6. Katya
Katya
Blood drips from my hands, but it’s not mine.
I’m standing over three bodies in what looks like a government facility, and I know how each one died.
The man by the door? Shot to the temple.
The woman by the window? Neck snapped.
The runner? A knife between the ribs, angled up into his heart.
My reflection stares back from a dark computer screen, and the face looking at me isn’t the confused art curator Dmitri keeps telling me I am.
This woman has ice in her veins and death in her eyes. She knows what she is.
A killer.
I move through the facility like I own it. Corners, exits, threats—I clear them without thought.
My body flows from one position to another with practiced ease. The knife in my hand feels like an extension of my arm. It feels natural and right.
I remember the mission briefing. Three targets. High-value assets who betrayed their country. My job was to eliminate them without leaving evidence.
The first kill was too easy.
The man never saw me coming. One swift movement, and he crumpled onto his keyboard.
The woman put up more of a fight. She was trained; I could tell from her stance when she turned around. But her training was civilian self-defense, maybe some basic military combatives.
Nothing compared to what I was capable of. When I snapped her neck, the sound echoed through the empty office like a gunshot.
The third one ran. Stupid move, but I let him think he had a chance.
I let him get almost to the exit before I put the knife in his back. He died knowing he’d been hunted by something far more dangerous than himself.
And I enjoyed every second.
“Katya.” A voice cuts through the dream, dragging me back to consciousness. “Wake up, kotyonok.”
I surface with a gasp, my hands still in fists.
My heart still pounds with the sick satisfaction of watching those people die.
The dream felt real. More real than anything in this manufactured life.
“You were having a nightmare,” Dmitri says, steady and close. His hand finds mine, forcing my clenched fingers open one by one. “But I’ll decide what’s real for you, kotyonok.”
I blink until my eyes adjust and find him sitting on the edge of the bed, still fully dressed in dark jeans and a black shirt. His hair is mussed like he’s just woken up.
“What time is it?”
“Three in the morning. You were thrashing around and crying out.”
The way he watches me makes my skin prickle with awareness. Not fear, but something else.
“I’m sorry I woke you.”
“I wasn’t sleeping.” He reaches out slowly, giving me time to pull away.
My body reacts before my head does, a sharp twitch like I’m bracing for a hit.
His eyes tighten for a second. Not worry. Something else. Like he knows more about that reflex than I do.
But his fingers only brush my cheek, and the tension breaks. The heat that follows catches me off-guard.
“You’re covered in sweat.”
The touch sends electricity down my spine, and I hate how my body responds to him.
Heat pools low in my belly, and my breath catches in my throat. Even terrified and confused, I want him.
“The dreams feel so real,” I whisper.
“Dreams feel real. That’s what makes them dangerous.” He traces his thumb along my jawline. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“No,” I snap, flinching at my own tone. “I want to forget it.”
His shoulders lower, and he lets out a sigh, almost like he’s relieved. “Then let’s focus on something else.”
He leans closer, and his hand slides from my cheek down to my neck, where his fingers rest against my pulse point.
“Like what?”
“Like this.”
His mouth crashes against mine, demanding and desperate, like he’s been holding back for weeks and has finally snapped.
I respond without thinking, like my body is remembering what my mind has forgotten about wanting him.
His tongue slides against mine, and I moan into his mouth. The sound should embarrass me, but nothing about this feels wrong, even though everything else in my life feels as though it’s built on lies.
He breaks the kiss to trail his mouth down my neck, and I arch against him instinctively.
“We should slow down,” he mutters against my throat, even as his hands shove my straps down.
He’s the one losing control, not me.
“Should we?”
“You’re vulnerable right now. Scared from the nightmare.”
I laugh breathlessly. “You think I’m the vulnerable one here?”
His hands still on my collarbone. “Enlighten me.”
“I mean, you look at me like you’re afraid I’m going to disappear.”
His body stiffens. He pulls back to meet my eyes. “Maybe I am.”
The honesty surprises me. This isn’t the smooth criminal who intimidates waiters. This is someone unguarded and uncertain.
“Then don’t let me.”
That ruins the last of his control. His mouth slams back against mine while his hands push my nightgown down around my waist. When his palms cover my breasts, I whimper and press into his touch.
He works over my body like he’s memorizing every inch, his mouth following the path his hands have mapped. When he takes one nipple between his lips, I thread my fingers through his hair and hold him against me.
His other hand works my remaining breast, and he rolls the nipple between his fingers until I’m writhing beneath him.
The combination of his mouth and hands sends heat straight between my legs, and I feel moisture gathering there.
“Please,” I breathe.
“Please what?”
“Touch me. Everywhere.”
His hand slides lower, over my stomach and down to where I’m already aching for him. When his fingers find me through the thin fabric of my panties, I buck against his touch.
“You’re soaked, kotyonok. I barely touched you.” He growls it, more threat than praise. “Do you even know what you’re doing to me?”
“Show me.”
He strips away my panties with one jerk and settles between my thighs. The first touch of his mouth makes me cry out and grip the sheets. He starts slow, broad strokes that make me tremble, then focuses on my most sensitive spot with devastating skill.
