Vadim
I stared at the mark on her neck.
Dark red, ugly, already beginning to deepen at the edges where my mouth had worked hardest. The bruising would last for days. My teeth had never broken the skin—that was deliberate—but the mark was visible and it would remain visible, and everyone in this house would read it correctly.
Fucked and claimed.
She had been walking the garden perimeter every day with her byki.
My men knew better—knew what happened to men who forgot their place—but a woman like this, left to wander and make herself known, had a way of finding the weakest point in any room.
A precaution was not the same as distrust. It was arithmetic.
My cock was still buried deep inside her, angled to hold every drop of my seed as close to her cervix as possible.
I had no intention of moving until I was satisfied the work was done.
When I glanced up her eyes were closed, her chest rising and falling in the space between us, her lashes still wet at the corners.
Her hatred was no concern of mine. Hatred and compliance were not mutually exclusive—she had demonstrated that thoroughly enough tonight.
I released her legs and pushed her breasts together, dragging my tongue across the damp skin, tasting salt and the faint remnant of her body wash beneath it. The flesh was warm and slightly flushed and yielded exactly as it should.
She whimpered.
The sound moved through me with more effect than I intended to acknowledge.
“Hate all you want, Iskra,” I said, moving back to her neck to drag my tongue across my mark. “Your womb is mine to breed as much as I deem fit.”
I rested my hand on her belly.
Where my heir would soon rest and grow strong.
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I pulled my boxers up and gathered my clothing while she remained on the bed, both pillows stuffed beneath her hips.
“Do not bathe until the morning,” I said, turning to leave.
She said nothing. I didn’t require her to.
I opened the door to find Bogdan and Radovan in quiet conversation across the hallway. They straightened immediately and nodded as I walked past.
For once their gossiping would do some good.
I heard Bogdan move to follow and glanced over my shoulder.
“Give the house a final security check,” I said.
The realisation had settled somewhere during the evening—quietly, without announcement. Any child of mine would become a target the moment its existence was known. Heirs attracted threats the way power attracted envy. It was inevitable and it needed to be accounted for from the beginning.
Women came and went. Nothing would ever happen to my heir.
I pushed open my bedroom door.
Both wings of the house were identical in layout, twin master bedrooms at opposite ends of the upper floor. Mine was decorated in slate blue and gold—darker than her room, colder, chosen without sentiment. The bed was stark and empty and exactly as I had left it.
This was the way I preferred it.
My bedroom was the one place in the house that belonged entirely to me.
No staff, no byki, no advisors with phones already out before they’d crossed the threshold.
The one place I was genuinely alone and uninterrupted.
I had been precise about that from the day I moved in and I intended to remain precise about it.
I cracked my neck and tossed my clothes over the back of the couch.
After a moment I reached into my trouser pocket and set an alarm for the morning, ignoring the messages and emails waiting for me.
My alarm wasn’t for training.
Not for work.
It was to nail Iskra’s womb before the day started.
The thought of her hatred—that cold fury she wore like a second skin—and the image of her carrying my child regardless of it. Despite it. Her body doing what it was contracted to do while the rest of her raged against the arrangement.
It was almost poetic.
I carried that thought and the smile it produced to the shower. While I bathed, Iskra would be lying in her bed, smeared with my scent, both pillows still wedged beneath her hips on my instruction. The image was satisfying in a way that had nothing to do with sentiment.
Mentally I began to run through tomorrow’s schedule, already blocking out time to give my wife a proper Bratva honeymoon experience.
I chuckled to myself, washing every trace of her from my skin.
Then the image arrived without invitation—her belly heavy with my heir, those swollen breasts ready to nourish the next Pakhan—and my fist closed around my cock before I had decided to allow it. My dick twitched and I groaned at the ceiling.
Where were my years of discipline?
I finished bathing, dried off and settled into bed.
But when I closed my eyes she was there. Coming apart beneath my hands, that fury still burning underneath it, her body answering regardless.
I turned onto my side and checked my phone.
The alarm was active.
I stared at the ceiling for a moment.
A wedge. That was what was needed—distance, structure, the deliberate maintenance of the correct dynamic.
I couldn’t allow a slip of a girl to complicate a position I had spent years building toward.
The lure was physical and physical things were manageable.
It always wore off. It had always worn off before.
I put the phone down.
It would wear off.
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The alarm chimed and my eyes snapped open. With a yawn I reached for my phone and silenced it. I sat up, scratched my chest and stretched. Sleep could wait. My dick had a mission to accomplish.
I yanked the covers off and went to the bathroom, pulled on my robe and brushed my teeth.
I opened the door to find Tikhon on the chair outside, phone in hand. When he made to stand I raised a hand.
“I won’t need you where I’m going,” I said, and walked past him.
The house was quiet and dark. The sun hadn’t quite risen yet—the kind of early morning where the darkness had just begun to thin at the edges without committing to anything. I passed the staircase and saw Spartak outside Iskra’s door. He stood when he saw me approaching.
“Good morning, Pakhan,” he said, with a single nod.
“You can leave. Bring her breakfast up at nine.” I paused. “Mrs Dragunov may have difficulty walking today.”
His eyes widened. His lips parted. Before he could compose himself further I opened her door and stepped inside.
The faint scent of sex still lingered in the air.
I closed the door carefully behind me and stilled. Breathed in again.
No perfume. She hadn’t bathed. Obedient at last.
I moved to the window and drew the curtain back just enough—a sliver of pale dawn light fell across the floor and reached the edge of the bed without quite touching her. Enough to see by. Not enough to wake her.
I turned.
Her small frame was entirely still beneath the covers, one hand curled near her face, her hair loose across the pillow where the braid had come undone in the night. She hadn’t moved much. The pillows were still roughly where I had positioned them.
I untied my robe and considered my options with the unhurried calm of a man with nowhere else to be.
My instinct as Pakhan had always been stealth. Enter quietly. Assess before acting. Take the advantage that patience provided.
Let’s see how long it took her to wake up and find my cock already inside her.
I eased onto the bed, annoyed when the frame groaned beneath my weight—but her eyes stayed closed. She must have been exhausted. The wine, the sex, the specific drain of a body that had been used thoroughly and told to lie still afterward.
Excellent.
I crept closer, easing her thighs apart beneath the covers, moving into position above her.
In sleep her face was unguarded in a way it never was when she was awake—younger, softer, the watchfulness gone.
It irritated me. That innocence was of no use to me.
I wanted her corrupted and reshaped to suit my world, her edges worn down until she fit the space I had made for her.
But first I needed to break her down.
I lowered myself to her breasts and licked a slow path from the swell of one to the other, pausing to flick my tongue over her nipple.
Her chest continued to rise and fall in the steady rhythm of sleep.
It didn’t stop me. I worked each peak until it hardened beneath my mouth, her body responding faithfully even as the rest of her remained elsewhere.
Only then did I settle my cock between her thighs.
Only then did I smile—feeling the damp heat of her cradle me, her body already prepared, already mine even in sleep.
One round inside her before I began my morning.