14. Damir
DAMIR
“Oh.”
That small sound nearly breaks me.
It slips out of her before she can stop it, soft and startled, her eyes widening as my hand slides higher beneath her dress. For all her sharp words and reckless courage, Sofia goes completely still when my palm finds the bare heat of her thigh. Not from fear. I would stop if it were fear.
No, this is shock. The kind that comes from wanting something before she has given herself permission to want it.
I lower my mouth to her ear and let my fingers move slowly, deliberately, over the inside of her thigh. “You are very quiet now,” I murmur.
Her breath catches. “I’m thinking.”
“No.” My hand moves higher, and her body trembles before I even touch where she needs me. “You are waiting.”
Her fingers tighten in my shirt. “You are very full of yourself.”
“I have reason.”
“I hate that you probably do.”
I almost smile. Then my knuckles brush the damp fabric between her legs, and the words vanish from her mouth.
There it is. The truth of her.
Hot. Wet. Aching.
I press two fingers against her through the thin barrier, and her hips jerk before she can pretend control. Her head falls back against the wall, exposing the long line of her throat, the faint mark I left there still visible above the neckline of her dress.
Mine.
The thought is brutal and simple.
“You were arguing with me,” I say, dragging my fingers over her slowly, feeling the soaked fabric give under my touch. “Snooping through my study. Demanding answers. Threatening to open locked doors.”
Her lips part, but no sound comes.
“And all this time,” I continue, pressing harder, “you were this wet.”
Her eyes fly open. “Damir.”
A warning. A plea.
A surrender she has not yet admitted to herself.
I hook my fingers beneath the edge of her underwear and pull it aside.
The first touch of her bare cunt nearly empties my head. She’s slick against my fingers, swollen and soft and so hot that my jaw tightens. I drag one finger slowly through her folds, gathering the wetness there, and circle her clit with a pressure light enough to torment.
Sofia’s whole body goes tight. “Oh God.”
“Not God,” I say against her jaw. “Me.”
“You arrogant—”
I press my thumb over her clit, firmer this time, and her insult becomes a gasp.
Good. Much better.
I watch her face as I touch her. I want every expression.
Every crack in her control. Every second of surprise as she realizes her body is not interested in helping her fight me.
Her lashes flutter. Her cheeks flush. Her mouth opens on a broken breath, and when I circle her clit again, slowly, steadily, she grips my shoulders like she might fall.
“You like that,” I say.
“No.”
I do it again. Her hips lift into my hand.
“Liar.”
“I hate you.”
“No, you don’t.” I lean closer, my mouth brushing the corner of hers. “But I think you hate how badly you want my fingers inside you.”
Her breath comes faster. Panting now. Hot, uneven little breaths that touch my mouth and turn my restraint into something thin and dangerous.
I slide one finger down from her clit to her entrance, teasing, barely pressing in. She clenches around nothing.
Christ.
I feel it against my fingertip, that hungry little pull, and my cock hardens so painfully I have to brace my bandaged hand against the wall beside her head.
Sofia looks down between us, as if she can’t quite believe this is happening. My hand beneath her dress. Her thighs parted for me. Her body slick and trembling in my study while the dead watch from the walls and secrets sit locked in drawers.
“Look at me,” I tell her.
Her eyes snap back to mine.
I push one finger inside her, and she cries out. The sound is shocked and raw, and it goes through me with vicious satisfaction.
She’s tight. So tight I have to stop for one breath, forcing myself not to take more than she can give. Her body grips my finger like she has been starving for this and hating herself for it. Her nails dig into my shoulder. Her lips tremble.
“Has no one touched you like this?” I ask.
Her face flushes darker. She looks away.
That’s answer enough.
Something possessive and ugly opens in my chest. Dmitri Sokolov was going to put his hands on her. He was going to take this softness, this heat, this first helpless little clench around a man’s fingers, and treat it like something owed to him.
No. Never.
I turn her face back to mine with my mouth, kissing her hard as I begin to move my finger inside her. Slow at first. Deep. Controlled. My thumb returns to her clit, circling in time with each stroke, and she melts against me in pieces.
Her body is honest even when her mouth is not. Every time I curl my finger, her breath breaks. Every time I press her clit, her hips chase my hand. Every time I slow down, she makes a frustrated sound she clearly wishes she could swallow.
I pull back enough to see her face. “Tell me to stop,” I say.
She glares at me, but her eyes are dark and unfocused, her mouth swollen from mine.
“Don’t you dare.”
I slide a second finger inside her, and her back arches off the wall.
“Damir.”
My name comes out wrecked. I shouldn’t enjoy that as much as I do.
I fuck her with my fingers slowly, stretching her, feeling her body struggle and then soften around me. Her cunt is soaked, taking me with wet little sounds that make my control fray. I keep my thumb on her clit, circling, pressing, learning the exact rhythm that makes her thighs shake.
She tries to close her legs. I wedge my knee between them.
“No,” I say.
Her eyes open, furious and dazed. “You are impossible.”
“You married me.”
“Under duress.”
“You invited me.”
“I invited you for my own cause—” She pants.
I curl my fingers inside her. She chokes on whatever she was about to say.
“Then I am exceeding expectations,” I murmur.
She laughs once, breathless and broken, then moans when I press harder against her clit.
The sound does something to me. I want more. I want her louder. I want the whole house to understand that the woman upstairs is not Sergei Antonov’s niece anymore, not Dmitri Sokolov’s bride, not a piece moved between families.
Mine.
My wife.
I lower my head and kiss her throat, right over the mark I left. She shudders. I drag my mouth lower, over the pulse hammering beneath her skin, down to the neckline of her dress.