“Dmitri,” I gasp as my hips lift toward his mouth.
He responds by sliding two fingers inside me while his tongue circles and teases. The dual sensation makes me cry out, and my back arches off the bed. He works me with ruthless expertise, dragging it out until I’m trembling on the edge.
“That’s it,” he murmurs against me. “Let go for me.”
He adds a third finger, stretching me while his mouth works magic. The pleasure is so intense it borders on pain, and I can feel my orgasm building like a storm inside me.
“I’m going to?—”
“Not yet,” he says, pulling back just enough to deny me release. “I want you to take your time falling apart around my fingers.”
He returns to his torment, alternating between long, slow licks and quick movements that leave me gasping. His fingers work inside me, finding spots that make me see stars, and when he curls them just right while his tongue does something devastating, I nearly scream.
“Please, I need?—”
“I know what you need.”
He increases the pressure, his mouth working me while his fingers thrust deeper, harder. The coil of tension in my belly winds tighter and tighter until I think I might break from the pressure.
“Come for me, kotyonok.” It’s an order, but his voice frays like he needs it as much as I do.
The combination of his voice and his relentless attention pushes me over the edge. My orgasm crashes through me like a tidal wave with pleasure so intense it whites out my vision. I arch off the bed, crying out his name as wave after wave of sensation rolls through me.
He works me through it, gentling his touch as I come down from the high. When the last tremor fades, he moves up my body to gather me against him.
“Beautiful,” he breathes, pressing soft kisses to my neck. “Absolutely beautiful.”
I’m still catching my breath when another flash hits—not violent this time, but wrong in a different way.
Different hands. Different mouth. A man’s voice saying my name, but not the name Dmitri uses. He keeps calling me Alexandra, but that feels different. Official. Like he’s reading from a file.
His touch is skilled but mechanical, like he’s checking off items on a list rather than making love. And there’s something about the setting… bright white walls, the smell of antiseptic, and the feeling of being observed.
“Excellent reflexes, Agent Volkova,” the man says, and I realize this isn’t intimacy. It’s evaluation.
I jerk away from Dmitri so violently that I nearly fall off the bed.
“Stop. Something’s wrong.”
He pulls back, concern replacing desire on his face. “What happened?”
“A memory. But not… not the kind I should have.” I press my palms against my eyes. “Someone else. Someone who called me by a different name.”
He moves up to gather me against him, pulling the covers over my exposed body. “Dreams can feel very real after intense experiences.”
“It wasn’t a dream. He called me Alexandra, but that felt wrong. Like he didn’t have any right saying it.”
His arms tighten around me, and I catch something that looks like panic cross his face before he schools his features.
“Trauma can create false memories,” he says carefully. “The mind tries to fill in gaps with information that doesn’t belong.”
My gut says it wasn’t a dream at all, no matter what he calls it.
“But it felt so real. Like I’d lived it.”
“The important thing is that you’re here now. With me. Safe.”
But his voice has taken on that careful quality again. He’s choosing his words too precisely.
“Dmitri.”
“Yes?”
“Who am I really?”
The question sits between us like a loaded gun. He doesn’t answer immediately, and that hesitation tells me everything I need to know.
“You’re the woman I’m married to,” he finally declares. “That’s all that matters.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only answer I can give you.”
I settle back against his chest, hyperaware of his heartbeat under my ear, of how his body goes taut whenever I ask the wrong questions.
“Will you stay with me?”
“Of course.”
He adjusts so I can curl against his side, and he strokes my hair with gentle repetition. The gesture is soothing, but I can feel the control it’s taking for him to be tender when something darker lurks beneath the surface.
“The man in the memory,” I say quietly. “He knew what he was doing. Like he’d mapped my responses.”
“Perhaps it was an old boyfriend.” Dmitri’s hand stills in my hair. “Some men are just experienced.”
“It wasn’t experience. It was data collection.”
“Explain?”
“He touched me like he was running diagnostics. Like my body was equipment he needed to test.”
“That sounds like a nightmare, not a memory.”
“Maybe. But nightmares usually aren’t that detailed.”
He’s quiet for a long moment. “Try not to think about it. Focus on what’s real.”
“And what’s real?”
“This. Us. Right now.”
Something about the way he says it makes me think he’s trying to convince himself as much as me. Like he knows our time is limited and he’s trying to hold onto whatever we have before it disappears.
“Dmitri?”
“Mm?”
“In my other dreams, the violent ones… I’m not afraid. I’m good at what I’m doing.”
“Dreams don’t always reflect reality.”
“What if they do?”
His hand starts moving in my hair again, but the gesture feels more anxious. “Then we’ll deal with whatever that means when the time comes.”
The words should comfort me, but they don’t. There’s something desperate about the way he says them, like he’s making promises he’s not sure he can keep.
As I drift off, I catch him staring at the ceiling with the look of a man who knows he’s living on borrowed time. Like he’s waiting for something to happen that will change everything between us.
And maybe destroy it entirely.