats, as though it’s dying for him with every word he murmurs to me. “It will never be enough.”
“Tomasz…”
“I vowed to care and protect because love isn’t enough. It will never be enough.” He repeats the latter part with another torturous stroke that leaves me discombobulated, incapable of making sense of anything other than the way he’s making me feel.
Big hands encapsulate my neck as he licks the edge of my jaw to my chin, nipping the soft flesh before he closes his mouth over mine in something that is part kiss of life and lick of death. It’s a timeless echo of all he feels, and I drink it up greedily. I gulp every drop until I’m so full that my spirit is as uncontainable as the affection he speaks of. Something that no word could ever tame or restrain.
I allow Tomasz to pray, worship, and adore while he makes love to me with the same intense and overwhelming power that he protects me with. And there is nothing and no one in this world that could possess me the way he does. Even when we are calm and sated, lying in tangled sheets with nothing but our breaths whispering around us.
The universe could be on fire, and I wouldn’t care.