Chapter Thirty
In which this is the best Christmas ever.
Vadim…
Christmas Eve…
"Are you certain you don't want to spend the U.S. Christmas with the Morozovs?" My cousins have issued several invitations to join them in New York for the holiday, and I left it up to Oksana to decide.
She's fussing with the bows on the gifts arranged under the tree.
When she said she wanted a Christmas tree, I did not know that she'd come home with her new bodyguards, Lavr and Marlen, staggering under the weight of a pine so enormous that it brushes the twenty-foot-high ceiling of the entryway.
I found another tree in the library where we spend most of our time, and a third nestled next to the windows in our bedroom as well.
"No, I like it being just us," she says, going back on her knees and surveying the gift arrangement, which must be off, because she rearranges them. "Are you certain you're all right with how much Christmas I've thrown at you? I know we talked about a tree."
There are swags of boughs and tiny lights lining the halls and arranged on every fireplace mantel. Wreaths decorate the doors and there's a forest of poinsettias scattered along every tabletop. Oksana must have deforested half of Illinois to pull this much greenery together.
I let my gaze sweep the library, then raise my brow. She has the grace to look chagrined. "I might have gone overboard," she admits.
Helping her stand up, I take advantage of the moment to kiss her. "I don't mind. It looks nice."
Oksana understands me well enough now to know that I don't care about the sentimentality of the holidays and she doesn't have any driving ambition to change me. What I do enjoy, is watching her be happy about the decor and the "perfect Christmas Eve" snow falling outside.
"Thank you," she says, wrapping her arms around my neck. "The best part of this holiday is that I get you all to myself."
"Hmm…" I agree absently, my hands sliding over the curves of her waist and hips. My bride is wearing a silky, dark green sweater. It's tight, and I suspect she's not wearing a bra.
"Vadim?" I bring my gaze back up to her amused one. "You're sneaking a peek down my sweater, aren't you?"
The half smile I give her is unrepentant. "Yes."
"Do you think that you could dance with me while you decide whether or not I'm wearing a bra?" she asks.
For the first time, I pay attention to the music piping through the speakers. It's an instrumental version of, "I'll Be Home for Christmas."
"We haven't danced since our wedding reception, have we?" I ask, and her eyes light up.
"We haven't."
Sliding my arm around her waist and bringing her closer, I take her left hand. We move together, more swaying than stepping, as I gaze at my wife's beautiful face.
"Well, now you're not even trying to get a look down my sweater," she chuckles.
"This is good, too," I murmur. Her lush mouth is curved in a shy grin. The chilly light from the snow outside gives her eyes a silvery sheen. She looks almost otherworldly. We kiss as I feel her melt against me, opening her mouth with a little sigh.
We dance and kiss for three or four songs until the quiet is shattered by my phone. Not wanting us to be disturbed tonight, I'd programmed my phone to accept only urgent calls.
She steps back, her hands slipping slowly down my chest. "You better check it."
"Sir? I'm sorry to disturb you." Yegor is my head of security at the manufacturing plant, one of my most experienced men. "I must alert you that the same helicopter has flown over the facility six times today. I've isolated the tail number and I'm running a registration search now."
This time last year, I would have immediately left and headed out to the facility, making a plan to find whoever sent the chopper to spy on us and kill them.
"I trust you to handle it," I say.
"Sir?" Yegor's startled. Never once have I left something this important to a member of my team.
"This is what you do," I remind him. "I trust you to handle it."
"Of course, my Vor." He recovers quickly. "Standard protocol, then. Track the number, find out who sent it, and send you the information."
"You have your plan," I say, my gaze still on my wife, who's swaying back and forth to the music, eyes closed.
"I'll double the guard rotation, and send up a couple of surveillance drones," he adds.
"Good work." Before he hangs up, I add, "Merry Christmas."
Why the hell did I say that?
His tone changes from shock to cautiously gratified. "Thank you. Merry Christmas to you and Mrs. Turgeneva as well."
Oksana is watching me with a smile as I hang up, still swaying to the music. "Are you trusting your head of security to handle something?" she asks, pressing her hand over her chest. "I'm touched. A little stunned. Also, wondering who might be inhabiting my husband's body."
Taking her hands, I wrap them around my neck again. "Just me. All of me, here with you."
I finally understand that my wife is the center of my universe. Before Oksana, everything revolved around duty. But now, my world - the Bratva, my role as Vor, the work - is eclipsed by my wife.
"You beautiful man," she says in a choked little voice, kissing my jaw. "Thank you."
"I want to ask you something," I say, my heart thumping harder than I like.
"Of course," she says, running her fingers through my hair.
"Did you ever think of using your escape network to disappear yourself? Before the wedding, perhaps?" My tone is dark. "You had heard all the stories about me."
Oksana's breath catches, her smile dropping.
"No," she says, her eyes searching mine.
"It never even crossed my mind. I knew…" We sway together as she gathers her thoughts.
"Even before I remembered, you were familiar to me in a way I couldn't explain.
No." She shakes her head decisively. "Never once. "
"I'm glad," I say, kissing her. Now that the question no longer lurks in the back of my mind, I feel like I've set down a burden I'd carried too long.
I had noticed earlier that she'd laid out a thick quilt in front of the fireplace here in the library earlier, but I didn't mention it. Now, she's pulling me toward it with another shy little grin.
"It's almost midnight," she says.
"Yes."
"I think that we should celebrate our first Christmas here in this house, by christening the library," she says.
I don't bother to mention to her that we have christened the library many times.
On the couch.
Her holding onto the shelves as I fucked her from behind.
Balanced precariously on the window seat.
Instead, I say, "Good idea."
The quilt is warm from the fire, it's thick, so we can kneel on it. I slide my fingers through her hair, tugging slightly so that she looks up at me. "I love you."
