Chapter Thirty-Eight
In which windchimes are a promise.
Caroline…
I'm having the most beautiful dream.
Nikandr and I have been married for years, maybe. There is a fullness to my stomach and the slight wiggle of a little person inside me. He's grinning down at me, cupping my face as he kisses me. There's a light tinkling melody playing around us, a sweet symphony that soars and dips.
Opening my eyes and sitting up, the sound is still there, the music still playing for me.
Crawling out of bed, I look out the window and see them.
My three windchimes. They had been repaired and were precisely placed, equidistant from each other.
A breeze is making them dance and move. The moonlight glints off the silver spoons as they twirl.
"Oh…" I put my hand up to my mouth, eyes welling up. The windchimes have found a home here, that means that I have, too.
"Do they sound the same?" Nikandr is sitting in an armchair where he can see me and the window. He's giving me an open smile, not the guarded, slightly chilly smile, or the perfunctory one. A real smile, that I've seen a few times on his face… usually when we're in bed.
"They're so beautiful." I’m a little weepy, but so stupidly happy. He rises, coming over to wrap his arms around me from behind and we watch the wind chimes dance for a while longer.
"I'm sorry that your things were treated so harshly," he says, dipping down to kiss the side of my neck. "Especially something that meant so much to you. I fired Dolores, by the way."
"I should probably feel bad about that, huh?" I ask. I feel his chest shake behind me as he laughs.
"No. You shouldn't." His scent wraps around me. I have missed it so much, clean cotton, wintergreen, and something that smells how warmth feels.
Tuning, I smile up at him, my hands holding his lapels. "It is wonderful to have you back home. Even more than the windchimes."
He pulls something out of his pocket and holds it up in the moonlight. My wedding ring. "Oh!" I say, touching it lovingly. "I have missed this ring. Johann ripped it off my finger when they shoved me into the car. How did you find it?"
Nikandr cocks his head, giving me a slight smile.
"It has a transmitter in it so that I could always find you if you were in danger.
That didn't exactly work out the way I had planned," he says sourly.
"We traced the transmitter and found it in a flowerbed just outside Faneuil Hall.
" I hold my hand up and he slips the ring back on my finger, kissing my knuckles.
"So, my challenge here is how to keep you safe and know where you are at all times.
Especially now that we have this threat. "
"What are you thinking?" I ask. He pulls a slim case from the side table and holds it up, opening the case and showing me a syringe. "Oh, wait –" I stammer. "Where the hell do you think that's going?"
"It's a subdermal transmitter," he says, turning the syringe delicately in his hands. "Impossible to detect by the usual scanner, lasts up to six years."
"You know, I've got a thing about needles." I move back a step. "They freak me out really bad, I used to have to take a Valium before I got my immunization shots."
Nikandr's smile is filthy. "I promise you," he says, "that you will never even notice me injecting it."
Folding my arms nervously, I ask, "How are you planning that?"
He runs his fingertips down my neck and lightly over my collarbones. "I trust you," he says. "I probably don't deserve it, based on the last few days, but do you trust me, too?"
"Yes," I say instantly, without thinking, but it's right. I do trust him.
"Then let me show you that I love you," he says, kissing me and my knees weaken like I'm a Victorian maiden.
"You do?" I lean back, searching his face.
"I do," he says gently. "I should've told you the first time I realized it, that night at the dinner with Liria and Alexsey.
I watched you laughing at something Liria said and your face was so beautiful, it was joyful.
And it made me realize how much of that you've brought into my life. I should have told you then."
I've already heard the phrase, "My heart swelled," but I never understood it until now. That love is an ephemeral thing that feels too big to contain.
"You're going to hate this," I say honestly. "The first time that I knew I loved you was when I was looking at Dritan Krasniqi and planning to kill him. I was so mad that I said it to him first, that he got to hear that I loved you before you did."
Nikandr laughs, his head tilting back and I get to admire his gorgeous neck, because every part of this man is gorgeous.
There's a slight curve of a tattoo written in Cyrillic that goes up one side of his throat.
