20. Yaromir
YAROMIR
She kisses me.
I don’t expect it.
For once, I’m the one who stills.
Anya rises on her toes, one hand still wrapped around my injured knuckles, the other gripping the front of my shirt, and presses her mouth to mine. It’s not soft. It’s not careful. It’s angry, shaken, and hungry enough to make my control snap tight in my chest.
For half a second, I let her do it. I let her choose.
Then I take over.
My clean hand slides into her hair, ruining whatever the stylist did to it, and I kiss her back hard enough that she makes a small sound into my mouth. Her fingers dig into my shirt. She pulls me closer, and I feel the tremor running through her body.
Not only fear. Something else.
Something I recognize because it lives in me too.
The fight in the bathroom didn’t just scare her.
It woke something. I felt it when she cleaned my hand.
The way her breath changed. The way her eyes kept dropping to my split knuckles.
The way she said he scared me, but looked at me like my violence had answered something inside her she didn’t know how to name.
I should be disturbed by that.
I’m not. I understand it too well.
Some people break under violence. Some of us thrive in it.
My pretty, furious wife is far more like me than either of us understood.
I back her against the sink. She goes willingly. Her hips hit the edge, and she gasps against my mouth. I slide my hand down to her waist, then lower, gripping her ass through the red silk. She arches into me, and the movement drives my cock hard against her stomach.
She feels it, and her breath catches.
Then she presses closer.
Well, fuck me.
I drag my mouth down her throat, biting lightly under her jaw. Her head tips back, giving me more. Her pulse hammers beneath my lips.
“You liked it,” I murmur against her skin.
She goes still for a second. “What?”
“That I hurt him.”
Her breathing turns uneven. “No.”
“Liar.”
Her nails scrape over my shoulders. “I don’t want to be a part of any of that.”
“Yes,” I say, kissing the side of her neck. “And it still made you wet.”
Her body jerks.
There. Truth.
Her face burns, but she doesn’t deny it quickly enough.
I lift my head and look at her. Her pupils are wide. Her mouth is swollen. Her chest rises fast under the red dress, the silk tight over her breasts.
“Yaromir,” she says, but it’s not a protest.
It’s a warning. A weak one.
I turn her around. She gasps as I take her by the waist and whirl her to face the mirror above the sink. Her hands fly to the marble counter. I step in behind her, close enough that she feels all of me against her back.
Her eyes meet mine in the reflection.
“Watch,” I say.
Her throat moves as she swallows. “What?”
“Your face.”
I slide both hands up her body, over her ribs, to her breasts. The red dress is expensive, structured, made to keep her elegant. I hate it suddenly. I want it off her. Torn if necessary.
Instead, I pull the neckline down just enough to bare her tits.
Her breath breaks.
In the mirror, I watch her watch herself. The shock in her eyes. The flush on her cheeks. The hard peaks of her nipples in the cool air. I cup both breasts in my hands, squeezing slowly, thumbs dragging over her nipples. Her lips part around a sound she tries to swallow.
“Don’t go quiet,” I say.
Her eyes flick to mine in the mirror. “Someone could hear.”
“Then they will learn to leave.”
I lower my mouth to her neck again, kissing and biting as my hands work her breasts. She trembles against me, but she doesn’t move away. Her hips press back into me, just once, almost helplessly. It sends heat straight through my blood.
I release one breast and slide my hand down her stomach, over the silk, toward the slit in her dress. Her thighs tense.
“Say stop,” I tell her.
She grips the edge of the sink harder. Her eyes stay on mine. “No.”
That single word is enough.
I push my hand under the dress. Her skin is hot, smooth, her thigh tight under my palm. I move higher, slowly now, because I want to watch every second of her losing control.
She tries to close her legs. I put my knee between them and push them apart.
Her breath comes fast.
I find the edge of her underwear. Silk. Already damp.
My jaw tightens. “You’re soaked,” I say.
She closes her eyes.
I stop moving. “Open them.”
Her lashes lift slowly. I hold her gaze in the mirror as I slip my fingers beneath the fabric and touch her directly. She shudders so hard her elbows almost bend.
I catch her with one arm around her waist, holding her upright against me, while my fingers slide through all that wet heat. “Look at you,” I say against her ear.
Her face twists with embarrassment and pleasure. “I can’t.”
“You can.”
My fingers find her clit, and she gasps.
