Stefania
The water is almost too hot and it's exactly what I need.
Yevgeny ran the bath while I stood in the kitchen and poured myself a glass of red wine from a bottle I found on the counter.
I don't know if it was there before today or if he put it there this morning, anticipating this moment.
With Yevgeny, it could be either. The man plans three moves ahead in everything.
I took the glass into the bathroom and found the tub full, steam curling off the surface, the overhead light dimmed to something soft. There’s no bubbles, just a milky wisp of oil threading through the water.
I sink in up to my shoulders and close my eyes before taking a long sip of wine and let myself feel it.
Happiness.
It's such a foreign sensation that I almost don't recognize it.
I've felt satisfied before, after a hunt, when the research pays off and the target goes down and the anonymous tip lands in the right inbox.
I've felt relief. I've felt the grim, private pride of knowing I made the world marginally safer for women who will never know my name.
But happy is different. Happy is lying in a bathtub in a house I didn't choose, drinking wine I didn't buy, married to a man I met yesterday, and feeling like every jagged piece of my life has suddenly found the shape it was supposed to fit.
Three days ago, I was standing in the gym in my family home hitting a bag until my knuckles bruised, convinced that this marriage would bury me. That Yevgeny Orlov would be another cold, controlling Bratva man who'd take my body and my compliance and never look deeper.
I was wrong about everything.
The bathroom door opens. Yevgeny comes in wearing sweatpants and nothing else, his chest bare, the ink on his shoulder and across his pec catching the low light.
He leans against the counter and looks at me with an expression that's somewhere between tender and predatory, which I'm learning is his default setting.
"Room for company?" he asks.
"Maybe," I sass.
He smiles and it changes his whole face.
He moves behind the tub. I feel his hands settle on my shoulders and his thumbs press into the tight muscles at the base of my neck and I make a sound that is entirely undignified.
"You're tense," he says.
"I just killed a man."
"You're always tense. Even before tonight." His thumbs dig in deeper, finding knots I didn't know I had. "You carry everything in your shoulders. Every secret, every decision, every night you spent alone doing what nobody else would do."
I take another sip of wine. His hands work up the sides of my neck, into my hairline, then back down to the tops of my shoulders. The pressure is firm, deliberate. He touches me the way he does everything: like he's studied it first and decided exactly how much force to apply.
"You were incredible tonight," he says. "I've worked with men who've been doing this for twenty years who can't read a situation the way you read that alley."
"He was sloppy. It wasn't hard."
"It's not about him being sloppy. It's about you being precise.
" His hands slide down my arms, thumbs tracing the muscle there, the definition I’ve built through years of training.
"The way you moved. The way you controlled the space.
The way you gave him a chance and then made the call when he didn't take it.
" His fingers tighten on my biceps. "Do you have any idea what it was like watching you? "
"Terrifying, I imagine." I take another sip of wine and melt into relaxation as his hands continue to knead my shoulders.
"Beautiful." His voice drops lower. "You were the most beautiful thing I've ever seen."
My chest tightens. I stare at the surface of the water and I don't trust my voice for a moment.
Nobody has ever called me beautiful. Not in the way that means every part of me, including the parts that make the kind of decisions that would send most people running. I never expected to hear it because I never fit the shape of what beautiful is supposed to look like.
I'm not delicate. I'm not slender. I'm not the kind of woman who floats through a room in a slinky dress and makes men's heads turn with effortless femininity.
I'm five-eight and built like someone who fights for a living.
My thighs are thick with muscle. My arms are defined.
My stomach has the softness I've never been able to train away, no matter how many hours I spend with Jess.
My hips are wide. My body is built for power, not for prettiness.
I've made peace with that. Or I thought I had. But hearing him say beautiful while his hands move across my shoulders, feeling the way his fingers grip my muscles with something that is unmistakably desire, breaks something open that I didn't know was closed.
"I'm not what most men picture when they think about a wife," I say.
His hands still. "What do most men picture?"
"Someone softer. Smaller. Someone who doesn't have more muscle definition than they do."
"Most men are idiots,” he says, dropping a kiss to the crown of my head.
I almost laugh. "I'm serious. I spent years thinking that this body, the way I'm built, was a trade-off.
That I could be strong or I could be attractive but not both.
That the muscles and the scars and the width of me made me.
.. functional. Useful. But not something a man would actually want. Or desire."
His hands resume their movement. He traces the line of my collarbone, his palms sliding over my shoulders and the tops of my arms. The touch shifts from massage to something else.
"Let me tell you what I see," he says. His voice is quiet.
The same voice he used at the altar when he whispered those five words.
"I see shoulders that carry secrets most people couldn't survive knowing.
I see arms that are strong enough to fight and soft enough to hold.
I see thighs that can pin a man to the ground or wrap around me in bed and both of those things make me lose my mind. "
His hand dips below the waterline. His palm traces the curve of my waist, the flare of my hip, the swell of my stomach.
"This body isn't a trade-off," he murmurs against my ear.
"It's a weapon and a miracle at the same time.
Every inch of you was built for exactly what you are, and what you are is the most extraordinary thing I've ever been in the company of.
