Chapter Five #4
Something inside me softened and caught fire at the same time.
I rose to my feet. My knees shook, but not from weakness this time. Vadim caught me around the waist and lifted me before I could decide where I was going.
The room turned. My back hit the bed. The robe fell open under me.
Vadim came over me, huge and hot, one knee spreading mine with a pressure that made soreness and need twist together.
His mouth took mine.
I tasted him between us.
That should have embarrassed me. It didn’t. It made me lift my hips.
He groaned into my mouth and slid one hand down my body. Not gentle enough to pretend. Not rough enough to hurt. He cupped my breast, thumb dragging across my nipple, and I gasped against his tongue.
“There,” he said against my mouth. “You like knowing what you do to me.”
I arched when his hand moved lower. “Maybe.”
“No maybe.”
His fingers slid between my thighs.
I was wet.
He found that immediately, and his eyes lifted to mine with a look so darkly satisfied I wanted to smack him and pull him closer at the same time.
“All this from putting me in your mouth?” he asked.
Heat rushed up my throat. “Don’t sound so pleased with yourself.”
“I’m pleased with you.”
My answer broke when his fingers circled my clit.
The touch was light at first, then firmer when my hips followed it. Pleasure moved through the tender places in my body and turned them bright. Last night had opened me. This morning made me aware of every place he’d been.
Vadim watched my face as he touched me.
“You’re sore,” he said.
“Yes.”
His fingers slowed.
I grabbed his wrist. “Don’t stop.”
His eyes burned. “Tell me if it hurts.”
“I’ll tell you.”
He lowered his mouth to my breast and sucked my nipple between his lips.
My head went back.
The pull of his mouth and the steady motion of his fingers made pleasure build faster than I expected. Maybe because I was already raw. Maybe because I had spent all morning holding back fear, anger, love, and a terrible kind of hope, and this was one thing I could understand.
Vadim slid one finger inside me.
I cried out.
He stopped at once.
“No,” I said quickly, gripping his shoulder. “Not bad. Just—”
“I know.” His voice was thick. “You’re tight. Tender. Still taking me.”
The words should have been too much.
They were exactly enough.
He moved his finger slowly, watching me take the stretch. Then he added the pressure of his thumb over my clit, and my whole body clenched around him.
“Vadim.”
“Yes, my wife.”
The endearment hit the place his hand had built.
I came with a sound I didn’t recognize. My heels dragged against the sheets. My fingers locked on his shoulder and wrist. Pleasure rolled through me in hot, shaking waves, softer than last night at first, then sharper when he kept touching me through it.
I tried to close my thighs.
He didn’t force them open. He kissed the inside of one knee and waited until I opened them again myself.
“That’s unfair,” I said breathlessly.
“Yes.”
“At least deny it.”
“No.”
A laugh broke out of me.
It barely sounded like mine.
Vadim’s face changed.
Not soft. Never only soft. But the look in his eyes made the laugh catch in my throat.
“What?” I asked.
“I want years of that sound in my house.”
My chest tightened.
I reached for him because I didn’t know what to do with words like that. He came willingly, settling his weight between my thighs, careful where I was sore even as his cock pressed hard and hot against me.
I wrapped my legs around his hips.
He went still again.
“I need you inside me,” I said.
His eyes closed for half a second.
When they opened, the restraint in them was fraying.
“You will be sore after.”
“I’m already sore.”
“Nadia.”
“I want to feel you when I walk.”
Vadim’s control broke on a rough sound wrapped around my name. He gripped my hip and lined himself up. The head of his cock pressed at my opening, thick and blunt, and I remembered the size of him with a flutter of panic and need.
He bent and kissed me. “Breathe.”
“I am.”
“No, you’re arguing.”
“Same thing.”
His mouth curved against mine.
Then he pushed in.
The stretch stole my breath anyway.
I held onto him, nails biting into his back. He went slow even though restraint looked like it was killing him. Inch by inch, he filled me. The soreness flared, then melted under the heat of him, under the way he kissed my mouth, my cheek, the corner of my jaw.
When his hips met mine, I was shaking.
Vadim stayed still.
I looked up at him. “You’re allowed to move.”
“Give me a moment unless you want this over with embarrassing speed.”
