23. Yaromir
YAROMIR
The drive home is silent.
Not empty. Silent.
Anya sits beside me with the emeralds at her throat, her red dress still perfect to anyone who doesn’t know what happened in the side room.
Her hair is pinned back badly now, a few loose strands brushing her neck.
Her mouth is swollen from mine. Her cheeks are pale from the confrontation in the lobby.
She doesn’t ask if I’m all right.
Good. I wouldn’t answer.
Outside the window, the city slides by in cold light and rain. I barely see it. I see my father’s face instead.
Bastard.
The word is old. It shouldn’t matter anymore, but it does.
Not because it’s untrue. Because he says it like he has not spent my whole life making sure I understood it.
When we reach the estate, I step out first and offer Anya my hand. She takes it without hesitation. That shouldn’t matter either.
It does.
Inside, the house is quiet. The staff knows better than to appear unless called. Viktor remains near the entrance, waiting for orders, but I dismiss him with a look. He leaves without a word.
Anya removes her gloves slowly.
I look at the emeralds around her neck. I bought them to hurt Dmitri. That was true when the gavel fell. Now I’m not sure the reason matters.
They belong on her.
The thought irritates me because it sounds too close to sentiment.
“Go upstairs,” I say.
She looks at me. “No.”
I turn toward her. She stands in the center of the hall in that torn-open version of elegance, red silk, diamonds, flushed skin, and anger she hasn’t fully learned how to hide.
“No?” I ask.
“No.”
“You’re tired.”
“So are you.”
“I have work.”
“You’re lying.”
My jaw tightens. Anya sees it. She always sees too much.
I walk away before I say something sharp enough to cut her for no reason.
The drawing room is dark except for the fire. It has burned low, but there’s enough flame left to throw light over the walls. I stop in front of it and stare into the heat.
The room disappears.
For a moment, I’m not here. I’m eight years old in a hallway too narrow for my mother’s sadness. She’s sitting at the kitchen table in a robe too thin for winter, turning a ring around her finger because he had promised to come that night.
He doesn’t come.
I’m twelve, standing outside a door while men inside speak about me like I’m a mistake that has learned to listen.
I’m fifteen, watching my mother cough into a handkerchief and hide the blood before I can see it.
I saw it. I always saw it.
I’m nineteen, outside the main Volkov house, rain running down my face, while a guard tells me Kirill Volkov is not receiving visitors.
My mother dies three weeks later.
The fire snaps.
I come back to the room.
Anya stands behind me. I feel her before I see her.
“You should have gone upstairs,” I say.
“I heard you the first time.”
“And you ignored me.”
“Yes.”
I close my eyes briefly. “This is not a good time.”
“For what?”
“For you to test me.”
“I’m not testing you.”
I turn then, anger already rising.
She’s closer than I thought. Close enough that I can see the small marks my mouth left on her neck earlier. Close enough that the emeralds glitter against her throat like proof of a war she didn’t start but entered anyway.
“You shouldn’t be near me right now,” I say.
Her eyes search mine. “Because of your father?”
“Because I’m not in the mood to be gentle.”
Something changes in her face.
Not fear.
She steps closer. “Good.”
My cock swells.
Before I can answer, she reaches up, takes my face between her hands, and kisses me.
Tenderly. That’s what stops me. Not the kiss itself. Not her mouth. Not her body pressed against mine.
The tenderness.
She kisses me like she’s not trying to prove anything. Like she’s not thinking about Dmitri, or Katya, or the room full of people who watched us bleed each other in public. She kisses me like she saw something in me standing in front of that fire and chose not to walk away from it.
For a second, I do nothing.
Then her thumb brushes the edge of my scar. A small careful touch.
I take her mouth.
The kiss changes instantly. Her soft little breath breaks against my lips as I pull her hard against me. My hands close around her waist, then slide lower, gripping her ass through the red silk. She gasps, and I lift her off the floor.
Her legs go around my waist. No hesitation.
My control snaps another inch. I carry her to the nearest wall and press her against it, kissing her until her hands are in my hair and her body is moving against mine.
The emeralds are cold against my throat when I lower my mouth to hers again.
Her dress rides up, exposing her thighs, and I grind my cock against her through my trousers.
She moans into my mouth. “Yaromir,” she breathes when I drag my mouth down her neck.
“Say it again.”
Her fingers tighten in my hair. “Yaromir.”
My name in her mouth does more to me than it should.
