Chapter 20 #3
"Excellent responsiveness," he murmured against my throat. His tongue traced my pulse point, felt my heartbeat hammering against his lips. "The treatment appears effective."
"Please—" The word came out wrecked. Broken. "Please, I need—"
"What do you need, Miss Cross?"
"To—" I couldn't say it. Couldn't form the words with his fingers still moving inside me, still keeping me exactly where he wanted me: desperate and hovering and unable to think about anything except the release he wouldn't give me.
He slowed.
Not stopped. Just slowed. Fingers dragging out, pressing back in with agonizing patience. Thumb circling my clit in lazy patterns that kept me right at the edge but wouldn't push me over.
"Please," I begged again. "Please, I need to come, please—"
"The treatment protocol requires patience." His voice was rougher now. Cracking at the edges. "These things can't be rushed."
He was enjoying this. Bastard. Absolute bastard.
His free hand came up to grip my jaw, tilting my face toward his.
Those grey eyes met mine through the reading glasses that had no business looking that hot, and I saw it—the hunger behind the clinical mask.
The desire he was barely containing. The man underneath the doctor, waiting for permission to devour me.
"What do you call me?" he asked.
The question cut through the haze. Specific. Loaded. A door he was offering me that would end the game and start something else.
I hesitated. The roleplay had been good. So good. The clinical detachment, the power dynamic, the sensation of being examined and assessed and treated—all of it had wound me tighter than I'd ever been.
But I didn't want the doctor right now.
I wanted him.
"Daddy," I whispered.
Something shifted in his expression.
"Please," I continued, the word tumbling out faster now that I'd started. "Please, Daddy, stop teasing and just—I need you, I need to come, please—"
The clinical mask shattered.
One moment he was Dr. Besharov with his measured movements and professional distance. The next he was Kostya—my Kostya, my Daddy, my monster who'd been holding himself back and finally didn't have to anymore.
He kissed me hard enough to bruise.
His fingers withdrew from between my legs, leaving me empty and whimpering, but before I could protest he was moving. Hands on my hips, dragging me to the edge of the desk. The sound of his belt unbuckling, his zipper coming down, the rustle of fabric being shoved aside.
"The doctor's appointment is over," he growled against my mouth.
And then he was inside me.
One thrust, deep and claiming, and we both groaned with it. The reading glasses were gone—knocked off somewhere, lost to the floor. The stethoscope clattered to the ground as he pulled it over his head and threw it aside. All the props of the game discarded because we didn't need them anymore.
I wrapped my legs around his waist and held on.
He fucked me the way he did everything—thorough, intense, completely focused on taking me apart.
The desk creaked beneath us, groaning in protest, but I didn't care.
Couldn't care about anything except the drag of him inside me, the weight of his body over mine, the sound of his breath harsh in my ear.
"Mine," he rasped.
"Yours," I agreed, because it was true. Had been true since the basement. Would be true until I stopped breathing.
He changed angle, somehow hitting deeper, and I shattered.
The orgasm crashed through me like a wave—no, like a storm, like something violent and beautiful that wiped everything else away.
I cried out his name, his real name, and felt him follow me over the edge seconds later.
His whole body tensed, shuddering, and the sound he made when he came was almost wounded.
My name on his lips.
“Maya, fuck, Maya!”
It felt wonderful. Impossible. Perfect.
The desk had definitely not been designed for this.
Some important part of it—a leg, maybe, or the center support—was making an ominous creaking sound that suggested we'd compromised its structural integrity.
The stethoscope was somewhere on the floor, probably tangled with the reading glasses I still couldn't believe he'd owned this whole time.
My sundress had ended up across the room, draped over a chair like it was taking a nap.
We were sprawled in the wreckage. Him half on top of me, both of us breathing like we'd run marathons, the air thick with sex and sweat and the faint scent of his cologne.
I started laughing.
Couldn't help it. The whole thing was absurd—the folder of nothing, the clinical questions, the way he'd maintained that neutral voice while doing things that had nothing to do with medicine.
My brilliant, dangerous, ridiculous man had staged an entire fake doctor's appointment because I'd whispered a fantasy in the dark, and it had been simultaneously the hottest and most ridiculous experience of my life.
Kostya's chest rumbled beneath my cheek. He was laughing too, that low sound I'd become addicted to, the one he hadn't known he could make until I'd stumbled into his life.
