13. Nina
NINA
It’s been three days, and I haven’t said a word about what I heard.
Not to Reeves, not to my editor, not to Sofiya when she called on Tuesday, asking how I was doing. I said fine. She said good. We talked about Alexei for twenty minutes while I sat on the window seat, looking out at the grounds.
I said nothing.
I’m good at saying nothing. Ten years of field work will do that.
This morning I open the Reeves thread and type for forty minutes straight. It’s the most I’ve sent him in one sitting since this started. It’s sourced from things I’ve seen inside this house, and I now understand the full weight of them.
Three weeks ago, I was feeding him the shape of something. Now I’m feeding him the bones, and he’ll know the difference the moment he reads it.
He replies in under an hour. This is significant. We need to talk.
I close the laptop and go downstairs for breakfast.
Nikolai is at the table. He looks up when I come in, says good morning, I say good morning, I pour my coffee, and sit down.
We are two people eating breakfast. I’m also a person who just sent a federal agent enough material to open a serious conversation about the man sitting across from me.
The coffee is hot. The eggs are good. The morning is very ordinary on its surface.
He asks about the piece I filed yesterday.
I tell him it went well. He asks one question about the sourcing structure, I answer it, he nods, and goes back to his food. I go back to mine. That’s the whole conversation.
I think about the truck the entire time.
The thing about building a wall between two tracks is that it only works if you maintain it, and maintaining it requires not looking directly at either side for too long.
I’ve been doing that for three days. I’ve been good at it. This morning, something makes it harder, and I can’t identify what, which bothers me, because identifying things is what I do for a living.
He refills my coffee without asking and goes back to his newspaper.
I look at my coffee and I think, that’s the something . It’s not dramatic. It’s not significant. It’s a man refilling a coffee cup because it was empty and he was closer to the pot.
I’m sitting at this table with a federal thread open on my laptop upstairs, a wall I’ve been maintaining for three days, and the wall just got thinner because of a coffee refill.
That’s the problem with ordinary things. They don’t announce themselves.
I write for hours. Good work, clean work. I file two hundred words to my editor and spend the rest of the afternoon going through the notes I’ve been building since the truck, filling gaps, thinking about what I still need.
At dinner, Nikolai opens a bottle of red without being asked, pours two glasses, and sits down.
I look at the glass. I look at him. He picks up his fork.
“There was a meeting today,” he says. “With a property developer on the west side. The man brought his lawyer, his accountant, and his wife.”
“His wife.”
“She had opinions about the acquisition structure.”
I pick up my fork. “What kind of opinions?”
“Detailed ones. She had a spreadsheet.”
I look at him. “Did she?”
“Color coded.” He cuts his food. “Her husband kept trying to explain that she was just there for lunch.”
“Was she.”
“No.” He picks up his wine. “She knew the numbers better than he did. Better than the accountant.”
I take a drink, look at my plate, and think about a woman in a meeting room with a color-coded spreadsheet while her husband tells everyone she’s just there for lunch, and the laugh gets out before I can stop it.
He looks at me when I laugh. Not triumphant. Just looks.
I look back at my plate and keep eating. “What happened?”
“I offered her the deal directly.”
“And her husband?”
“He came around.”
I take another drink. “Did the accountant have opinions?”
“The accountant had nothing,” he says. “The accountant was decorative.”
After dinner, I go upstairs, sit on the edge of the bed, and run the logic.
I’m feeding Reeves. That’s true. I’m building something real, something significant, the most important work I’ve done in ten years, happening inside this house.
I’m not going to walk away from it because the situation has gotten complicated.
I knew it was complicated from the beginning.
I decided to stay because of the story. The story is still the story. Nothing about that has changed.
I’m also still here.
I sit on the edge of the bed, and I think about the way he sat at that table tonight.
Not performing anything. Not managing anyone. I’ve been sitting across from him at meals for weeks, and I thought I understood what I was looking at.
I did not understand what I was looking at.
The full scale of it landed tonight, and it’s sitting in my chest right now doing something I can’t rationalize, and I have tried.
I’ve been sitting here trying for twenty minutes, and the trying is not working because my body has made up its mind.
Every part of me screams for him, in a way that has nothing to do with loathing for the monster that he is.
He is not a good man, but the fact isn’t making the pull go away.
If anything, it’s making it worse.
I get up before I finish deciding.
I’ve made a decision, and I’m not going to pretend that walking down the hallway to his room is something that just happens to me. Tonight I choose it.
His door is slightly ajar. I push it open and step inside. The room is dimly lit by one lamp on the side table. Nikolai is standing near the window, looking out at the dark grounds, a glass of something in his hand. He turns when he hears me.
For a second, he just looks at me, surprised. Then something shifts in his expression. He sets the glass down slowly.
I walk across the room until I’m standing right in front of him. My heart is beating hard, but not from anger this time. I reach up, slide my hand behind his neck, and pull him down to kiss me.
The kiss is different. Slower. Deeper. There’s no rush, no fight.
His mouth moves against mine with a kind of quiet intensity that makes my stomach tighten.
His hands settle on my waist, warm through the thin fabric of my shirt.
He doesn’t grab or pull. He just holds me there while we kiss, slow and deliberate.
When we finally break apart, I’m already breathing differently.