I carry her from the wall to the large table near the fire and set her on the edge. She looks up at me, lips swollen, chest rising fast, eyes dark with something that has nothing to do with revenge now. She’s mine now.
I take her mouth harder. The kiss stops being careful the moment her hands slide into my hair.
She gasps into my mouth, and I use it. My tongue pushes past her lips, and she opens for me with a sound that makes my cock go painfully harder.
She kisses like she’s angry at me for making her want this, but her body doesn’t lie.
Her knees part. Her fingers tighten in my hair.
Her hips shift closer, searching for friction she’s too proud to ask for.
The fire is hot behind me.
She’s hotter.
I drag my mouth down her throat, biting once under her jaw. She shivers, and my hand moves up her side, over the tight bodice of the dress. The fabric is expensive, structured, made to hold her in place.
I hate it suddenly. I want my hands on her skin.
I want her open.
My fingers grip the neckline while my mouth finds hers again. I don’t think about the stitching. I don’t think about the cost. I don’t think at all.
I pull. The silk gives away almost immediately.
Anya breaks the kiss with a gasp.
For one second, both of us look down. The red fabric has split across her chest, the bodice dragged low enough to bare one breast completely and leave the other half-covered. Her nipple is already hard, flushed in the firelight.
My breathing stops.
Her eyes lift to mine, dark and bright, and her lips part around a shaky breath. “You ripped my dress,” she whispers.
My hand closes over her bare breast, and her eyelashes flutter.
“Yes.”
Her throat moves. Then, very slowly, she looks down at my hand on her tit and smiles. It’s small. Dangerous. Almost disbelieving, like she’s just discovering this part of herself and likes it more than she expected.
“I think I liked it.”
That’s the end of whatever restraint I had left.
I shove the torn fabric farther down and take her nipple into my mouth.
She cries out, fingers tightening in my hair as her back arches.
I suck hard, then drag my tongue over the tight peak, feeling her whole body answer me.
Her thighs clamp around my hips, and my cock presses against her through my trousers, thick and aching.
“Yaromir,” she breathes.
I lift my head only long enough to look at her.
Her dress is ruined. Her hair is loose. The emeralds are still around her throat, heavy and perfect against flushed skin.
I catch the other side of the dress and pull again. Another seam tears.
Anya’s breath catches, but she doesn’t stop me. She watches my hands destroy the dress with a look on her face that goes straight to my blood.
“I’ll get you ten more,” I say.
She reaches for my shirt, tugging at the buttons with shaking fingers. “I don’t care.”
Good. Neither do I.
I kiss her again, rough and deep, while she works my jacket off my shoulders. It hits the floor. Her hands move to my shirt next, clumsy at first, then desperate. One button pops loose and skitters across the table.
She freezes for half a second. Then she laughs under her breath.
A real laugh. Breathless. Wild. It nearly ruins me.
I help her with nothing. I let her undress me because I want to see the look on her face when she does it.
When my shirt opens, her hands flatten against my chest. Her gaze drops to my skin. Her fingers move over me slowly, over old scars, muscle, heat. She looks at me like she wants to touch everything and doesn’t know where to start. There’s only hunger in her face.
I tear the last of the bodice down, put my mouth back on her breast, and make her say my name again.
She says it like she’s angry the word belongs to me.
“Yaromir.”
My mouth closes over her nipple, and I suck until her fingers dig into my shoulders. Her back arches off the table, her tit pressed into my mouth, the other filling my hand. I squeeze, thumb dragging over the hard peak, and she makes a sound that goes straight to my cock.
She’s learning quickly.
I kiss down the center of her chest, over the rise of one breast, then the other. Her skin is hot under my mouth. Her breaths come short and uneven, each one catching when my teeth graze her nipple or my tongue circles the tight little peak.
“You like your tits in my mouth,” I say.
Her face flushes. “Don’t say it like that.”
I lift my head. “Like what?”
“Like you know.”
“I do know.”
To prove it, I take her other nipple between my lips and suck again, harder this time. She gasps and jerks against me.
I smile against her skin. “There,” I murmur. “That’s how I know.”
Her hand slides into my hair and pulls. “You’re impossible.”
“You’re wet.”
Her whole body stills.
I lift my head and look at her. The ruined red dress is pushed down to her waist. Her tits are bare, flushed from my mouth.
The emerald necklace glitters beside her on the table, forgotten.
Her thighs are open around my hips, and even through the thin fabric of her underwear, I can feel how soaked she is.
She tries to look offended. She fails.
I slide my hand between her legs and press my fingers over her.