" He moves to the side of the bath and looks at me.
"I can't believe you're mine. I can't believe I get to touch you.
I get to be with you, be inside you." He slips two fingers between my folds, dragging a moan from me.
He sees me. All of me. The killer and the woman. The muscle and the curves. The scar on my thigh and the softness of my stomach and the hands that have taken lives and the heart that has never, until now, been held by anyone.
I place the wine glass on the shelf and part my legs to give him better access. Then I look up at this man who is kneeling beside the tub in damp sweatpants with an expression on his face that would bring me to my knees if I wasn't already sitting down.
His fingers curl deep inside my pussy. The water laps gently against my skin, warm and silky from the oil, but it does nothing to hide how soaked I am. How he made me.
“Yevgeny…” His name slips out on a broken breath as his thumb finds my clit and circles it with that perfect, unhurried pressure. My hips jerk up without permission, sloshing water over the edge of the tub, and he makes this low, approving sound that vibrates straight through me.
“Look at you,” he murmurs, dark eyes locked on where his fingers disappear between my thighs.
“Still so full of my cum from earlier, and now you’re dripping for more.
Such a greedy, needy cunt.” He pumps deeper, scissoring his fingers, stretching me open while his thumb keeps working my swollen clit.
“You killed a man tonight, Stefania. You were ruthless. Precise. And now you’re spread open for me like this.
Soft and wet and mine. Fuck, I love how your cunt clenches when I praise you.
” He groans quietly, like he is savoring the way my body responds to him.
Heat floods my face, my chest, my core. I can’t stop the moan that tears out of me.
My legs fall wider apart, one knee hooked over the edge of the tub, the scar on my thigh gleaming wet under the low light.
He leans in and presses a kiss right over that raised line, tongue tracing it like it’s sacred, and the tenderness of it mixed with the filthy way his fingers are fucking me makes my head spin.
“Please,” I gasp, hips rolling to meet his hand. “I need—God, I need more.”
He adds a third finger, stretching me wider, and my back arches hard enough that my tits break the surface of the water, nipples tight and aching.
“That’s my good girl. Taking three fingers like you were made for it.
This pussy was built to be filled, wasn’t it?
Built to take my cock, take my cum, take everything I give you until you’re full of me, marked by me.
” His voice drops lower, rougher. “I’m going to breed you so full, Stefania. Watch this soft belly swell and grow.”
The words hit me like a spark to dry tinder. My walls flutter around his fingers, and I come with a sharp cry, thighs trembling, water splashing over the sides as my body seizes and pulses. He keeps stroking me through it, drawing it out until I’m shaking and whimpering his name like a prayer.
Before I can catch my breath, he’s standing.
Sweatpants shoved down, cock thick and hard and already leaking at the tip.
He steps into the tub with me, water surging up and over the rim in a messy wave that drenches the floor, but neither of us cares.
He sinks down and pulls me onto his lap so I’m straddling him, my knees braced on the slick porcelain, my soaked pussy hovering right over that gorgeous cock.
“Ride me in here,” he growls, hands gripping my hips hard enough to bruise. “I want to feel you lose control while the water’s splashing all over us. Want to watch these perfect tits bounce while I fill you up again.”
I don’t hesitate. I sink down onto him in one slick, greedy slide, taking every thick inch until he’s buried to the hilt and I’m gasping at how full I feel.
I brace my hands on the sides of the tub and start moving, rolling my hips at first, then sliding back and forth, the slap of wet skin and splashing water echoing off the tiles.
“Fuck yes,” he groans, head tipping back against the tub edge.
One hand stays on my hip, guiding me, the other palms my breast, thumb flicking my nipple.
“You’re so fucking beautiful. These thighs pinning me down, big tits bouncing while you ride my cock.
And your cunt is so fucking tight it makes me see stars. ”
The praise makes me clench around him so hard he curses. I ride him harder, faster, my scar rubs against his thigh with every downstroke, a sharp little reminder of who I am, and he traces it with his fingers like he loves it. Like he loves all of me.
“I’m going to come again,” I pant, grinding my clit against his pelvis on every drop. “Yevgeny—please—”
“Come on my cock, Stef. Milk me. Take every drop so I can breed this womb right here in our bath.” His hand slides between us, thumb finding my clit again, rubbing fast and perfect circles. “You’re going to look so good pregnant. Round belly, leaking tits, wide hips. Come for me. Let me feel it.”
I shatter. My orgasm crashes through me, my walls clamping down on his cock, thighs shaking, a raw cry tearing from my throat as I grind down hard and take him impossibly deeper.
He follows right after, hips snapping up, groaning my name as he floods me with hot, thick pulses of cum.
So much of it that it leaks out around where we’re joined, mixing with the bathwater.
We stay locked together, panting. His hands move from my hips and palm my breasts, his cock jerking inside me in response.
“I’ve never felt like this, been like this, with anyone,” he says, rolling a nipple between his thumb and finger, making my body spasm in response.
“Like what?” I ask as another aftershock shivers through me.
“Insatiable,” he says.