A smile tugged at my mouth.
His eyes narrowed. “Do not look so proud.”
“I’m very proud.”
“You should be.”
The humor burned away as he drew back and thrust in again.
I gasped.
The rhythm started slow. Deep. Careful enough to let me adjust and hard enough to make every thought scatter. He held himself above me, one forearm braced beside my head, the other hand gripping my hip. I felt the power in him. I felt him holding back.
I dug my heels into him. “More.”
His eyes locked on mine.
“Say it clearly.”
“I want more.”
His hips snapped into mine.
The sound that came out of me wasn’t quiet.
“There,” he said, voice rough. “That is clear.”
He fucked me harder.
Not careless. Never that. But deeper, heavier, the bed moving beneath us, his breath at my ear, my muscles giving around him with each stroke. Pleasure sparked through the tenderness. The stretch of him rubbed something inside me that made me grab at his back, his shoulder, the sheets.
“You feel what you do to me?” he said. “Do you feel how badly I want to fill you?”
My nails dragged down his back.
“Yes.”
“I will put my child in you one day, Nadia. Not because a room named a price. Not because a contract said a thing about your body. Because you are my wife and I want a family that begins with your yes.”
My throat closed.
He slowed enough to look at me.
“Too much?” he asked.
“No.” My voice shook. “Don’t stop saying it like that.”
His forehead touched mine.
“My wife,” he said, thrusting into me. “My future. The mother of my children when you choose it. The woman I took from a room that didn’t understand what it was touching.”
I came apart around him.
It started deep, where he filled me, then rushed outward until I couldn’t separate the pleasure from the pressure of his body or the rough devotion in his voice. I cried his name into his mouth. He swallowed it and drove into me harder, his control finally breaking all the way.
His rhythm turned fierce.
I held on.
Not endured.
Held.
Vadim buried his face against my neck, thrust once, twice, then shoved deep with a harsh sound that seemed torn out of his chest. Heat pulsed inside me. His body locked over mine. His hand slid beneath my hip and held me close while he emptied himself into me.
For a long moment, neither of us moved.
His weight was heavy.
I liked it.
That scared me less than it should have.
Vadim lifted himself before I had to ask, but not far. He stayed inside me, breath rough against my cheek, his hand moving over my hair once.
“Are you hurt?”
I swallowed. “No.”
“Sore?”
“Very.”
“Proud?”
I huffed a weak laugh. “Insufferably.”
“Good.”
I turned my face into his neck.
He eased out of me slowly. I clenched at the loss, and I hated that he felt it because his eyes went dark again.
“No,” I said. “You do not get to look pleased right now. I need water and possibly a new spine.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
“That’s not how spines work.”
“I know several doctors.”
I laughed again, softer.
Vadim went still above me.
I knew that stillness now. Not danger. Attention.
I touched his face before he could make the laugh too precious and break my nerve. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Look at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you’re already building a room around every sound I make.”
His thumb moved along my cheek. “Not a room.”
“No?”
“A life.”
I had no joke ready for that.
I should have dodged them. Made a joke. Asked for the water. Pulled the sheet over myself and found a safer subject, like murder or breakfast.
Instead I looked at him.
“Vadim.”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know how to be your wife.”
“You learn with me.”
“I don’t know your world.”
“You learn what keeps you safe. I handle the rest.”
“That sounds like a very reasonable household policy.”
His mouth curved. “It has served me.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
I touched the mark near his jaw. “If I choose this, I’m not choosing a cage with better sheets.”
“No.”
“I need to see Petya again. I need him safe, but not hidden from me like a shameful thing.”
“Yes.”
“I need Gennady stopped.”
“He will be.”
“I need you not to turn into him because you think wanting me gives you permission.”
Vadim’s expression went hard, but not at me. “If I ever use your fear to quiet your will, you put a knife in me while I sleep.”
My eyes widened.
He didn’t smile.
“I’m not joking,” he said.
“I don’t want to stab my husband.”
The word left my mouth before I could catch it.
Husband.
Vadim went utterly still.
The air left the room.
I felt my face heat. “That was hypothetical.”
“No.”
“Vadim.”
“No. You said it. I’m keeping it.”
“You can’t keep a slip of the tongue.”
“I can keep anything that precious.”