"As long as you love me," he says, "I don't care about the timing.
Now…" He cups my face in his hands, kissing me thoroughly.
"I can promise you that you won't feel a thing with this needle. "
Eyeing him suspiciously, I ask, "And how would that be?"
That filthy smile is back. "Because I'm going to be fucking you. Right as you come, I'll put the transmitter in you." I eye the needle. It's long. "Trust me," he whispers, kissing me again, pushing his thumb between my lips. I suck it, watching him swallow.
"Okay," I sigh.
In seconds, I'm on my back and he's wrapped around me, forearms braced by my head, one knee thrust between mine, pushing my thighs apart.
"I'm going to shove your face into the mattress," he whispers to me as he flips me over onto my stomach, yanking my hips up.
"I'm going to slam my cock you, hard, and keep it there, pushing my hips to make you feel every inch.
You'll whimper because you aren't ready, but I'm crammed inside you so it's too late to argue. "
Oh, sweet Lady Gaga, he's killing me with his deep voice, and how his slight Russian accent gets thicker when he's talking dirty to me.
I whimper, just the way he said I would.
Then, he pushes down on my back, making me arch up to him and he spits on my pussy.
I feel it and it's so shocking and so good, slicking his way as he shoves his cock inside me, just as deep as he threatened.
"So fucking tight for me," he growls. "This greedy cunt sucking me in." His hand slides around me and he tugs on my pubic hair, the sting lighting me up. He angles his hips, making room for his cock inside me. "So beautiful," he says, resting his chin on my shoulder. "Your mouth so wet, and open."
He's fucking me roughly, and my need for him after so many days apart is feral.
"So good," I groan happily. This snaps the last of his self-control, he pulls his hips back and then slams into me again, even deeper though I don't know how he found more room.
There's a heat building around my belly button, swirling and growing, ready to take me over.
"I know I'm big," he says, a feral tone to his usually smooth, polished delivery. "But you can take me. You fit so perfectly around me, so fucking silky and soft."
The tall, carved headboard is slamming against the wall. I thought that was just a thing you'd read in smut romances, but no, the velocity of his thrusts is sending me closer to it and I watch the headboard bash against the wall.
Nikandr goes back on his heels, pulling me up with him, still buried inside me.
His teeth fasten into my shoulder, not a gentle bite.
This one might draw blood and I moan, grabbing his hair and yanking.
"You're going to come before I do, baby," he rasps, "and I'm close.
" His rough fingers have found my clitoris and he's tugging on it, his hips driving up into me until it feels like I can't breathe, that every part of me belongs to him now.
There's nothing but the feel of him driving inside me, his fingers on my clit and his hoarse voice, murmuring filth into my ear. "Come for me," he orders. "Do it."
The vortex of heat and need inside me is swirling and when I hear his voice, I shatter, I think I'm screaming but nothing registers but his cock, jerking inside me, filling me with come.
My husband carefully rolls me over and curls up behind me like the world's most muscular blanket, his cock still inside me. It's hard. He just came but it's still hard?
The room is filled with our panting, and the sound of lazy kisses. "So, did you feel anything?" he asks. I can feel his mouth stretch into a grin against my skin.
"Feel?" I mumble. It takes me a second to understand what he means. "Did you inject me? Right then?"
He hugs me tighter. "The transmitter is in your perfect, delectable ass."
I giggle weakly. "Can you come with me to my doctor's next time I need a shot?"
"I could," he says. "But I'd have to kill them afterward. No one gets to see how pretty you are when you come but me."
We fall asleep, Nikandr still hard inside me. No moment could feel better than this.
***
Nikandr is already gone when I wake up, vaguely remembering him kissing me, murmuring that he loved me. I don't think I'll ever get tired of hearing that.
Getting dressed in one of my power suits, I get ready for work with a blissful, loose-lipped smile that makes it abundantly clear that I was rode hard and put up wet last night. As I'm pouring my first cup of coffee, Isaak looks down at his phone, one brow raised.
