Chapter Forty Five
Catherine
This isn’t fair.” My hands are bound to the bed frame with silk scarves Alexei scavenged from my closet. “I was good!”
“Good is relative, koshechka. You still look like you want to gouge my eyes out.”
“I do want to gouge your eyes out! I’m not so fuck-drunk that I’ve forgotten that!”
He laughs against my throat; a ticklish burst of warm breath shivers over my skin.
“Fuck-drunk? Christ, Katya.” His fingers brush my tousled hair away from my face, an action I can’t perform myself with my hands bound.
“I have missed kissing you,” he says, and his thumb rubs across my lower lip.
“You even think to bite me, and I will heat your ass for it.”
Alexei’s definition of gentle is fucked up. Really fucked up. But he layers his lips over mine, his tongue swiping at the seam of my lips, and…I don’t bite him. Maybe because I’m an idiot.
“My good girl,” he murmurs, and his palm cups my breast, kneading—gently.
God, it feels so good. I didn’t think I would miss being pawed and manhandled so much.
But he always knows exactly how to touch me, exactly what I want—even when I don’t know.
He takes my mouth with slow, deep strokes of his tongue, and I know this is exactly how he’ll take the rest of me.
The heat of his body burns over me. His fingers drift down my thigh, maneuvering my leg over his hip, and then he’s sliding so deep inside me that I gasp into our kiss. There’s a little pinch, a tug. I’m still sore and swollen from earlier, but I push past the ache and lift my hips to take more.
He gives an abbreviated groan into my mouth. “My God, koshechka. There is nothing like you.”
I murmur, “Alyosha.”
He freezes. “Sashulya,” he corrects irritably.
With an aggravated grunt, he retreats, withdrawing—from the kiss, from my body.
He flops onto his back with a sigh. “Alexei is dead, koshechka. You do not call me this name anymore.” There’s a severity in the words I don’t understand. Maybe I am fuck-drunk.
“You’re angry?” With me? I’m incredulous.
“Da, I am angry,” he says, and his fingers begin picking the knots from the scarves binding my wrists. “You never fucking listen. And now we must talk before I can fuck you properly, so you can understand why you must never call me this name.”
Despite the strain in his jaw, he massages my wrists with careful fingers. They’re not even sore. I’m sore other places, though. My knees squeeze together just a little, and he notices—of course he does.
“Come,” he says, and he does that manly chest-thump I’ve gotten so accustomed to. “You are sore. We will have this conversation in the bath.”
I don’t know why I feel so nervous, but my body is full of barely-restrained energy. More than I’ve had in months, like my whole body is coming alive again, awakening from a long, long hibernation. My head swims as I push myself up. Definitely fuck-drunk.
I hear the taps turning, the spray of water beginning to fill the tub. I see Alexei—Sashulya—doing something on his phone.
“What are you doing?”
“Turning off cameras.” It’s an absent response, and my spine stiffens.
“You put cameras in my house?”
He gives me a blank, unapologetic stare.
Of course he put cameras in my house. Of course the ruthless, morally-corrupt bratva boss put cameras in my house.
His hand clenches around his phone for a moment.
He tosses it aside, and it clatters onto the nightstand.
“You think I could let you go so easily? You think I would not want to know that you were safe, that you were happy?” A tendon in his throat is taut with strain.
“But you weren’t. You made me break my promise to you. ”
My breath catches in my throat. The last one, he means—that I would never see him again.
He didn’t promise he would never see me.
I feel myself soften—just a little. All this time, he’s been watching me?
I was never alone. Not really.
I swipe my hand across my burning eyes. “You moved,” I say, accusingly. “You had my visa denied!” My words sound strangled in my throat, choked with the tears that want to come.
“You wanted your freedom,” he snarls back.
“I gave it to you! I created for you the life you said you wanted. I hoped that it would help you heal when I could not.” A rough curse sears the air.
“You do not gain your freedom and then dangle yourself like bait in front of a man like me. Do you think this was easy for me? Do you think I did not wonder every day when you would bring home another man—a better man—and fuck him in this bed I bought for you?”
There’s a terrible lump in my throat. Like my body is trying to purge itself of the lingering resentment. “You didn’t even bother to say goodbye!”
