Iskra
Heat. That was the first thing.
Heavier than usual, pressing down from above rather than rising from the covers. I tried to kick free and my leg met resistance—weight, warmth, something that wasn’t the duvet.
Wet lips moved along my jaw.
One hard thrust pried me open.
The shock of it dragged me upward through the layers of sleep before I had any say in the matter—that lurching, disorienting climb from dark to fractured awareness where nothing was quite real yet and nothing could be trusted.
Vadim.
My eyes flew open.
He loomed above me in the half-dark, the dawn light catching the edges of him—shoulders, jaw, the movement of his body above mine.
The shadows in the room seemed to shift with him or perhaps it was sleep still moving at the corners of my vision.
I blinked hard, trying to anchor myself.
Ceiling. Chandelier. Red walls. His room. My room.
Real.
This was real.
His hand gripped my thigh, hauling it higher as he drove deeper. No warmup, no pretence of one—just the immediate, relentless driving of a man who had been planning this since before I was awake to have any opinion about it.
I hadn’t been ready.
I had to be dreaming.
“Damn. Look at those tits move,” he growled, pulling back only to surge forward again, slamming his pelvis against mine with a force that knocked the last of the sleep out of me entirely.
Fucking asshole.
Not a dream.
“Da. Show me that fire,” he hissed, and slapped my breast.
“Mother—” The curse died as his fingers curled around my throat and closed.
“What did you say?” he growled, his grip crushing my windpipe.
I slapped him.
Open palm, full force, directly across his face. The crack split the quiet of the room like a gunshot.
I froze.
The silence lasted one second. Two.
I was going to die in this bed.
Then the smile came. Slow. Wrong. The smile of a man who has just been handed exactly what he wanted without you meaning to give it.
He pulled out.
One motion—rolled me onto my belly, fingers already yanking my hips into the air before I had processed the movement.
“My little hot-headed bitch wants to play?” he said, fisting my hair. “Now you get fucked like one.”
I scrambled to get my hands under me but he was already pulling—hair wrapped around his fist, my head wrenched back until my neck curved and my body had no choice but to follow. I couldn’t move forward. Couldn’t drop my head. Couldn’t do anything but hold the position he had decided on.
His legs moved to bracket mine, trapping them together, and then I felt the blunt head of his cock slip into position.
I didn’t dare move.
And it wasn’t because of his grip on my hair.
I had just slapped the Pakhan of Chernograd.
The man who eliminated people for a simple show of disrespect—never mind a blow.
Never mind an open palm cracked across his face hard enough to leave a mark.
My heart was hammering somewhere in my throat and my lips were already parting to apologise, to offer whatever words might undo the last thirty seconds—
He moved.
His body slammed against my ass and I howled—the sound torn out of me before I could contain it—his entire length sinking into me in one brutal stroke.
He hit something deep inside my belly, something that sent a white shock of sensation straight through me, pain and pleasure indistinguishable from one another at that depth.
He slapped my thigh. Hard. Retaliation, precise and deliberate, for my blow.
Then he pulled back and ploughed forward again.
I could feel him rearranging my insides, the stretch of him working deeper with each thrust, my body simultaneously resisting and yielding.
I may have cried out for God. I may have cursed him.
I genuinely couldn’t be certain which sounds were leaving me and which were still trapped somewhere in my chest.
“No god can come between us,” he snarled against the back of my neck.
He used the fist in my hair to pull me back to meet every thrust, setting the pace he wanted, my body moving on his terms. The problem—the specific, humiliating, unforgivable problem—was that somewhere between the shock and the pain the discomfort began to dissolve into something else entirely.
My hips found the rhythm without my permission.
My hands tightened on the bedding and I began to rock back, chasing each withdrawal, using the grip I had to meet him.
“You’re not supposed to enjoy this like a damn whore.”
He noticed.
Of course he noticed. He noticed everything.
He slapped me again.
And again.
And again.
Each strike landing on already sensitised flesh until it burned—a deep, spreading heat that somehow fed directly back into everything else I was feeling, which was its own particular kind of betrayal.
All I wanted was to tell him not to stop.
But that would push him over the edge.
Or worse—it would give him exactly what he was looking for.
He suddenly yanked my hair, ripping strands from the root as he forced me to my knees. My eyes watered from the pain. He released my hair and clamped his thick forearm around my neck, his other hand biting into my hip.
Then he began my torment all over again.
This time I could feel his muscles working behind me as he hammered into me. My head rolled back, his arm tightened to lock me in place. Even as I struggled to get air into my lungs my hips moved and my ass bounced back and forth, taking everything he had.
“Damn you,” he growled.
Fuck you, I thought, and pushed my hand between my legs, rubbing my clit before pinching it.
The world blurred before my eyes.
It could have been the lack of airflow. It could have been the depth of my orgasm. I honestly couldn’t tell and didn’t particularly care.
As my body shuddered his cursing erupted from deep in his chest—low snarls that curled around me like something I’d won.
I dragged him with me. His arm loosened to grip my breast as lash after lash of hot come filled me.
His fingers crushed my flesh and I ground my hips and squeezed every muscle I had until he groaned like it had been pulled out of him against his will.
He might have started this.
I finished it.
“Suka,” he spat, and pushed me away.
I fell face down on the bed.
Laughter spilled out of me—genuine, helpless, the kind that comes from somewhere you didn’t know was still intact.
I was still laughing when the bedroom door slammed.
His come dripped out of me while he cursed his way down the hallway.
I pulled the covers over my shoulders and closed my eyes.
For the first time in weeks, I smiled.
??
??
??
After a quick shower followed by a long soak in the tub, I began to feel human again. The aches and bruising were a map of the last few hours—every tender spot a reminder—and my insides still tingled in a way I refused to examine too closely.
I pulled the warm robe on and caught my reflection in the mirror.
The bruise on my neck was large and reddish-purple, the kind that would darken before it faded, sitting exactly where he had intended it to sit. I touched the tender skin and shook my head. A love bite. As though what had taken place this morning had anything to do with love.
The man had a talent for reframing possession as affection.
I wrapped a towel around my hair and moved toward the bedroom, slowing almost immediately when the dull throb of pain registered with every step.
A sharp knock at the double doors.
“Come in,” I said, and it came out sharper than intended.
One door opened and Spartak stepped inside, a tray balanced under his arm with the careful concentration of a man who had not been trained for this specific duty.
“The Pakhan said to bring your breakfast,” he said, and then his eyes found my neck before he could redirect them.
I tugged the robe higher and waved him toward the table.
“Thank you. Leave it there,” I said, and felt the heat climb my face regardless.
He set the tray down and left without another word, which I appreciated.
It wasn’t until I approached the table that I noticed the strip of painkillers beside the plate.
I stared at them for a moment.
It was almost enough to suggest the Pakhan had a heart somewhere beneath the machinery of him.
I dismissed the thought before it finished forming.
Men like Vadim Dragunov didn’t develop hearts.
They developed strategies. The painkillers were logistics—keep the breeding stock functional, maintain the schedule.
That was all.
Monsters like him didn’t grow to love anything.
They only knew how to consume it.
I sat down and ate.