Stefania
I wake up sore.
Not the kind of sore I'm used to like the ache of training or the deep-tissue burn that comes after a night spent crouching in cold alleys. This is a tenderness between my thighs that reminds me, with every small shift of my body, exactly what happened last night.
Three times. We had sex three times. And it was nothing how I imagined it would be.
It was loud and messy, and invigorating. It felt like the most natural thing in the world, and the most intense.
Morning light is coming through the curtains, pale and thin. The bedroom smells like sleep and sex and the spicy cologne that clings to Yevgeny's skin. I'm on my side, facing the window. His arm is draped over my waist, heavy and warm, and his breathing is deep and even behind me.
I try to shift and my inner thighs protest. A dull, sweet ache that makes me press my lips together and exhale slowly through my nose.
"Sore?"
His voice is low. Rough with sleep. His arm tightens around me and I feel his mouth press against the back of my shoulder blade.
"A little."
"Good." His hand slides down my stomach. His palm is warm and his fingers spread wide across my skin and every nerve in my body wakes up and pays attention. "That means you'll remember it."
"I wasn't likely to forget."
He laughs. It’s the first time I've heard him laugh and it does something to my belly.
His hand keeps moving. Past my navel. Over the curve of my hip. His fingers trace the crease of my thigh and I feel my breath catch.
"Open your legs," he says.
I do.
His fingers slide between my thighs and I feel the slickness there. His cum. Still inside me. Still warm. A sound leaves his throat, deep and possessive, and his mouth presses harder against my shoulder.
"You kept it all," he murmurs against my skin. "Every drop. Like the absolute queen you are."
The praise hits me the same way it did last night. Like a fuse lighting in the base of my spine. My hips jerk involuntarily and he makes a pleased sound.
"So responsive." His fingers slide through the mess of me, spreading the slickness. "You're full of me, Stefania. You feel that?"
"Yes," I moan.
"And you kept every bit of it inside you all night, like a good wife." His fingers find my clit and I gasp, my hand shooting out to grip his forearm. "I want to taste it. Can I taste you?"
I nod. He rolls me onto my back and shifts down the bed and I watch him settle between my thighs with his hands pushing my legs apart and his eyes locked on the place where I'm swollen and slick and marked by him.
He pushes my legs further apart, tilting my pelvis so I’m fully spread out and displayed for him. “So fucking perfect.” He lowers his mouth.
The first touch of his tongue makes my back arch off the mattress.
He's slow, thorough, licking through the mess of his cum and my juices with flat, firm strokes that make my vision blur.
His hands push the backs of my thighs, holding me open while he works, and the sounds he's making are obscene.
Wet, hungry sounds like he's enjoying this as much as I am.
"You taste incredible," he says against me, his breath hot on my delicate skin. "My cum mixed with yours. Sweetest thing I've ever had."
My fingers twist in the sheets. My legs are shaking. He sucks my clit gently and then licks down, his tongue dipping inside me, and the noise I make is loud enough that I'd be embarrassed if I had any capacity left for embarrassment.
"That's it. Let me hear you. Don't you dare hold back.
" He circles my clit with the tip of his tongue, then sucks again, harder.
"You took me so well last night. Three times and you didn't waste a single drop of cum.
My perfect wife." He goes back to eating my pussy, ravishing it, sucking and slurping against my folds.
Growling against my lips and getting firmer and firmer with the pressure he flicks over my swollen clit.
I come apart with a cry that echoes off the bedroom walls. His mouth stays on me through the entire thing, not stopping, drawing every last tremor out of my body until I'm limp and panting and my fingers ache from gripping the sheets.
He presses a kiss to my thigh, right next to the scar, and climbs back up my body. His mouth is wet when he kisses me and I taste both of us on his tongue and the filthy intimacy of it makes my chest crack open in a way I'm not prepared for.
We lie there for a while. His head on my chest, my fingers in his hair, the morning light growing stronger through the curtains.
"When does the next hunt begin?" I ask.
He lifts his head. Looks at me. Then he reaches to the nightstand and picks up a folded newspaper I hadn't noticed.