Her jaw drops. "What?"
"I love you." I say it slower, watching the shock fade and tears fill her eyes.
Happy tears. I think. Her lips open and I run my thumb along them.
"Don't say it back," I ask gently. "Not now.
It's important that I say this to you, that you hear that I love you without expectation of anything in return. "
"Well, I didn't get you anything anywhere as good as this for Christmas," Oksana says with a wet little chuckle.
"It would be difficult to top," I agreed with a hint of a smile, cupping her face in my hands. I've always loved how she looks, framed by my fingers, rough and tattooed against her pale, unblemished skin.
Oksana pours her feelings into her kiss, pressing against me, her soft curves filling in the hard lines on me. My hand slides under her sweater and she laughs against my lips.
"You're not wearing a bra," I say, pleased.
"Merry Christmas to me." I take her stiff nipple between two fingers and tug a little, just to hear her gasp.
Reluctantly, I let go of her warm breast to explore further, pushing my hand under her skirt as she watches me with a sly little gleam in her eye.
"Moy svet, you're not wearing panties, either," I growl, trying not to sound like a man ready to hoist his wife up and drop her on his cock.
There's a long, breathy sigh from her when I run my finger through her center. The feel of her, so warm and already getting wet for me, has me hard enough to pound nails. Sliding her skirt up her thighs, I rasp, "Take me out."
Her hands go to my pants, struggling for a moment with my belt before getting my zipper open. I stifle a groan of relief as her cool fingers wrap around my cock, squeezing experimentally. "Hmm… You do know how to flatter a girl," she says, using her other hand to cup my balls.
"You may achieve what my legion of enemies can't," I groan. "You're going to kill me with those soft hands and your tight pussy."
"Not yet." She's nibbling her way down my neck.
"We have to open presents first before you can leave this mortal coil.
" Every time my thumb brushes against her clit, she shudders, squeezing my cock tighter and if I don't get in her pussy, I'm going to embarrass myself.
I push three fingers inside her, enjoying her rapturous little shiver.
"You're gripping my fingers," I whisper into her ear before biting her lobe. "If you don't loosen up, you won't be able to take me."
"Oh, I'll be able to," she whispers back. "I'm soaking. You're making a mess of me."
"Yebat'!" I growl, gripping her ass and lifting her. With a sinuous move of her hips, Oksana puts the head of my cock at her opening, just the tip pushing inside. I go back on my heels for leverage and lower her slowly, making her feel every one of the bars on my cock.
Arching her back, she presses the piercings where she wants them, her hips circling again.
"I'll never get used to this," she moans.
"How you feel when you push inside me. Those piercings, rubbing hard.
" She opens her eyes, looking at me seriously.
"You're better than my fictional bad men. Even the dragon shifter."
I don't ever remember laughing like this. Certainly, not during sex.
My bride stares, wide-eyed, still impaled on me as I laugh and laugh and I'm equally shocked.
It feels foreign, but cleansing and when it subsides, she has her arms around me, stroking my hair.
“Now, I can function again,” I say. I lift her up and drop her again, my cock driving all the way into her and her heat envelopes me, her eager cunt squeezing my length.
"Fast, or slow?" I ask. "Tender or greedy?"
"All of it," she says instantly, and so I do, bouncing her up and down while she shrieks rapturously until I feel those first tell-tale squeezes, how she rubs her clit against me and I slow down as she bites me in frustration.
The warmth of the fire, the tiny lights strung through the room, and the scent of pine all blur together, everything cycling down to the feel of my bride wrapped around me, impatiently pushing against me, demanding her pleasure.
"You're so different from that defensive girl I met that first night," I grunt, inching her down slowly on my cock, ignoring her frustrated little noises.
"So beautiful, demanding that I make you come. Tell me, wife. How many times?"
"How many what?" Oksana moans, opening her eyes and trying to focus. Her pupils are blown wide, a thin circle of silver surrounding them.
"How many times do you want to come?" I say patiently.
"Can we start with one? Right now?"
Yanking her sweater off, I pull her up and fasten my lips around her nipple, biting it lightly as my hips move faster, bouncing her until she's breathless.
She holds my gaze though, and I watch her as her entire body turns soft and liquid, her wet slicking my thighs as she comes.
I stop for a minute, though my cock is very unhappy about it.
Her breasts rub against me as she shakes a little and I wrap my arms around her until the last waves of her orgasm sweep over her.
"Ready for the second?" I ask, lowering her on her back, my cock deep inside her.
"Oh, okay," she slurs. "I'm a little cock drunk."
This sparks my second round of laughter for the holidays. We're slow this time, until I watch her second orgasm pass over her and she cries out as I pull out of her.
"You've made a mess," I say, leaning back on my elbows. “Clean me up."
Oksana's arms are a little shaky but she has my cock in her mouth in seconds, trailing her tongue along the throbbing vein on the bottom of my shaft, carefully popping each piercing between her lips as I clench my teeth.
Her hand works my cock as she licks my scrotum and my thighs and when I try to turn her around to push back into her, she shakes her head. "Like this. I've been practicing."
She works my cock deeper into her mouth until the head pushes down her throat.
Looking up at me, she swallows, her throat muscles squeezing me and I explode, my come spurting down her throat and with each swallow she makes me come harder, every muscle in my body locked tight.
Nothing else exists but this pleasurable agony.
When I'm finally capable of movement, I pull out of her mouth, watching her tongue run over her lips. "Rusalka," I pant, "you delicious, perfect Rusalka."
She laughs and I roll us over, curling up behind her and pulling one of the soft wool throws over her. We listen to the crackle of the flames for a while until she whispers, "Best Christmas ever."
Kissing her shoulder, I nod. "Agreed."
***
Rusalka - A Russian version of a succubus or sex demon.