He sighs, scrubbing his face with one hand. “You did not want that from me,” he says impatiently. And then, in a low voice, he admits, “I could not say those words to you. It was difficult enough to let you go. To watch you walk away from me would have been impossible.”
“I couldn’t even call you!”
“It was best for you that you could not do this,” he says.
“It was best even that I could not do this.” He shoves his fingers through his hair.
“Koshechka, you make me weak. You do not know how weak.” His feet slap across the floor as he crosses toward me and drops into a crouch.
“I did regret that,” he admits. “It is twenty-one hour flight from Moscow, and I had to watch you grieve.”
There’s a lump in my chest that it’s difficult to breathe around. “You let me grieve,” I say, and I can feel my lips quivering around the words. It’s a denunciation, an accusation.
He makes a rough sound deep in his throat. “Fuck this,” he declares, and lunges for me. It’s instinctive to struggle, but I know better by now—his arms are like bands of iron around me. I’m not going anywhere he doesn’t allow.
Water splashes, and he sinks with me into the depths of the tub. His palm presses my head against his shoulder. “Enough, koshechka.” His voice is a deep rumble near my ear. “Enough of this.” His lips brush my forehead. “Ya tebya lyublyu. I love you. I am sorry I hurt you.”
I subside with a shuddering sob, turning my face into the salty skin of his throat.
For long moments there’s just the rise and fall of his chest, the gentle slosh of the water around us.
That arm I’ve missed is wrapped around me, holding me close.
When my sobs fade into hiccoughs at last, he speaks again.
“Sasha,” he says. “And Shura. These are just nicknames for Aleksandr. Friends use these, and family. Shura is maybe a little more familiar. Close friends sometimes use this.” His fingertips slide along my arm. “Sashulya—this is a softer name. A woman uses this one with her lover.”
I can’t help the scathing sound that scratches at my throat. “What does the woman use when she’s angry?”
A muted laugh, lost against my temple. “Aleksandr,” he says. “You use this full name, Katya, and I will know you are angry. But if you are only annoyed, maybe you use Sashka or Sashenka. These are often used by family for children, and so the sound can be…patronizing. You see?”
I don’t; not really. I think there’s just a feeling to Russian diminutives that doesn’t translate well to English.
His voice firms. “There is no Alyosha anymore, koshechka. There can never be again. So you must not call me by this name, even by mistake.” As if to rub the command into my flesh and bones, his palm slides down my thigh.
My heart still squeezes in my chest. I’m still not okay. It doesn’t matter that he’s here with me now, holding me in his arms. I still remember the pain of his death. It’s still fresh in my mind. I can’t shake the feeling that none of this is real.
“Why did Alexei have to die?” I ask.
“For the same reason Catalina Russo had to die.”
I think he thinks he’s said more than he has. I shift uncomfortably, finding a spot where I can look up at him. “I don’t understand.”
“Of course you would not,” he huffs. “You are a soft woman, American—you think everything works the same as it does here. If you do not like your job, you only have to quit and take a new one. Koshechka, there is no quitting the bratva. It is not a career you choose, it is a life you live. There is only one way to leave it.”
In a body bag. I shudder, and his hands chafe my arms.
“I thought Anatoli killed you,” I say.
He shrugs. “He did. I asked him to do this. He will make a good pakhan.” His arm curls over my shoulders.
“I did not expect the news to break so soon. I was already on the plane when this happened. But once it had, I could not control it—and neither could Anatoli. To do so would weaken his position. And a dead man cannot control what is said of him.”
“You gave up the bratva?” I find this difficult to wrap my brain around. He gave up his entire life. His reputation, his fortune, his home—his name. He gave up everything he was, everything he could have been.
For a moment I think of the relief in his voice last night when I called him Alyosha, and I realize…
he couldn’t have known. He didn’t know, until then.
He didn’t know if he would be enough. If I would want him.
If he might have sacrificed so much of himself to come to me, only to be rejected.
And he did it anyway, even with that uncertainty hanging over his head.
“What was I meant to do, koshechka, when there was something I wanted more? When I knew I could not have both?” His strong fingers cup the nape of my neck, massaging away the tension.
I’ve missed this—how he always knows exactly what I need.
“I tried to let you go, when I thought that was what you needed from me. But when you tried to come to Russia—” He swipes a hand over his mouth, stifling a curse.
