Chapter 13Ana
Ana
The sensation I wake up to is so sharp and electric I start thrashing, only for a firm arm to band across my torso, pinning my hands, and a heavy leg to weigh down my calves.
A memory.
Almost.
A terrible one. It glimmers at the edges, threatening to crush me all over again because it’s an arm around my waist and a hand on my mouth. It’s being yanked backward. Dragged. It’s–
“Shhh, Ana.”
Just like that, the memory vanishes, snatched as cleanly as I was, leaving only the question about whether it was truly a memory or just the possibility of what happened to me. My instincts tell me to grab for it; my self-preservation tells me to let it go.
This is not where my two halves join. This is not how I become the old Ana. Not through that door.
“Vasily?” I whisper, even though I’ve already caught his scent and recognized his warmth and attempted to melt into it.
But couldn’t, because I’m pretty sure he’s hooked a 9V to my clit.
“Of course,” he says so silkily that ok, yeah, I do melt a little.
I shimmy until I find that just-right spot that I can breathe and whisper, “What is that?”
“A sex toy,” he murmurs, pressing a kiss to my shoulder.
Which has me realizing that not only is my shoulder bare, my whole body is. His, too. He’s damp. The pungent scent of his oakmoss soap tells me he’s just gotten out of the shower. His body is curved around mine to contain me. I feel his stiff cock laying along my slit.
And, yep, a sex toy.
A really incredibly strong sex toy.
“I... don’t know if this is okay,” I manage to say, but good grief, it’s a struggle. This thing feels like it’s going to suck my clit right off my body. I don’t even know if I’m about to orgasm so much as just freaking pee myself.
“It’s fine. God didn’t hear you ask.”
I flinch, but it actually helps move the thing to a less terrorizing spot. “Um, what?”
“It’s not a sin if—oh, that’s not what you meant.”
“You used a... whatever this thing is while I was sleeping, Vasily. I don’t think you’re supposed to do that!”
“A rose. It’s a rose, see?”
The thing comes off my clit with an audible pop before Vasily waves it in front of my face. It has a single red light on it, but it’s just enough illumination that I can see the truncated tear drop shape .
I’m sleepy enough I don’t think to stop him before the gadget attaches to my clit again.
“Holy mother of pearl!” I squeal.
Vasily laughs huskily. “I love you so fucking much, you know that? And let me remind you that you’re asleep in my bed, which is an obvious invitation for me to wake you up however I want.”
Well, dang. He’s got me there. Why am I even in his bed?
Oh right, because he didn’t come home. I made dinner and put on the sexiest dress in my closet and thought of a dozen questions to casually pepper in to try to learn more about who we both are and what drove me away from him when right now, I cannot imagine wanting to be anywhere but this bed.
But he didn’t come home, so dinner had to go into the fridge and the dress got traded for pajamas and I got really sad. I thought I’d feel better if I slept in his bed and kissed him goodnight when he got home, though.
I was right.
But I don’t know if that means I agreed to be woken up by a clitoral assault.
“The toy, though?” I ask, although it’s crazy how difficult this thing is making it to talk. Like, I don’t want to say Vasily’s own body isn’t as good at this. He’s definitely driven me wordless with his fingers and his tongue on my clit. But this?
Hachi machi.
I squirm more against him, and he lets out a deep, happy rumble as he rolls against me, rubbing his cock along me to add extra tingles when I really do not need extra tingles.
“I did some research on how to get you pregnant,” he says.
“Pretty sure you’ve been . . . you’ve been doing the . . . oh God, I’m going to come. ”
With another audible pop, the rose comes off my clit, the sensation powerful enough to nearly have me breaking but too brief to actually push me. I cry out as much in frustration as in pleasure, irrationally about to demand he put it back. I grind myself against him, but it’s not enough.
“Yes, that’s how I want you,” he says, laughing darkly. “All slutty and needy for me. You want to come, don’t you?”
“Please?”
“Not yet. See, my research today told me that I need to keep you right on the edge. On this edge.”
He brings the toy back to my clit, and yet again, the suction and the vibration of it has my entire body jerking. “Nooooo,” I moan.
