Chapter Thirty-Seven
Maksim.
Parker’s words ring loud in my ears an hour after he’s left the library.
I’ve stared at the wall of books across me for just as long, ruminating over the information he gave me.
I feel… hollow. My wife, as strong as she is, wants nothing more than to be a mother.
We’ve had this conversation before where I’ve asked if wanting to be a mother is against feminism, and she laughed at me.
Explaining that in her eyes, raising strong women is a kind of feminism.
She believes and helped me recognize that being a mother is just as difficult as being a woman in a working field.
That the job is twice as demanding. But it’s more so the work of rediscovering the power women wield in their bodies.
“There will never be a moment more powerful in our marriage than the day you watch me go through labor and give birth to the future generation. You will hold a magnificent little thing in the palm of your hands and know that that child will exert generations of knowledge, carry our history, and teach us a few things as well…”
For a second I think of my mother. How much of the load she carried in her marriage, not just with raising me, but helping my father carry out plans between teaching neighborhood kids piano, hosting fundraisers, and being a wife and socialite.
I get up from the sofa I've been left sedentary on, take a deep breath, and dab the cigar on the ashtray until it’s out.
Fuck, I came in here fucking smug as shit, and now I’m eating it.
Goddamnit. I turn off the light and head up the stairs, taking them one by one as slowly as I can.
I’m in no rush seeing as I have a lot to fucking apologize for.
I emit a low, agitated groan and pause with my hand on the crystal doorknob before opening the door to our bedroom, standing just outside the threshold, thinking of the right words to say to my wife.
I don’t have any other than ‘I’m sorry.’
Music softly fills the room, and I follow it to the bathroom, where I find Sabrina with her damp hair up in a bun and her cheek resting on her knees she’s brought up to her chest in the antique clawfoot bathtub.
She’s facing the wall; the blush pink bubbles in the water are just below her knees, and I almost fall to mine to crawl to her.
My chest aches at the view of my wife so…
devoid of life once more. My heart is somehow beating too big and too slow at the sight of my wife’s usual poise so…
somber. I did that. Not alone. There are so many factors hurting all of us from so many different angles, but I'm not helping. I’m hurting.
Parker was right to add on to my already bruised face. I deserved it.
“Sabrina,” I choke out as soon as I get to her.
“Just… leave me alone, Maksim… please,” she sobs softly.
“I can’t,” I admit. My jaw flexes at the thought that maybe we’re worse than before.
She sniffs before turning her head to face me, and my heart weeps.
Tiny, diamond-coated tears roll down her flushed cheeks.
Her face is still angular and missing her usual softness, not having gained any of her weight back.
I realize I haven’t seen her eat a fucking cupcake in what feels like years.
Those usual mesmerizing verdant eyes of hers with slats of gray are red-rimmed and watery.
Tears unlikely to end soon. “I’m fine,” she lies on a breath that feels like a shiver.
“Why didn’t you tell me you thought you were pregnant?”
“Because you mattered more. I can have another child. I know how incredibly terrible that sounds. Christ, lately it feels like everything I blurt out is just the fucking worst.” She shakes her head.
“Everything I feel on the inside lately feels icky and feels like it sticks to my insides like a consuming tar.”
“Sabrina—”
“Let me finish, please.”
I give barely a nod of my head and then she does so.
“I can have another child, Maksim. What I cannot have, nor find… is another you. If this version of you is all I get to have… then I’ll take it.
No matter how much it kills me. If all you will use me for is to bear the future Giordano line, and the most I get called is your fucktoy—which, trust me, it’s hot in the moment—then so be it.
I will still love you. I will love you with all I am and fight to bring my king back to me—” Her voice breaks.
“Because I do not love you with my heart, Maksim… I love you with my entire soul. And that is my cross to bear.”
I reach forward and cup her face in my hand. “Nobody could replace you for me, Duchess. You’re everything I never knew I needed.”
“Then treat me like it, Maksim. Treat me the way I deserve.”
“I don’t know how right now,” I brood. “Shit happened to me, and I’m trying to figure it all out.
There’s bits and there’s pieces. It’s all fucking fuzzy, and every time I wake up, I will the memories to come back and they won’t.
