Iskra
The baby calf was safe and I could breathe again.
My hand had slid down to rest over my belly without my noticing. The familiar lump sat heavy in my throat when I realised.
Vadim had left.
I stared at the screen.
The calf was moving faster now, those dark innocent eyes blinking at the camera, at the world, at everything it didn’t know yet about what was waiting for it out there. My chest ached in a way I hadn’t budgeted for.
“Olya was asking—”
“Go away,” I said, without looking at Radovan.
They all knew. They were all keeping their distance. Even Spartak, who usually found some excuse to hover, had made himself scarce.
Except Olya. Olya didn’t care about my irritability. Olya had opinions about nutrition and rest and would share them regardless of the reception.
All morning I had been frozen. Then the test confirmed it. I sent the photograph to Vadim and he left me on read. No response. No words. Just the double tick sitting there.
Then Radovan appeared to announce the doctor’s appointment — because of course Vadim would require comprehensive medical confirmation before filing the result.
The job was done.
That was why he had walked out of my bedroom this morning. Door pulled shut behind him. Grinning, probably, all the way down the hall.
I tucked the blanket around my shoulders and pushed a pillow onto the couch before laying my head down.
The calf blinked on the screen. The narrator’s voice was low and calm, describing the world in the measured tones of something that had seen all of this before and found it worth documenting anyway.
I focused on that voice.
Even though the tears blurred everything.
??
??
??
It was two nights later when I heard him creep into my room.
I was instantly torn—the need for physical comfort pulling one way, the need to rage against him pulling the other. Ultimately I said nothing. I lay still and listened to the rustle of clothing before the bed dipped beside me.
He moved close enough for me to catch the smell of his body wash, softer this time, not the sharp freshness of just after training.
His hand came to rest over my stomach.
Possessive. And yet gentle.
“Ty menya ochen’ obradoval,” he murmured.
I stared at the ceiling. In the darkness only a faint glint of gold was visible—the moon catching the ring on my hand where it rested on the bedding.
I made him very happy.
It was a transaction. One that had been completed. The contract fulfilled in the most fundamental sense. So what was he doing here, in my room, in the dark, with his hand over my stomach like that?
He began to work on the buttons of my top. One by one, unhurried, peeling it open. Then he tugged my bottoms down my legs and off my feet.
“Ideal’naya zhena,” he said, and kissed my neck.
The perfect wife.
Each word landed like a blow—the air leaving my lungs in a slow invisible collapse, the kind of pain that doesn’t announce itself but takes up residence and stays. I pushed it down and breathed in again.
Filled my lungs.
Stared at the ceiling.
His weight moved over me, prying my legs apart before settling between them. His mouth dropped to my breasts, hands pushing them together, and the sudden wet heat made me restless against my will.
His tongue worked around each nipple in turn before his mouth closed and he sucked hard enough to make my breath labour.
I could feel every part of him covering me. The solid heat of his body. The hard length of him between my thighs, heavy and present and impossible to ignore.
His hands travelled the length of my arms until his fingers found my wrists and pinned them to the mattress.
His mouth sucked harder. I hissed.
Then he moved—dragging the length of his cock between my pussy in a slow deliberate stroke.
I tried to focus on the ceiling.
It was no good.
His lips travelled up my neck, soft wet kisses placed with the unhurried patience of a man who had nowhere else to be.
“I missed this hot little hole,” he groaned, easing the blunt head toward my opening.
I was so wet he slipped before he adjusted and this time he sank inside. The thick head pushed past the resistance before the rest of his girth began to spread me open. I clenched my fists and pushed against his hands but he tightened his grip and added his weight behind it.
“Wrap your legs around me,” he demanded, his hips beginning to rock.
I hooked my heels around his thighs and he sank deeper. A moan left me before I could stop it. My head fell back, neck arching, heels digging in harder. His soft chuckle against my throat irritated me in a way I couldn’t fully account for.
There was no rush. His strokes were deep and slow, as though he wanted me to feel every inch—and I did, which was the problem. When his balls grazed against me he paused and pressed himself in as deep as he could go.
“You feel that?” he rasped beside my ear. “Every inch of my cock. Just for you.”
What the hell was he expecting? Gratitude?
I feigned a yawn.
“Hurry up,” I said. “I have an appointment in the morning.”
His body tensed above me and he stopped moving.
“Is that right?” he growled.
“Da,” I said, entirely unrepentant.
I closed my eyes and felt the shift in the air.
This was what I preferred. What I was accustomed to. The monster I had married. Not the dark and the hand on my stomach and the soft wet kisses. This. I knew how to be here.
The first deep brutal thrust shoved my hips up the bed but his grip on my wrists held me in place. I thought I was prepared.
I wasn’t.
Thrust after thrust, the heavy slapping sounds of flesh filling the room, his animalistic grunts and growls climbing with each stroke. The tension coiled tight inside me despite everything I had decided in advance about this evening.
I could feel his seething anger in every movement and it soothed something broken in me. My legs tightened around him and I began to throw my hips up, taking what I needed rather than waiting to receive it. I was panting from the effort when the friction found my clit.
He released my wrists and dropped his elbows to the bed before throwing his full weight behind his thrusts.
It was cold.
It was violent.
And it was us.
My breasts bounced between us and got trapped beneath his chest. I clutched at his waist and flung myself toward each downward plunge.
The silent scream didn’t stay silent. I came—my pussy clenching down on him—but he didn’t stop.
He continued to hammer into me like he had something to prove and wasn’t finished proving it.
I sank my teeth into his chest.
That was all it took for the psycho to come inside me.
“Blyad,” he cursed, groaning as more come spurted deep.
I released his chest—hoping I’d drawn blood—and sank back onto the bed.
He lay on top of me for a few moments, gathering himself, before he pulled away.
I listened. The rustle of clothing. The padded footsteps. His come trickling out of me.
The door opened and a sliver of hallway light cut across the room.
“I’m good for a few days,” I said.
The door closed.
Not a soft click.
A slam.
I reached for tissues to clean myself up.
He could keep his delusions. I knew exactly what this marriage was.
??
??
??
Tau opened the door for me while Radovan and Spartak waited outside.
I stepped past him and couldn’t help but take him in — the dark beauty of him, cold and composed and utterly terrifying.
The kind of man who could have been one of those American honey traps if he’d been pointed in a different direction.
Even with the subtle scarring along his jawline. Perhaps because of it.
He inspected the room carefully before fixing his gaze on the midwife.
I waited for him to leave.
He didn’t.
Anger overtook my fear of him. Another spy for my husband. Another set of eyes reporting back.
“Get out,” I said. My voice came out tired and flat.
“Nyet,” he said, and crossed his arms.
The midwife opened her mouth. Her eyes landed on Tau. Her mouth closed again.
I leaned across her desk, picked up the large bottle of hand sanitiser and threw it at his head.
“I want some fucking privacy,” I said. “Right fucking now.”
I grabbed whatever was on the desk—a plaque or a picture frame, I didn’t stop to check—and threw it.
He was already moving.
It hit the door as it swung shut behind him.
Fucking men.
If he couldn’t make the time to be here, then neither could his men.