"It already has."
I take it. Unfold it. The headline is local, a column on page three. A woman attacked near a bus stop on the south side two weeks ago. Suspect described but not identified. Police investigation stalled.
I read it twice. The details settle into the part of my brain that catalogues and processes and plans. Location. Time of day. Description. Pattern.
"How long have you been watching for this?" I ask.
"Since the night I decided you were going to be mine. I just had to wait and make sure I wasn’t mistaken about you." He settles back against the pillows, his arm behind his head. "If something comes up, you decide what to do with it. I just make sure you’re safe."
I stare at the newspaper. Then at him.
"You’re giving me a wedding gift."
"I am."
Something fierce and bright moves through my chest. I set the paper down and look at the man beside me, and for the first time in six years, I don't feel alone.
"Tell me about one of them," he says.
"One of what?"
"Your targets. Tell me about one you're proud of."
I think about it. Not all of them are stories I want to revisit. Some were quiet, clinical, forgettable. But one sits in my memory differently.
"There was a man named Curtis Webor," I say. "Two years ago. He was a youth pastor at a church on the west side. Married. Two kids. Coached the girls' basketball team."
Yevgeny's jaw tightens. He already knows where this is going.
"Three girls came forward to their parents.
Said he'd been touching them after practice.
The parents went to the church leadership and the church buried it.
Moved him to a different congregation. The parents went to the police and got told there wasn't enough evidence because the girls' statements were inconsistent.
They were fourteen. Of course, their statements were inconsistent. "
"What did you do?"
"I spent two weeks following him. Documenting. He was doing it again at the new church. Different girls, same pattern. I broke into his house while he was at work and cloned his laptop. The hard drive had everything on it. Photos. Messages. Everything the police said didn't exist."
"You gave it to law enforcement?"
"I gave it to a journalist at the Tribune who'd been trying to get the church to comment for months. The story ran on a Sunday. Webor was arrested the following Tuesday. The church settled with seven families out of court."
Yevgeny is quiet for a moment. Then he says, "That's not a kill."
"No. Some of them don't need to die. Some of them need to be destroyed publicly, so every person who protected them has to answer for it too. Killing Webor would have let the church off the hook. Exposing him burned the whole thing down."
He looks at me with something in his eyes I haven't seen from anyone before in my life. Admiration.
"And the ones you did kill?"
"Deserved it." I say it without hesitation. Without doubt. "The ones I killed were the ones the system was never going to touch. The ones who'd keep doing it for the rest of their lives because nobody was going to stop them. So, I stopped them."
He kisses me and I can feel him hardening beneath me again, already.
"Tell me how," he murmurs against my lips.
A jolt of excitement courses through me. I want to be disgusted at myself, but I can’t. I did what was right and somehow I ended up with the one person in the world who isn’t disgusted by my actions or fearful of them. He sees my power and he likes it.
"With a knife."
He groans, pulling my hips until I’m lying on my stomach, then he climbs over me. “Tell me more,” he whispers against my ear as he presses his cock between my ass cheeks, then against my entrance.
"I stabbed them..." he pushes inside in one brutal thrust that has me gritting my teeth. “I slit one’s throat but found out just how messy that is.”
The soreness stretches into something that burns in the best possible way.
"My wife," he groans into my mouth. "My hunter. My perfect, dangerous queen."
“I waited until I knew they were dead—”
He picks up his pace, thrusting into me, reaching an entirely new part of me in this position.
“Then I wiped the knife clean whatever they were wearing and left.” My words come out punctuated by his ravaging thrusts now as his cock thumps against that spot inside me that makes my body quiver.
Within seconds, my pussy is milking his cock again, trying to pull him deeper as I scream into the pillows and press my ass against him.
“Yes,” he grunts. “You made the world a better place,” he is panting now, chasing his orgasm. “I’m going to empty my balls in your tight pussy again, claim you again, mark you again. Then tonight we’ll hunt together and you can show me exactly how powerful you are.”
His voice fractures, and his words turn into to “ah, ah, ah, ah” as he comes undone, emptying himself inside me again.