The fabric is in my way. I have very little patience left for things in my way.
I grip the top of her dress and pull, and the seam gives with a soft, satisfying tear.
Sofia gasps. “Damir.”
“I will buy you another.”
“That is not the point.”
“No,” I agree, tearing it lower, exposing the pale curve of her breast above her bra. “This is.”
Her chest rises and falls rapidly. She should be furious. She is furious. But her nipples are already tight beneath the thin fabric, her body arching toward me even as her mouth prepares some sharp, useless protest.
I push the bra cup down and take her nipple into my mouth.
She cries out properly this time. The sound fills the study.
I groan against her skin, my fingers still moving inside her, my thumb still working her clit. Her nipple is hard against my tongue, sweet and sensitive, and when I suck harder, her cunt clenches around my fingers so tightly my vision nearly darkens.
“Christ,” I breathe.
Her hands fly into my hair, but not to push me away. On the contrary…
I bite her nipple lightly, just enough to make her jerk, then soothe it with my tongue. Her whole body shakes. She’s panting now, flushed and open and completely undone, her head tipped back against the wall while I take her breast with my mouth and keep fucking her with my fingers.
“Please,” she whispers.
The word is so soft I almost miss it.
I lift my head. “What was that?”
Her eyes open, and the look she gives me could start a war. “I said please, you smug bastard.”
A real laugh almost leaves me. Instead, I kiss her, swallowing the rest of her anger as I drive my fingers deeper and press my thumb harder against her swollen clit.
Her body tightens instantly. I feel it coming before she does. The tremor in her thighs. The way her breath shortens. The helpless little lift of her hips against my hand. The tightening around my fingers, wet and rhythmic, as if her body is trying to pull me deeper and keep me there.
“You are close,” I say against her mouth.
“No, I’m—”
“Yes.”
“I don’t—”
“You do.”
I curl my fingers again, hitting the spot that makes her go suddenly silent. Her eyes widen, then roll half-closed.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, baby,” I murmur against her. “Fucking come for me.”
She grips my shirt with both hands.
I do it again. And again.
Her mouth opens, but no words come out now. Only breath. Heat. Soft, helpless sounds she can’t swallow no matter how hard she tries. I keep my thumb on her clit, steady and relentless, while my fingers stroke deep inside her.
Her cunt flutters around me. Her body goes rigid.
“Damir,” she gasps.
I put my mouth to her ear. “Come for me, Sofia.”
She breaks.
The orgasm takes her hard. Her whole body locks against mine, then shudders, hips jerking into my hand as pleasure tears through her.
She cries out, loud enough that anyone in the corridor could hear, and I cover her mouth with mine, not to silence her, but because I want the sound inside me.
Her cunt pulses around my fingers, wet and tight, each contraction dragging a low groan from my throat.
I don’t stop. Not immediately.
I slow only when her hands clutch desperately at my shoulders and her knees begin to give. I keep her upright with my body, my arm around her waist, my fingers still buried inside her as the last waves move through her.
She trembles against me, completely undone. Breathing hard. Hot and soft and furious, even now.
I kiss her cheek, then the corner of her mouth, then the mark on her neck. Her skin tastes like heat and salt and something that is entirely Sofia.
When I finally withdraw my fingers, she makes a small, shocked sound. Her face burns red.
I look down at my hand. Then at her. She follows my gaze and looks as if she might murder me to avoid embarrassment.
I lift my fingers to my mouth and taste her.
Her eyes go wide. “Damir.”
The way she says my name now is different, something ruined but still hungry.
I step closer again, trapping her more fully between me and the wall, my cock hard against her belly. She feels it and freezes, breath catching.
“Yes,” I say quietly. “That is what you do to me.”
Her gaze drops for half a second, then returns to mine.
She’s still panting. Still flushed. Her dress is torn open, one breast exposed, nipple wet from my mouth. Her hair is loose around her face, lips swollen, eyes dark and stunned. She looks nothing like the controlled bride from the church.
She looks like my wife.
And I have not even begun with her.
I should let her walk out before I decide that the taste of her on my tongue was not enough. Before I put my hands on her again. Before I forget the photograph on my desk, the blood still drying under my bandage, and every reason Sofia Antonova is dangerous to keep too close.
“Go back to your room, Sofia,” I say.
She laughs once, still breathless, still irritated, and the sound scrapes against what is left of my restraint. “There he is,” she says. “The husband with rules.”
“Yes.”
“And if I don’t?”
My body reacts before my patience does. The image comes too easily: Sofia over my shoulder, her dress torn, her thighs bare against my hands, that sharp mouth of hers still trying to insult me while she trembles from what I just did to her.
I let my eyes darken because hiding it seems pointless now.
“Then I will put you over my shoulder, carry you there myself, and neither of us will reach the hallway with dignity.”
Her pulse jumps at her throat.
She hates that I see it.
I like that I do.
For a moment, she doesn’t move. Then she gathers what remains of her dignity, which is impressive considering her dress is torn, her lips are swollen, and her legs are still not entirely steady, and walks toward the door.
When she passes me, I don’t touch her.
That costs more than it should.
Her scent lingers anyway, warm skin and arousal and that faint trace of soap from my house now clinging to her. The study no longer smells only of leather, paper, smoke, and old secrets.
It smells like Sofia.
My hand tightens at my side.
She stops at the door and looks back. I stand beside the desk, Elena’s photograph face down beneath my hand, my expression locked into something I know she can’t read. Good. There are too many things in this room she has already seen.
“Tell your guards,” she says, lifting her chin, “that next time they pretend not to follow me, they should choose better places to hide behind.”
My mouth almost curves.
She leaves before I can decide whether to call her back.