"Your technique was highly irregular, Doctor," I managed between giggles. "I'm not sure this treatment is FDA approved."
"Mmm." He shifted, pulling me closer, one arm banded around my waist like he was afraid I might try to escape. As if. "Complaints can be filed with administration."
"I'll be filing a glowing review, actually." I lifted my head enough to see his face—soft around the edges now, all the sharp lines of the enforcer blurred by satisfaction. "Five stars. Would recommend to anyone with . . ." I paused, grinning. "What was it? Fluid accumulation?"
He laughed outright at that. The sound echoed in the quiet office, warm and full and so unlike the man he'd been when we met. That man had growled more than he'd spoken. Had looked at me like I was a problem to be solved rather than a person to be known.
This man—the one beneath me, sprawled on a desk that might never be the same, wearing a button-down shirt that was now thoroughly wrinkled—this man looked at me like I was everything.
"The diagnosis was accurate," he said. "The treatment was effective."
"Very effective." I pressed a kiss to his chest, right over his heart. "Though I do have some feedback on your bedside manner."
"Oh?"
"Too much teasing. Unprofessional delays. I was ready to file a complaint about three times."
His hand found my hair, tangled in the strands that had come loose during the . . . examination. "The teasing is part of the protocol."
"According to whom?"
"According to me." He tugged gently, tilting my head back so he could see my face. "And you loved it."
I had. God help me, I absolutely had. Every moment of desperate hovering, every denial, every time he'd brought me to the edge and held me there—it had all been exactly what I'd wanted without knowing how to ask for it.
"Guilty as charged," I admitted.
He kissed my forehead. Gentle. The kind of tender gesture that made my chest ache, coming from a man whose hands were capable of such violence. That was the thing about Kostya—he contained multitudes.
"Same time next week?" he asked. "I believe you need a follow-up appointment."
The offer hung in the air between us. Not just about the roleplay—though yes, definitely about the roleplay, because I was already thinking about variations, about other scenarios, about all the ways we could play this game—but about everything else too.
The future. The life we were building. The strangeness and the sweetness of finding home in the arms of someone who should have been all wrong but was somehow exactly right.
I kissed him instead of answering.
Slow this time. Not the desperate hunger of before, but something softer. Deeper. The kind of kiss that said yes without words, that promised tomorrows and next weeks and all the appointments we'd make up excuses for.
When I pulled back, his eyes were warm. Happy in a way that transformed his whole face.
"I’ll take that as a yes," he said.
"Obviously." I settled back against his chest, listening to his heartbeat slow to something approaching normal. The desk creaked again beneath us—definitely going to need repairs—but neither of us moved. "But next time, maybe we upgrade from the desk. My back has concerns."
"I'll procure an examination table."
"You're going to buy an actual examination table?"
"If that's what my patient requires." His hand stroked down my spine, soothing, possessive. "I told you. Whatever you need."
The words were simple but they held everything. Whatever I needed. Not just in bed, not just in roleplay, but in all of it. The clinic and the cats and the family dinners where bratva killers argued about machine learning. The proposal I'd said yes to. The future that was somehow, impossibly, ours.
I thought about that future. A wedding, eventually. A life. Maybe—the thought made my heart stutter—maybe more than that. The thing we'd discussed. The thing Sophie had whispered about, that I'd been avoiding and wanting in equal measure.
But that was for later.
Right now, I was sprawled on my fiancé's desk surrounded by the wreckage of a medical roleplay, and I was happier than I'd ever thought I could be.
"I love you," I said. "Even though your diagnostic skills are questionable and you definitely violated about thirty HIPAA regulations."
His laugh rumbled through me again. "I love you too. Now let me take you to bed. The desk is making concerning noises."
"Yes Doctor."
"Good." He stood, pulling me with him, cradling me against his chest like I weighed nothing. "Also, I'm hungry. The treatment was exhausting."
"Midnight snack?"
"And a bath. And then—" He paused at the door, looking down at me with an expression that was half-tender, half-wicked. "Then we discuss your follow-up treatment plan."
I wrapped my arms around his neck and let him carry me out.
The cats were waiting in the hallway. Zmeya chirped accusingly, as if she'd been timing how long we'd been in the office. Malysh just blinked, serene and unbothered as always.
"Your children are judging us," I said.
"Let them judge." Kostya stepped over Zmeya's attempted ankle attack and headed toward the kitchen. "They'll understand when they're older."
I laughed into his shoulder.
Home.
This was home.