Chapter 43 OKSANA
Early the next morning…
I don’t sleep. Not because of exhaustion, or adrenaline, or the glow of a job half-finished. I don’t sleep because something in me—the part sharpened by years of killing and running and listening for footsteps in the dark—keeps whispering that something is wrong with Stephano.
That while I sit in this room pretending I can relax, the man I married is out there bleeding in ways I can’t bandage. The dread sits under my skin like a splinter.
It grows. It spreads. It coils in my throat.
And when he finally comes home… I know I was right.
He looks older. Drawn.
Not physically—he’s still all impossible muscle and lethal beauty—but deeper, beneath the bones. Something inside him has died quietly, and the world didn’t notice except for me. He moves like a man carrying a ghost.
And I know exactly whose ghost it is.
Nico.
Or Alexei.
Or both.
I’m not sure it matters anymore.
He moves like a man who dug a grave tonight: his father’s, and maybe a part of himself, too.
It almost frightens me how deeply I feel it, how his fracture echoes in my own chest as if we share ribs.
Because God help me, losing him in any way—even to his own darkness—is something I don’t know how to survive.
When he finally tells me what happened, Gustave dead, Nico pulling the trigger, truths unmasked, bloodlines ripped apart and sewn back together, I feel something twist low and vicious inside me.
But beneath all of it lives the question that terrifies me most.
"What happens if Nico chooses war?" I ask quietly. "And if my brother chooses war against him? Where does that leave us?"
He lifts his head slowly. What I see in his eyes could break countries.
He steps closer until his heat brushes my front.
"Oksana," he murmurs, voice low and carved in steel, "look at me.
" He tilts my chin up, forcing me to meet the storm head-on.
"You're my wife," he says. "Grigori is my brother-in-law.
Nico…" His throat works. "…is whatever he is now. I do not break for anyone."
The vow coils around my spine like a warm hand.
"If war comes," he continues, "I stand with you.
With La Famiglia. With the alliances that keep us alive.
With the decisions that keep New York from burning.
" His thumb sweeps my bottom lip, slow and possessive.
"If I have to choose between blood and you?
" His voice drops to a dark promise. "I choose you.
Not out of duty. Not out of strategy. But because I'd rather carve the world apart than lose the only person who sees me, even the parts I’m still learning to hate. "
My chest tightens, painfully. His words shouldn’t melt me. But they do.
Because Stephano Conti does not give love lightly. He gives it like a man handing over his last weapon, conditional on nothing.
I swallow. "It will be hard to kill Nico," I admit. "I… do like him."
Stephano exhales, eyes closing for a beat. "So do I." He reaches up, fingers sliding into my hair. "Let’s hope he doesn’t make us choose."
The silence settles between us, not heavy, but full.
A decision hanging in the air like a blade suspended by a thread.
Nico will have to decide which blood runs deepest through his veins—the Russian legacy hunting him, the Venezuelan shadow that shaped him, or the Italian bond forged between brothers.
A hot shower later, I don't fully feel human again, but at least alive. I’m still toweling off when I catch my reflection in the fogged mirror and snort at the half-feral grin looking back at me.
"You okay?" Stephano asks from behind.
I turn, and God help me, the man is naked except for a towel slung low on his hips, droplets of water sliding down his chest like they belong there.
His hair looks almost black when it's slicked back and damp.
The haunted look in his gray, stormy eyes has been replaced with hunger.
He's making peace with the past. He also looks like sin carved into muscle and bone. I don’t think I'll ever be tired of looking at this man.
He steps closer, caging me against the counter with his arms, his palms braced on either side of me. The heat of him, the smell of soap and male skin, it all hits me at once, low and heavy.
Arousal flares inside me like a match against gasoline.
It’s been simmering beneath my skin for twenty-four hours, ever since Toni’s mansion was attacked.
There’s something about a good fight that makes me horny as fuck, and being forced to wait until now has turned the desire into a nearly painful need.
And now my husband is looking at me like I’m the only thing keeping him sane.