I rub slowly at first, circling the swollen little point until her hips start moving despite her grip on the sink.
Her body is honest even when her mouth is stubborn.
Every stroke makes her wetter. Every small sound she gives me makes my cock throb harder against her ass.
“You’re not the meek deer I thought you were,” I murmur.
Her eyes meet mine again, glassy and furious. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
“Nothing.”
My fingers press harder, and she moans. The sound fills the small room and goes straight through me.
“You think violence should disgust you,” I say. “Sometimes it does. Sometimes it should.” I kiss the side of her neck, feeling her pulse race under my mouth. “But when it is yours, when it’s done for you, when it puts a man who frightened you on his knees…”
Her whole body tightens.
I smile against her skin. “There it is.”
“Stop talking,” she whispers.
“No.”
My fingers move faster over her clit. Her hips jerk into my hand.
“Watch your face, Anya.”
She does. Barely. Her eyes are heavy, mouth open, cheeks flushed. She watches herself fall apart while I hold her from behind, one hand under her dress, the other closing over her breast.
I slip one finger lower, teasing her entrance.
She freezes, and I slow immediately.
Her gaze snaps to mine. “You said no stopping,” she whispers.
I oblige.
I push one finger inside her. Slowly.
Her mouth opens on a silent gasp.
Tight. So tight my restraint almost snaps again.
I go still, letting her body adjust around me. Her hand comes off the sink and grabs my wrist. Not to pull me away. To hold on.
“That’s it,” I murmur. “Take it.”
She makes a broken sound when I move.
Just a little at first. In and out, shallow, controlled. Her body clenches around my finger like it can’t decide whether to resist or drag me deeper. I keep my thumb on her clit, rubbing in the same rhythm, and her legs start to shake.
“Yaromir.”
The way she says my name nearly makes me lose my mind.
I add a second finger carefully.
Her head falls back against my shoulder, and I catch her throat in my other hand. Not hard. Not enough to hurt. Just my hand around her neck, holding her there, making her feel the shape of my possession without taking her breath.
Her eyes open. In the mirror, I see the exact moment she understands what it does to her.
Her body clenches around my fingers. Hard.
My grip tightens by a fraction.
Her lips part.
“Do you want me to let go?” I ask.
She shakes her head once. A small movement. Desperate.
“No.”
I press my mouth to her ear. “Then keep watching.”
I fuck her with my fingers in slow, deep strokes, my thumb working her clit, my hand around her throat, my body hard behind hers. She watches in the mirror like she can’t look away from herself.
She rides my hand in small, helpless motions, breath catching every time my fingers push deeper. Her tits rise and fall under the loose neckline of her dress, nipples still hard from my touch.
I feel her getting close. Her body tells me before she does, the way her fingers claw at my sleeve.
“Don’t close your eyes,” I say.
“I can’t.”
“You can.”
“I can’t,” she says again, voice breaking.
I tighten my hand slightly at her throat, just enough to bring her focus back to me.
Her eyes fly open.
“Come for me, baby,” I whisper.
She comes apart.
It starts with a sharp inhale. Then her whole body locks around my fingers, tight and hot, and she cries out before biting it back too late. Her hips buck into my hand. Her eyes stay open, wet and dazed in the mirror, watching herself come while I hold her throat and fuck her through it.
She’s beautiful like this.
I slow only when she starts trembling too hard to stand. My hand leaves her throat first. Then I slide my fingers out of her and hold her steady with both arms around her waist.
For a moment, the only sound is her breathing. She looks at me in the mirror, face flushed, hair coming loose, breasts half-bared, dress twisted around my arm.
I lift my wet fingers to my mouth and taste her. Her eyes widen. I hold her gaze while I do it.
“Yaromir,” she whispers.
There’s shock in her voice.
And want.
My cock is hard enough to hurt. Every part of me wants to bend her over the sink, push that dress higher, and take her until she forgets Dmitri ever existed.
But not here. Not in a side room outside a ballroom while half the city waits for a crack in her dignity.
I lower my hand and fix her dress, covering her breasts with more care than I feel.
She turns in my arms, still panting. “You’re stopping again?”
The accusation in her voice nearly makes me smile.
“Not stopping,” I say.
Her brows pull together.
“Waiting.”
“For what?”
I cup her jaw, thumb brushing her lower lip. “For home.”