"Mrs. Morozova, you have a visitor."
"Who? Liria?" I ask, putting in my earrings.
He shakes his head. "It's Miroslava Balabonova."
"The Dragon?"
"Yes," he says, "if you don't wish to speak to her, I can have Rafail send her away."
"Yeah, she's not the type of woman who accepts the word 'no'," I sigh. "Bring her up."
What the hell? I think, pacing the living room. Why me?
The elevator door opens and the Dragon swishes through it, holding one of her vile, yappy dogs tucked under her arm like a football.
"Well, there you are," she says, looking at me disapprovingly. "I've been trying to reach you. Your husband has been distinctly unhelpful."
"It's been… a very intense week," I say, bringing her over to the couch.
"Makari," she snaps her fingers at her long-suffering body guard. "Set out a little dish of water for my Printsessa. She's parched." Her ratty little dog glares at me, pink tongue hanging out.
"Are you here in New York for a few days, or just passing through?" I ask.
She sniffs. "I am staying at the Hotel Lyric. I rather thought you would be there to greet me personally."
"My sincere apologies. As I said, it's been a very strange few days." I am sorry I didn't know she was staying there. I would have had my assistant manager send up some flowers and caviar for her.
The Dragon sits back, petting her nearly furless dog. "I have heard about some details about your strange week," she says, watching me closely. "Tell me this. Did you really kill Dritan Krasniqi?"
The deep breath I'd just taken freezes in my throat. "How would you know such a thing?"
"I have many sources," she shrugs. "But sometimes, the news is too good to be true. In this case, I would very much like to know that merzkiy ublyudok, that evil bastard, is dead."
"I gather that you have a personal stake in his death?" I ask.
Her wrinkled, bejeweled hand stays steady, petting the dog but there's a slight tremor now.
"My father arranged a marriage between me and Dritan Krasniqi," she says.
"Arranged marriages were a given when I was younger.
I knew very little about him, other than my father considered him a rising star in our world.
" She gives a little huff of disgust. "I was sent to spend the evening with him.
I expected dinner at some extremely expensive place.
" Her hand slows, resting on her dog's patchy fur.
"He took me to his office and raped me. On his couch.
I screamed and he punched me. I almost lost a tooth. "
"I am so sorry," I say, my heart twisting in my chest. "You deserved so much more than that."
"Well, my father was decent enough to end the agreement. He was very angry at the disrespect it showed for our family."
I didn't miss the implication that the disrespect was far more offensive than his daughter being raped and beaten.
"So," she leans closer, her eyes slitted in fury. "I want to know what you did." I tell her what I'd said to him and she cackles, slapping the sofa cushion. "Oh, I can imagine he hated that."
Then, I tell her how he died and she sighs in deep bliss. I let her have the moment so the words can sink in. "I stood there, watching him die. I wanted to be sure that the bastard was good and dead."
"How did he look?" she asks, a grin stretching over her wrinkled face.
"You know how bugs look when they're dead? Like, curled up and shrunken?" I smile, taking her shaking hand. "He looked just like that."
The Dragon leans over, giving me a hearty kiss on the cheek.
"Thank you. This makes me so happy." She puts the dog down so it can lap noisily at the water.
"I know my foolish son broke his contract with the Morozovs.
That decision will be reversed. Tell your husband that it will be business as usual. "
My mouth drops open, I'm sure I look like an idiot. "Can you… um, do that?"
She cackles delightedly. "My husband signed over all his business shares to me before he passed away from a heart attack. Melor manages the business. He likes to pretend that it's his, but he's forced to do as I say."
"Thank you." I squeeze her hand gently. "This means so much. These contacts are so important to Nikandr. To the entire Morozov Bratva."
She squeezes my hand back and rises, swooping her little dog and tucking her under her arm again. "I must be off. I do expect to see you at the Lyric before I leave this weekend."
"I'm looking forward to it," I say fervently, leading her to the elevator. I wait for a full thirty seconds before I dash over to my phone, calling Nikandr.
"Hey, honey. I have some good news."