Charlotte
I wake slowly, like surfacing from a deep, warm ocean I didn’t want to leave.
My body aches everywhere. A low, heavy throb between my thighs. Muscles sore in places I didn’t know existed. My scent and his scent tangled in the sheets around me. Heat rushes through my cheeks as flashes of last night hit me.
His mouth pressed against me. His hands stroking and squeezing. His voice telling me to breathe. His body moving inside mine until I forgot pain even had a name.
I press my fingers to my lips. They still feel kissed.
My body still hums with everything he did to me. Everything he said. The Russian words from yesterday’s lesson flicker uninvited through my mind, Я не понимаю.
But I do understand.
I understand that when he spoke to me in Russian, low and rough and right against my skin, it wasn’t just a language. It was possession.
I trace my bottom lip with the pad of my thumb and picture his mouth shaping the consonants before it did such wicked, sinful things to me… I turn and reach out for him, but the other side of the bed is empty. Cool.
Of course he’d be up early, buttoned into one of those perfect suits, pretending last night was a transaction instead of the world cracking open and letting fire in.
At least, that’s what happened to me.
I sit up with a soft gasp, tenderness sharp in my center. I move carefully, testing. My entire lower body complains, but beneath it…is something else. Something like pride. Like proof that I’m not invisible anymore.
The shower calls to me, a promise of warmth. I pad into the bathroom, wincing a little with every step. My breath leaves me when I catch sight of myself in the mirror.
Neck and chest marked by his mouth. Inner thighs bruised by his grip. Eyes bright, skin flushed, lips swollen.
I look ruined. I look alive.
Under the hot spray, I close my eyes and let the water pound into tight muscles. My thoughts flip restlessly between What have I done? and I’d do it again.
When I emerge wrapped in a towel, reality hits. I have no clothes.
Everything I owned fit into a bottom locker in the maid’s wing. What am I supposed to do, go down to breakfast in a bath towel and ask if Sophia has a spare sweater?
My gaze lands on the chair where he tossed his shirt last night. White. Crisp. Expensive. It smells like him. Clean cold air and something dangerous.
I slip it on.
It swallows me whole, the hem brushing mid-thigh. The collar gapes, showing the marks he left. The sleeves fall past my hands. I roll them clumsily and tell myself this is fine. This is respectable enough in what is our own private wing of a huge house.
My heart climbs into my throat as I step out into the hallway. I have to find him. Ask about breakfast. Ask about clothes. Ask about… everything.
Or maybe just see him again. Make sure last night wasn’t something he regrets.
I follow the quiet stretch of the corridor and head down the stairs. He appears in the doorway at the base of the stairs. Dark suit. Crisp shirt. Perfect hair. The opposite of me in every conceivable way.
He looks at me, and the look on his face steals the floor from beneath me.
His gaze locks on my bare legs, travels slowly upward, pausing at the hem of his shirt, then lifts to my face as if to confirm I’m real.
Heat floods his eyes. Control frays in a visible crack I swear I could hear.
“I, um—” My voice wobbles. “I didn’t have anything else to wear.”
He moves towards me like a storm gathering its strength.
“That looks better on you than on me,” he says, voice low and rough.
My knees nearly buckle.
He reaches into his desk drawer and pulls something out. My earbuds. Then he dips, and when he stands he has a box filled with the stuff from my locker in the maid’s quarters.
“You left these,” he says. “I assume you still want to learn Russian.”
I stare. “Yes.”
He steps closer, every inch a calm predator, and places the earbuds gently in my palm. His fingers brush mine.
“I could help you,” he adds. “If you want.”
I don’t know why that makes my throat tighten. Maybe because he’s offering something that isn’t part of the contract.
“I’d like that,” I whisper.
Something warms in his expression. A flicker of satisfaction he doesn’t hide fast enough.
He wants me to understand him. Not just his orders. Him.
“Lunches,” he says, voice low and certain. “Every afternoon, we eat together. And we speak only Russian.”
It sounds less like a lesson and more like a claim.
His jaw clenches. Hard. Like he’s fighting urges I’m too na?ve to understand. He breathes in slowly, nostrils flaring. “How do you feel this morning?”
“Like I’ve been run over by a very attentive truck,” I admit.
A sound escapes him. It’s half-laugh, half-groan. He reaches and trails one finger lightly along the inside of my thigh.
“Sore?”
My breath stutters. “A little.”
His hand withdraws instantly. “It’s stipulated in our agreement that you rest today. A day of recovery is mandatory after the first time.”
He’s trying to be clinical. Detached. It’s not working. I can see the fraying edges of his restraint, and I like it.
“But I don’t want to rest,” I say quietly.
That’s when the facade breaks.
His eyes darken. His chest rises as he sucks in a breath meant to steady him, and fails. He closes the distance between us in two long strides.
“If I touch you again right now,” he murmurs, voice a delicious threat, “I won’t stop. And you are already hurting.”
“I don’t mind the ache,” I whisper. “It makes me feel real. It reminds me of what we did. I really enjoyed what we did.”
He curses under his breath in Russian, and it sounds all too dangerous, too intimate. His hand finds the small of my back, guiding me toward the desk in his office.
“Sit,” he orders.
The command shoots through me like heat.
I lean back against the edge of polished wood and slide back just enough the my legs hang, not quite touching the floor.
He disappears through a door I hadn’t noticed when I walked in, and when he returns, he kneels between my legs to press a warm wet cloth gently between my thighs.
Against the tender ache of where his body was last night.
His eyes lift to mine. “Tell me if it’s too hot.”
I shake my head slightly, it’s all I can manage.
His hands remain, holding the compress in place, holding me in place as he leans over me. My breath comes fast, shallow. His thumbs brush the insides of my thighs, barely there.
“You shouldn’t look at me like that,” he rasps.
“How am I looking at you?” My voice sounds nothing like mine. It’s too breathless and a little more brave than I ever remember it being.
“Like you want more.”
“I do.” Even though I know I shouldn’t.
His control breaks so visibly it’s almost audible, a snapped leash falling to the ground between us. He sinks to his knees and I spread mine so his broad shoulders fit between them.
He presses the compress against me harder, and my body responds with a low moan as pleasure takes root and starts to unfurl.
His voice, when it comes, is a vow broken and remade in the same breath:
“You’re going to be the death of me and my rules.”
He presses a kiss to the inside of my thigh and I shiver with delight.
“The contract clearly stipulated you need rest today,” he says, nipping at the delicate skin of the inside of my thigh. “And then you walk in here wearing my shirt and nothing else…”
“I’m ovulating Vitali,” I counterargue, hoping the facts will outweigh the terms of the contract. “You want me to give birth in nine months time, then you need to fuck me repeatedly and relentlessly over the next five days.”