I start unbuttoning his shirt. My fingers are not shaking, but they feel unsteady anyway. He watches me the whole time, letting me do it.
When I push the shirt off his shoulders, he reaches for the hem of my top and pulls it over my head. We undress each other without speaking, piece by piece, until there is nothing left between us.
He guides me backward toward the bed and lays me down gently. The sheets are cool against my bare skin. He follows me down, settling between my legs, his body warm and heavy in the best way.
He kisses me again, slower this time, then moves lower. His mouth trails down my neck, across my collarbone, over my breasts. He takes one nipple into his mouth and sucks gently, then harder, until I arch my back and let out a soft moan. His hand slides down my stomach and between my thighs.
I’m already wet. When his fingers find my clit and start circling slowly, my breath catches. He takes his time, watching my face as he touches me. Two fingers slide inside me, stroking deep and steady while his thumb keeps working my clit.
“Nikolai…” The name slips out before I can stop it.
He doesn’t say anything. He just keeps going, slow and patient, building the pleasure gradually. His mouth joins his hand, tongue replacing his thumb on my clit while his fingers curl inside me.
The sensation is overwhelming in its gentleness. There’s no anger to hide behind, no rough edges to grip. Just this slow, steady climb that I can’t control.
My hips start moving against his mouth. My hand finds his hair and grips it. Soft moans fall from my lips as the pressure builds, deeper and warmer than before.
He doesn’t speed up. He stays right there, licking and sucking and stroking until my thighs begin to tremble.
When the orgasm comes, it rolls through me slowly at first, then crashes hard.
I gasp his name again as my back arches off the bed, and my pussy clenches around his fingers.
Waves of pleasure move through me, long and deep.
He keeps licking me gently through every pulse until I’m shaking and breathless.
Only then does he move back up my body. He kisses me, letting me taste myself on his tongue. His cock is hard and hot against my thigh. He looks down at me, eyes dark and steady. For a long moment, we just breathe together, faces close.
This already feels different. And that difference scares me more than anything we’ve done before.
Nikolai shifts his hips and pushes inside me slowly, inch by inch, until he’s buried completely. I let out a long, shaky breath. He fills me so deeply like this. There’s no rush, no slamming. Just the thick, heavy feeling of him stretching me open and staying there.
He stays still for a few seconds, letting me adjust, letting me feel every inch of him. Then he starts to move in slow, deep rolls of his hips. He pulls almost all the way out for every thrust and slides back in, grinding against me at the end of every stroke, so I feel him everywhere.
I wrap my legs around his waist and my arms around his shoulders. Our faces stay close. His forehead rests against mine. We keep our eyes open, watching each other as he fucks me.
It feels too intimate. Too much.
His breathing is rough but controlled. Every time he sinks deep, a soft sound escapes me. I can’t stop the little moans that keep slipping out. My hands slide up into his hair, holding on as the pleasure builds slowly, steadily, relentlessly.
“You feel so good,” he murmurs against my lips, voice low and rough. “So fucking good.”
I don’t know how to answer that. So I kiss him instead, deep and desperate, trying to hide how much his words affect me.
He kisses me back while still moving inside me, slow and deep, like he has all the time in the world.
The pressure inside me keeps growing. It’s not the sharp, violent kind I’m used to with him. This is warmer, heavier, spreading through my whole body. My fingers tighten in his hair. My legs start to tremble around him.
“Nikolai…” I whisper his name without meaning to. It comes out soft and broken.
He makes a low sound in his throat and thrusts a little deeper, grinding against my clit with every stroke. The pleasure coils tighter and tighter until I can’t hold it anymore.
I come hard, my pussy clenching around his cock in long, rolling waves. A choked moan escapes me as my back arches off the bed. My eyes stay locked on his the entire time. The orgasm feels endless, deeper than the ones before. It leaves me shaking and gasping beneath him.
He doesn’t stop moving. He keeps fucking me through it, slow and steady, drawing it out until I’m whimpering against his mouth.
Only when my body starts to relax does he let himself go. His thrusts become slightly faster, a little deeper. His hand cups the side of my face, thumb brushing over my cheek as he looks straight into my eyes.
“Nina,” he breathes, voice strained.
A few more deep strokes and he comes, burying himself as deep as he can go. He groans low and quiet, forehead still resting against mine as he finishes.
We stay like that for a long time, still connected, breathing the same air. Neither of us speaks. The room is quiet except for the sound of our breathing and the distant noise outside.
Eventually, he pulls out slowly and rolls onto his back.
I need water.
I sit up, reach for the glass on the nightstand, and drink half of it. My hair is damp at the back of my neck. The room is warm and dark, and I’m not sorry I came.
He watches me put the glass down.
“Why did you come tonight?” he asks.
“You’re my husband, Nikolai.” I look at him. “It’s completely legal to do this kind of stuff.”
He’s quiet.
“What do you do,” I say, “to a person who crosses you?”
“Why?”
“I want to know what I’m lying next to.”
He looks at me for a long moment. “Depends on the person,” he says.
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning some people know what they’re doing when they do it. Some don’t.” He holds my eyes. “I treat them accordingly.”
I nod slowly.
“Why?” he asks.
I lie back down. “I’m a journalist,” I answer. “I ask questions.”
He looks at me for another second. Then he looks back at the ceiling.
“Go to sleep, Nina.”
I don’t.