“Yes, Ana. This is where you need to be. Right here. It’s building pressure inside you, isn’t it?”
“Vasily,” I whimper, attempting to grab the rose myself, to take control of the situation, but I have no control over anything. Vasily is all over me. He’s inside me even though he’s not. He’s taken over everything.
I love it.
But I’m dying.
Oh, God.
“You feel that, don’t you? It keeps building . . . and building . . . and building.”
My body starts to shiver, a full vibration from the top of my head to the tips of my toes.
“You’re so fucking good,” he groans. “You’re mine, all mine. I’m keeping you forever.”
I open my mouth, and a deep, low keen from the depths of my soul leaks from it .
He pulls the rose off.
“No, Ana. You keep that inside. You let the pressure build, okay?”
The rose goes back on.
I start to sob, curling into him as much as I can, allowing no other outlet other than pushing into him with everything I’ve got.
He’s my skin.
He contains me.
“You keep yourself right there, Ana. You keep yourself there as long as you can, build all that pressure. Because everything it releases, you’ll need back. You’ll have to fill yourself back up. And with my cock plugging you, you won’t have any choice to fill back up with my seed.”
“Please!” I gasp, unable to contain myself much longer. I’m going to burst, and he’s not inside me. Everything he’s saying is so dumb— clearly no research told him this— but I want it.
I want it all.
I want to be filled with him.
And I can’t think straight, let alone voice my thoughts, when he’s controlling everything and torturing me and possessing me and loving me so damn hard. Because no one puts this much effort into crafting a permanent bond with someone else unless they love them like nothing else in the world.
I don’t know why I left. I don’t know if it was my choice or his or how long it’s been since I was here last, I just know I’m never going to leave again and nothing could take me away from him. He’d have to peel me off him to send me away, and he’d never do that.
He loves me.
“Now,” I moan, able to get that single syllable out, and then out and out and out, a chant as that damn rose wrecks my sanity .
“I’m going to fill everything,” he whispers against my ear. His words alone will surely break me. “My cum is going to be everywhere inside you, Ana, it will take over everything, to breed you over and over again.”
“Now now now now nooooooooooooow!”
His cock slides into me just in time for me to burst.
I turn my head into my pillow. I have no idea if we have neighbors; so far, I’ve seen this apartment and his office, nothing else. I’ve met Kostya and a couple delivery people, neither of whom spoke more than a couple words of English. If I ever spoke Spanish, it didn’t survive the concussion.
I was supposed to see a local neurologist as soon as I could, and I don’t even have a phone to set up an appointment.
So no, I don’t turn into the pillow to keep the neighbors from hearing me. I just need to be contained in every possible way. The way Vasily rolls over me just enough that his weight starts to press down does a great deal of it, but I need more.
I need to be held together at my seams.
I need all of me to be sealed up so I don’t lose another piece.
So I don’t lose any more of myself.
So I don’t lose Vasily ever again.
I’m suddenly hit by the most palpable, undefinable emotion.
It’s bliss at its highest level; that’s unquestionable.
The way he grinds over me isn’t rough right now so much as it’s intense.
There’s a need to it matching mine. When he takes one of my hands in his and leads them both up to my mouth, it’s like he knows that I just needed to bite down on something.
I’m practically breaking the skin over his white knuckles, but his groan is of primal dominance .
But there’s also this grief. At first, I think it’s that fear of this ending, but then I feel it pounding more loudly against my mind until something shatters inside.
Not my pussy.
My mind.
“Vasya,” I scream into the pillow.
He shifts us to lock me into him, to pin me down and block me from escaping— not that I have a single bone left in my body to escape with— as he groans, “Zvyozdochka,” and empties himself inside me.
I swear he was right about that suction thing. It was so stupid and clearly made up, but I feel like I can taste him on my tongue.
And I know even less Russian than I do Spanish, but I know that word. It’s me, it’s what he calls me. I have no idea what it means, and I have no idea why he calls me that.
I can’t escape the horrific knowledge that he hasn’t called me that in a very long time.
I burst into tears.
“Vasya,” I sob again.
“Shh, shh, zvyozdochka,” he murmurs, rubbing my side and kissing my shoulder blade, his touches firm and soothing in equal parts.