My nipples pebble under the towel. His cock presses against me, long and thick and hard enough to bruise.
"Hard and fast?" he asks.
Fuck, but his words make me drenched. I look him square in the eyes and lick my lips, an answer, a dare.
"Wouldn't want it any other way," I whisper, and watch the effect those words have on him.
His left hand hooks behind my neck, the right tugs the knot of my towel loose.
Gravity and his impatience work together to bare my skin.
I'm a little damp, a little goose-pimpled, and a lot ready to be consumed.
The contrast of his big, warm palm against my breast makes me gasp, but it's the look on his face—hungry, reverent, obsessed—that really undoes me.
"You're so fucking beautiful," he groans, and it's not a line.
It's a thing he needs to say, like he can't believe his hands are allowed this.
He thumbs my nipple, slow, then pinches just to check if I flinch, like I'm an experiment he's trying to get right.
I don't flinch. I arch toward him, hungry for more friction, more pressure, wanting him to bruise me a little so it doesn't fade with the morning.
Every bit of my body aches for everything he hasn't yet done to me.
He kisses me, hard, unleashing his own pent-up desires. No chess match here, just heat. My arms come up around his neck, but he shakes his head, pulls them off, and makes a show of pinning my wrists against the bathroom mirror. My heart pounds so loud I wonder if he can hear it.
"No," he growls. He holds my hands above me with one palm, and with the other, grabs my hip, spinning me so my stomach meets the cold marble of the counter. He releases my wrists, and I grip the edge. My cunt clenches with need so sharp it almost hurts.
He trails his knuckles down my spine and between my cheeks, then parts me, exposing every inch to the cool air. I shiver, desperate, every sense on red alert. He spreads my legs with his knee, and the head of his cock nudges my entrance, torturously slow.
"This," he says, punctuating with a slap to my ass that rings out in the tiled echo of the room, "is for the fucking Sasha stunt and worrying me." I cry out just a little, more with want than pain. The next slap has me biting the meat of my forearm, muffling the moan.
"You like that," he observes, so fucking smug, and the worst part is he's right.
"Yes," I hiss, my forehead pressed to the glass. "Again."
He delivers. Once, twice, and my body feels claimed. Owned. I stop bracing myself and just let it roll through me, blood singing in every vein.
Next, his hands grab my hips, unmercifully, he lines himself up, and in one relentless thrust, fills me to the hilt.
I watch his face in the mirror. See his clenched jaw.
His eyes have gone black as he loses himself in the rhythm he sets.
The mirror catches my reflection, cheeks flushed, hair in my face, lips parted in a silent scream.
He fucks me hard, like he needs to leave evidence.
His fingers dig crescents into my hips as his cock pistons inside me, every thrust a little more desperate.
My breasts bounce against the cold counter, nipples pebbled, every nerve lit up and burning.
The heat in my belly coils tight, pleasure and pain braided together so perfectly I can't tell which is which.
"You're mine," he says, breath ragged. "Understand?"
"Yes," I choke out, and then he reaches around to rub my clit, grinding the heel of his hand against it in brutal little circles.
My body goes liquid, knees buckling, and he has to hold me up to keep fucking me.
I'm gone, gone, delirious. It builds, crests, and explodes.
My orgasm is so violent that I see starbursts behind my eyelids.
My legs are jello, my voice is gone, but he keeps going, chasing his own finish.
He slams into me once, twice, then roars out my name and comes so deep I swear I can feel him paint my insides. I sag against the counter, my cheek pressed to the marble, sweat cooling instantly against my skin.
We stay just so, a heap of tangled bodies and breath, until he finally straightens and pulls me up with him. I collapse back against his chest, boneless, letting him hold all my weight. His lips graze my ear, soft now. "Next time, we go slow," he murmurs, but I know it's a lie.
I laugh, hoarse and true. "Promises, promises, promises."
He spins me around and kisses me, sweet and filthy at the same time. I taste blood—I must've bitten my lip—but I don't care.
He grins, all wolf, like he can taste my surrender and it’s the best delicacy of his life. "Oh, I like a challenge," he murmurs.