My chest hurt.
He kissed me once, hard and brief, then forced himself out of bed. “Water. Then bath.”
“You’re not putting me in a bath like an invalid.”
“I’m putting you in a bath like a woman I just fucked very thoroughly after her first night in my bed.”
My entire body flushed. “You can’t say things like that while discussing aftercare.”
“I can do many things.”
“Yes, arrogance remains one of your core talents.”
He looked over his shoulder at me as he picked up the water glass. “And you remain mouthy after sex. Good. I worried I had damaged something important.”
I took the water he handed me and drank because I was thirsty, not because the warmth in my chest needed somewhere to go.
He disappeared into the bathroom. Water began to run, deep and steady.
I sat up carefully, pulling the sheet over my lap. The city beyond the windows looked cold and bright. Somewhere below, men with phones and guns and old loyalties moved through a day that had been waiting for us before I opened my eyes.
My phone buzzed on the nightstand.
I grabbed it too quickly.
Unknown number.
A photo loaded first.
Petya stood near the entrance of a brick building in a borrowed dark coat, one of Vadim’s men visible behind him. The image was blurry, taken through glass or from across a street, but Petya’s face was clear enough.
My stomach dropped.
A message followed.
UNKNOWN:
He has until tonight.
Then another.
UNKNOWN:
Debt plus loss. Or I collect differently.
The bathroom water kept running.
My hand went cold around the phone.
Vadim came out with a towel in one hand. He saw my face and crossed the room before I spoke.
I handed him the phone.
He read the messages.
Vadim’s face went still, and the warmth left his eyes until only the dangerous man remained.
“He can see Petya,” I said.
Vadim studied the photo, then the window behind Petya, then the angle of the street. “This was taken before Lev moved him.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.” He turned the phone enough for me to see the edge of the awning above Petya’s head. “That was the first building. He is not there now.”
My breath came back too fast and not deep enough. “But Gennady had eyes on him.”
“For a few minutes.”
“That is enough.”
“Yes.” Vadim’s voice went colder. “It is.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means Kask had someone close to the first location before Lev changed the phone. Either they followed Petya before my men reached him, or Petya’s old contact gave up the wrong address fast enough to be useful.”
“Petya promised he wouldn’t leave.”
“He didn’t leave.” Vadim’s gaze lifted to mine. “This is not on him.”
I nodded once, but fear still gripped the base of my throat.
Vadim looked back at the message. His thumb hovered near the screen, not deleting, not answering.
“We’re not letting Petya walk into this,” I said.
“No.”
“And you’re not hiding me in this bedroom while men trade threats over my life.”
“No.”
That answer stopped me.
Vadim held the phone at his side. “Gennady wants your brother as bait. He wants you frightened enough to run toward him and me angry enough to walk into a public mistake.”
“What are we going to do?”
His gaze moved over my face, my bare shoulders, the sheet clutched under my arms, and came back to my eyes.
“We’re going to move your brother somewhere Kask can’t photograph him,” he said. “Then I’m going to make Gennady spend the rest of this day believing his message worked.”
A chill slid over my skin. “And tonight?”
Vadim stepped closer and touched my cheek with the backs of his bruised fingers.
“Tonight,” he said, “he learns what it costs to price my wife twice.”
My pulse hit hard.
I should have told him not to call me that while Gennady was threatening Petya. I should have told him wife was too large a word for a woman still tangled in black sheets with fear drying cold in her throat.
But Petya was alive.
Gennady was reaching.
And I was done being the door men used to get to each other.
I put my hand over Vadim’s.
“Your wife,” I said.
His eyes darkened.
“And myself,” I said. “Both.”
Vadim turned his hand under mine and held on.
I slid out of bed, keeping the sheet around me until my feet touched the floor. My legs shook once. Vadim reached for me, then stopped before his hand closed on my arm.
I steadied myself against his chest instead.
His heartbeat struck hard under my palm.
The phone lay on the bed behind us with Gennady’s message still glowing on the screen. In the bathroom, water ran hot enough to steam the doorway.
I picked up the robe from the floor and pushed my arms through the sleeves.
Vadim watched me tie the belt.
Then I took my phone, held it where we both could see Petya’s face, and stepped beside him toward the door.