Holding me together.
My next “Vasya” is softer as the ugliest part of my brain finally begins to settle itself so that I can come back into myself again.
“Shh, zvyozdochka. Ya tebya lyublyu. Ya tak sil’no tebya lyublyu, zvyozdochka.”
My breathing is still a mess, but the words fill me so well I have to ask, “What did that mean?”
“Fuck,” Vasily pants, making me realize this took just as much out of him as it did me. “Fuck, zvyozdochka. You know what it means.”
I frown. Do I know Russian? No, definitely not. The church service he took me to was in Russian, and as much as it gave me some peace, I think I would have liked it better if I’d understood it. But when I think about it, I realize I don’t need to speak Russian to understand the words.
I know exactly what he means, no matter the language he says it in.
“I guess you’re right. Yak tack silly to belly blue you too.”
Vasily goes very still above me, popping up on his hands to peel his body off mine. For one awful second, I think my attempt to speak Russian has called his ancestry into question or something.
But then he bursts into the most gut-busting laugh that keeps going even as he flops to the side.
I do a little flip-flop myself, remaining on my belly but facing him, and the fact that whatever I just said brought him this much happiness eases the rest of my sick feelings away.
He looks a decade younger lying there, with his arm tossed over his forehead, his chest jolting as little spasms of laughter escape between breaths, and I wonder if this was what it was like when we first met.
If so, it’s easy to understand how we fell in love despite the circumstances that brought us together.
He peeks over at me from under his arm and flashes me a brilliant grin.
I melt all over again.
He lifts the arm that rests between us and drops it down on my ass in a firm spank that has me squeaking and squirming and feeling good all over.
When he finally bundles me up in his arms and the blankets and whispers, “You are the very love of my life, zvyozdochka, never doubt the truth of that,” I pretend to ignore how foreboding the sentiment could be.
I shouldn’t, though, because in the ephemeral twilight that I eventually drift into, that vague realm between not-quite-awake and not-quite-asleep, long after Vasily’s breathing deepens with sleep because I’d already been abed for several hours when he returned home, another name creeps into my brain.
This isn’t a name without definition or context, though. This is a name with a face. This is a name with blond hair as pale as Vasily’s and eyes just as blue, a big, silly smile and an endless well of joy within.
I know him.
Oh God, he is my heart every bit as much as Vasily is.
I sit up, breathless. Panicked.
Where is he?
“Vasya?” I say as calmly as I can because there’s gotta be a reasonable explanation for this there’s just gotta be but where is he “Vasya, wake up! Wake—!”
I let out a little shriek as he suddenly rolls over me, reaches into the space between the bed and the headboard, produces a gun from the space between the bed and the headboard, and points it at the door.
He blinks a couple times as I work to unfreeze myself and stop my heart from heart-attacking.
“Shit, sorry,” he groans, rubbing the bridge of his nose with the butt of his gun, something we’re going to have a serious talk about in the morning. He looks down at me and frowns. “What is it, zvyozdochka? Are you okay?”
“I—uhh . . . I—where’s Artom?”
“Fuck, what?” He breathes and rolls back into his spot as he tucks the gun back into its spot.
“Artom!” I hiss at him. Good grief, it’s not like I’m asking about some random person here. “Where’s Artom?”
He sits up, and the look on his face has my heart pounding all over again because it’s not surprise I’m seeing, it’s sadness. Where is Artom?
“Oh, zvyozdochka, I’m sorry. It’s just been so long that I’m surprised you would have remembered him of all people.”
“What do you mean? How could I forget him? I mean, yeah, amnesia, but...”
He pulls me up in a big hug that feels as much for him as it is for me. “I suppose, but you knew him so briefly before he died.”
Everything stops.
How can it not.
How can he say that so smoothly.
How can
How can this be possible.
I cover my mouth with my hand. I don’t even know why. No sound was coming out of it. No breath. This is impossible.
I try to wrap my brain around this. I try to grab a single memory because it’s gotta gotta be there it’s gotta but it’s all gone and what do I do if it never comes back and it’s just gone and
And I break.
“What do you mean, our son died?”