You talk about tar sticking to your insides, and I feel like that same tar, Sabrina.
Every move I make feels slow, every thought I have is full of this need for more vengeance, but the person who did this to me, who ordered these people to do what they did to me, is dead.
Not that I'm mad that you killed him, trust me, I’m glad I got to watch that happen.
Every time I think about it, it soothes something in me.
It’s this fucking nightmare that I can’t stop reliving every goddamn night like fucking clockwork,” I rush out.
“It’s this fucking anxiety that has me on edge. ”
“So then love me, Maksim.” Her words are gentle, but they carry so much fucking weight. “Let me help. Let me take it away for you.”
I shake my head, knowing what she’s asking for.
“You show me how you love me every time you feel yourself falling into that pit. Latch onto me. Just… just don't… please don’t not love me.”
“Cara… I don’t know if I can give that to you right now.
If I were a better man, I would let you go.
But I'm not. I'm a lesser, selfish motherfucker, and knowing I have you to come home to, knowing there's a place for me in your heart, feels like the only glimmer of light to me right now.
Emotionally, anyway. No matter how much you hate me in the moment.
“I would put you in a glass cage in the basement if you ever tried to leave me, Duchess.
I told you once, you will forever be my bride, little moonbeam.
My word is my bond. So don't try it,” I warn her.
I meant it to come off as a joke, but it's not.
“I would find you like you found me, drag you back from whatever paradise you thought you discovered without me just for you to rule hell with me at my side. Always at my side, wife.”
She leans closer to me, pleading with her sea glass eyes. Fuck, the tears in them make them look like endless pools. I could drown in them. In her. Only ever her. How does she do this to me? “So then kiss me.”
“Sabrina…”
“Let me just try, husband…” Her eyes close, and a few more tears leak out.
She trembles like she’s afraid I'll reject her.
Never. The first touch of her lips against mine is tentative, feather-soft, and full of need.
For me. I can feel her soul reaching out to mine, and how can I say no when mine wants her—loves her—just as much?
I shove my hands into the warm, sudsy water, one arm beneath her knees, the other curved around her back as I lift her out of the water.
Her arms go over my neck as her kiss deepens, tongue begging for entry.
I grant it, just as I deposit her onto our marital bed, her naked, glistening body soaking the sheets for us already.
Her thighs fall open, showing me that side of paradise only she is able to give me.
“You are still so fucking breathtaking, Duchess.”
I shrug off my clothes, cock already hard and jutting out before me.
The mattress dips beneath my knee as I kneel between her legs and fall over her, using my other knee to slide her leg further up and over mine.
Shoving my hand beneath her head, I cradle it, tangling my fingers into her hair.
“Look at me.” She does; the desire in her eyes is unmistakable, so thick it is tangible.
This is what she needs from me. To prove that no matter what outside forces could tear us apart…
we won’t let them. I lick two of my fingers and reach between us, feeling how slippery the viscosity of her sweet pussy’s nectar is and groan. “Already this wet for me?”
She gasps an “Always” the second I force my fingers into her hot cunt and her knees squeeze my ribcage. “Maksim!”
“I said, eyes on me, Duchess. Don’t you dare look away.
” Her pussy grows hotter, wetter around my fingers.
My wife writhes beneath me, silently pleading for more of me.
“There you are, so fucking gorgeous.” I cover her mouth with mine, devouring her, and every time she tries to close her beautiful eyes I shove my fingers into her roughly, beckoning a shattered gasp that lets me taste her want. Her need for me. It fucks me up.
“Now watch.” I look down between us, where my cock is hard above her stomach, pre-cum pooling on her delicate flesh, and pull out of her sopping cunt, using her arousal to coat myself.
I rub the tip of my dick over her swollen clit.
Her moan is needy, eager, hungry as her nails dig into my back.
I tilt my pelvis down and push, mesmerized by the way her sensitive, hot pink flesh stretches around me to suck me in.
Perfect little fat pussy lips encase my cock like a fucking dream.
“That’s a beautiful sight, Moonbeam. Look at how well you take my cock.
Made for me, weren’t you?” I draw back and impale her so agonizingly slow it feels like torture.