“You do not know the dangers you provoke. Perhaps I shielded you too much. I wanted only to protect you from that life—and you would have walked straight back into it. Christ, I wanted to throttle you.”
I know that’s fear talking, and for the first time I realize the lengths to which he has gone to keep me safe. To separate me so entirely from my old life was the only way to accomplish it. But I threatened his carefully-constructed fabrication and put myself at risk.
His heart beats so strongly beneath my ear. That same heartbeat I thought only hours ago that I would never hear again. “What will you do now?” I ask. Because he’s been bratva since his teens. He’s given up everything he is, everything he worked for, everything he wanted.
For me.
He hesitates a moment; his shoulders lift in a sharp shrug. “Enough talking,” he says, as if that is the end of it. He fists his hand in my hair and dips his head.
I bite his lower lip. “You’re not the boss of me,” I say as he fixes me with a glare.
“Koshechka, I should heat your ass for that.” He swipes his tongue over the injury, but his fingers loosen enough for me to push myself away from his chest, maneuver myself over his lap.
He might’ve left the bratva, but it has not left him.
He sits like a king, his arms stretched along the sides of the tub.
His green eyes are hot on my face, studying me as if he can unravel me down to the smallest piece.
I splay one hand over his chest. “You have to talk to me,” I tell him firmly. “You don’t just—just dominate me.”
“Katya, you like it when I dominate you.” He slides his hands beneath the water, and they find my hips, tugging until I’m settled over his erection.
“You feel shame over this sometimes, I think—but you should not. Everything I do to you is for your pleasure. There is no shame in that.” His fingers slide between my thighs.
I’m still slick there, even in the water.
“You ask me what I will do? This, koshechka. Much of this.”
My back arches as he pushes inside me, and then I’m fighting to get closer, to seal our bodies together. That familiar heat races up my spine. I want to move—but his hands hold my hips, and I can’t. I’m pinned atop him, impaled.
“I’m no longer pakhan,” he says, and I’m gratified that the words are difficult for him to speak, as if he can’t draw quite enough air. “But there are other titles I think I will try.” He presses his lips against my damp throat. “Husband. Father.” He groans as I clench around him.
“I’m not going to marry you so you can get a green card,” I tell him.
A strangled laugh. “Nyet. This is unnecessary.” This time when he fists a hand in my hair, I let him kiss me. “Aleksandr Sokolov is naturalized American citizen,” he says against my lips.
Of course he is.
“You will marry me because I love you,” he says, and finally he lets me move. God, it feels so good. Water sloshes; my head tips back. I hear myself make some ragged little sound—a sigh, a moan. “And you love me, koshechka. Yes?”
I’ve never said it. Not once. It was a piece of me I withheld deliberately. Something he couldn’t take. Something that could only be given.
“I think you must,” he says. “I think a woman who did not love would be stupid to let her lover come inside her like this. You want me to make you pregnant, koshechka? Or is it a safe day for you?”
My whole body shudders. Why is that so hot? I slam the heel of my palm against his shoulder. “You tell me, creep. You’re the one who’s been spying on me!” Truthfully, I haven’t been paying much attention to my period lately.
The grin that slashes across his face is a bit feral, a bit unhinged.
But then, he’s both of those things. “Nyet,” he says.
“It’s not a safe day for you. Perhaps it has already happened.
” His palm covers my belly. “Maybe my baby is already in there. I want that, koshechka. I want to make you pregnant, to bind you to me in this way.”
It’s not a lie. I can feel him swelling inside me. Just the thought arouses him even more.
“If this is not something you want, you should tell me now.” The words are guttural; he thumbs my clit. “Or I will fill you with my come, koshechka. And then you will never escape me. I will make you mine in every way.”
He says it like it’s a threat. But it’s really a promise.
“Yes,” I say. “Yes.” I let him pull me down for a kiss, and I murmur into his mouth, “Ya tebya lyublyu.”
His groan overwhelms me. I quake with the force of my climax, and I feel him coming with me—inside me.
His arms crush me. His mouth devours mine.
An intensity unlike anything else; an intensity I don’t know how I could ever live without.
His forehead touches mine, and we breathe together, coming down from the high slowly.
His green eyes find mine. “This is forever, koshechka.”
Now, finally, I believe it.