Without warning, he hoists me up, like I weigh nothing, and tosses me over his shoulder like a bag of rice, my towel pooling on the tile behind us.
I bark out a surprised laugh and smack his ass on instinct, which just makes him dig his fingers harder into the backs of my thighs.
He carries me to the bed, flinging me onto it so the mattress bounces and swallows me, knees splayed, hair wild around my face.
He straddles my hips, looming over, and just… drinks me in.
I expect him to fuck me right away, but instead, he makes a slow, torturous meal of my skin.
He starts with my clavicle, nipping and licking, then works down, mouth on my breast, tongue a leash over my nipple.
Heat lances straight to my cunt. He sucks, bites, then moves to the other tit, lavishing attention until both are raw and hypersensitized.
I arch, desperate for more, but he just pins my wrists over my head with one hand and grins down, infuriating and perfect.
"Don’t move," he says. The note of command in his voice shreds all my restraint. My legs twitch; my hips buck under his weight. I’m so wet, I can feel slick pooling between my thighs and onto the sheets.
He trails a line of kisses down my belly, pausing to bite above my hip, then grazes his teeth over my stitches, grinning like he’s found a state secret.
"I'll never get tired of tasting Russian," he teases, and then he’s between my legs, spreading me open with two thick fingers, not inside, just rubbing circles over my clit until I’m dizzy with want.
"Look at you," he says, voice thick with awe and hunger. "So fucking wet. Is all that for me?"
I’m panting, fighting the instinct to grind against his palm. "Shut up and eat me," I snarl, but my words come out ruined, pleading.
He likes that. Likes that too much, if the way his cock twitches against my leg is any clue.
He bends down and lays his tongue flat against my pussy, slow at first, then speeding up until my thighs are trembling and my head’s pressed hard into the pillow.
I wrap my legs around his shoulders, try to control the rhythm, but he clamps my hips with his hands, holding me still while he wrecks me with his mouth.
He gets me so close I’m shaking. So goddamn close. Then he stops. Fucking stops. Pulls away and blows a cool breath across my clit.
The sound I make is not human. "Stephano—!"
He presses a finger to my lips. "No. You want to come, you ask me. Understood?"
I could claw his eyes out, but I nod instead. He goes back to work, this time adding a finger, then another, curling just right, tongue working me over until I’m right back on the cliff. My whole body locks up; I’m ready to explode.
He stops. Again.
"Fuck you!" I spit, voice hoarse.
He snorts, amused and delighted. "Not yet, Zhena."
I’d be furious if I weren’t so wound up.
My hands fist the sheets, and I hate him, I hate him, I want to bite his fucking nose off, but Christ, I can’t imagine anything better than him between my legs right now.
He resumes, and the cycle keeps going, tease, edge, deny, until I’m shaking all over, begging with my eyes, my voice shot to hell.
"Please," I gasp. It burns to say it, but I do.
He sits up, looming over me, eyes wild, hair mussed.
"That’s my girl," he says, and then finally, finally, he fucks me, deep and unrelenting, each thrust like an answer to every time he made me wait. I unravel so hard it’s almost dangerous.
My orgasm tears through me, wild and endless, leaving me trembling, sobbing, limp in his arms.
He grinds against me, not stopping, pummeling every last drop of pleasure from my body until I’m raw and boneless and sobbing for mercy. I feel him stiffen, burying himself as deep as possible, and with a grunt, he comes too, hot and hard, pulse after pulse.
Afterwards, he collapses beside me. There’s sweat and spit and maybe a little blood smeared between us. I’m still panting, but he draws circles on my shoulder, soft and tender, as if to apologize for the utter hell he just put me through. I’d punch him if I could feel my arms.
"Slow enough?" He teases.
"Next time, you’re the one begging," I rasp, but there’s no venom in it.
He laughs, and it’s warm, real, nothing like the facade he wears for everyone else. "I look forward to it."
We lay there, bodies tangled, not talking, not moving, just… alive.