Chapter 27
KATIE
By evening, Artur has declared war on cheese.
Soft cheese disappears first, followed by deli meat, undercooked eggs, herbal tea, the bathroom cleaner, and a jar of mayonnaise that has committed no apparent crime.
He stands at the open refrigerator with his sleeves folded to the elbows while a nutrition guide waits on the counter, marked in four colors.
“That cheddar is pasteurized,” I tell him.
“The label is ambiguous.”
“It says pasteurized in capital letters.”
“Aggressive typography isn’t evidence.”
Boris enters carrying a box of outlet covers. “The electrician says these aren’t required.”
“Install them.”
“The children don’t have fingers,” I say.
Artur closes the refrigerator. “They will.”
“Not tomorrow.”
“Excellent. We remain ahead of schedule.”
The house staff have begun treating his instructions like decrees from a hostile government. They acknowledge each warning, wait until he leaves, then ask me whether ordinary life may resume.
The cook shows me a list Artur left beside the pantry. Every item has been divided into approved, conditional, or prohibited. Cinnamon appears under conditional because he found conflicting information at two in the morning.
“Use the cinnamon,” I say.
“Mr. Dymov asked me to record substitutions.”
“Record a hostile takeover.”
She writes it in the margin.
Near the rear entrance, a guard has been reassigned because his aftershave worsened my nausea. The housekeeper removed a rug after Artur called its edge a fall hazard. Someone wrapped foam around the corner of the study desk where he bent me over nine nights ago.
The protection is so ridiculous that affection keeps softening my anger before it can become useful.
Cherry joins the resistance through video call, her face appearing on Boris’s phone while he opens the outlet-cover box.
“New rule,” she says. “Nobody tells Artur what Katie eats unless she consumes a live animal or Boris.”
Boris looks at the screen. “Why am I the exception?”
“High iron content.”
The cook hides a smile behind the pantry door.
I take the nutrition guide from Artur. “You aren’t receiving reports on every bite.”
“I didn’t request every bite.”
“You asked breakfast to submit a written statement.”
“Breakfast was evasive.”
Artur’s hand settles at my lower back as he passes. The touch is warm, protective, then gone before desire can gather beneath it.
That has been the pattern since the positive tests.
He kisses my forehead and holds me while I sleep, his palm spreading over my flat stomach at night with reverence so careful that I feel less like a wife than a locked case carrying precious evidence. Whenever I shift against the hard shape beneath his shorts, he moves away.
The clinic gave us three heartbeats yesterday morning, but it also gave him fresh reasons to fear touching me.
I make it through dinner before fatigue pulls at every limb, though half the meal tastes wrong. Roasted chicken smells faintly of pennies, while my stomach accepts only the potatoes without argument.
Artur watches each bite.
“If you ask whether I’m nauseated again, I’ll stab you with this fork.”
“That would require approaching me with a sharp object.”
“I can throw.”
“Your shoulder drops before release.”
“Would you like breakfast to document the assault?”
His mouth almost curves before he looks away, abandoning the expression before it completes.
The rejection is tiny, but it still reaches the fear I have been hiding all day.
High risk, three embryos, and specialist monitoring follow me down the short hall.
The phrases have already changed how the guards look at me, how the staff hurries to take anything from my hands. Artur has begun opening doors I opened perfectly well last week.
The most unsettling change is inside me, where I hesitate before lifting a laundry basket before resenting the hesitation.
Each ordinary sensation becomes a question, from the faint pulling low in my abdomen that frightened me until the clinic called it common to the tenderness in my breasts that announces itself whenever I descend too quickly into a chair.
I wanted proof that the pregnancy was real, and three flickers on a monitor gave it to me, but now I need proof that being pregnant hasn’t swallowed the woman who wanted Artur before she knew what grew inside her.
In the bedroom, I sit before the mirror and remove my sweater, revealing a body that offers no miraculous evidence.
My stomach looks the same, with a soft shallow curve below my navel, although my breasts feel heavier inside the lace bra and the nipples have become sensitive enough that fabric brushing them sends an ache toward my belly.
Purple shadows remain beneath my eyes, with fatigue leaving my skin pale.
Nothing about me resembles cargo until Artur enters and stops at the sight of my bare shoulders.
Desire darkens his eyes before he buries it almost immediately.
“You should rest,” he says.
“I’m already sitting down.”
“The doctor said fatigue may be significant.”
“The doctor didn’t say my husband should behave as if touching me will set off another bomb.”
Artur closes the bedroom door.
“Katie.”
“There are three babies inside me. I understand that this is frightening. I don’t understand why it means you’ve stopped wanting their mother.”
His face goes still with shock as he asks, “You believe I don’t want you?”
“You move away every time I touch you in bed.”
He crosses the room. “Because I wake painfully hard, and every medical article describes a different risk.”
“You could’ve told me. Restraint from you looks exactly like rejection when you refuse to explain it.”
Artur absorbs the sentence without defending himself, and his gaze drops over my half-dressed body before returning to my face.
“Every time I look at you, I want you,” he says. “Then I remember three heartbeats I cannot protect with my hands. Wanting anything near them feels reckless.”
“I’m near them, and I’m also the person who can tell you what feels good, what hurts, or when I need to stop. Did our doctor forbid sex? Did I?”
“No.” His voice roughens as he admits, “I believed restraint would be more reassuring, but I am terrified of hurting all four of you.”
The admission loosens something painful beneath my ribs, though it doesn’t solve the problem.
I stand.
Artur reaches for my elbow when I sway, but I steady myself before he can turn the moment into another restriction.
“Sit in the chair,” I tell him.
He obeys because curiosity has briefly defeated alarm.
I unfasten the bra.
The straps slide down my arms, and my breasts settle free, fuller than they were a week ago, with the nipples darkened slightly at their tight centers. Cool air touches them with enough sensation to make me draw a breath.
Artur grips the chair arms.
“Look at me,” I say.
His gaze moves slowly from my face to my breasts, and hunger strips the restraint from his expression. The sight warms me more thoroughly than any careful reassurance could.
I lower my trousers with the underwear beneath them, revealing no dramatic curve below. My stomach remains mine, as do my hips, while arousal has already made me wet between my thighs.
“This is the body you touched nine days ago,” I tell him. “It gets tired faster, my breasts hurt, and certain smells make me hate existence, but none of that has made me glass.”
Artur stands.
When he stands, his height and breadth reclaim the bedroom. Fear remains in his eyes, but it no longer empties the command from his body.
He closes one hand around my waist and draws me against him. “If anything hurts, you tell me once.”
“I will.”
“If you’re tired, I stop.”
“If I become tired, I’ll tell you.”
His other hand curves around the back of my neck. “Good.”
His quiet good ends the argument, and his grip tightens, leaving no uncertainty about who controls what follows.
Then his mouth takes mine.
The kiss carries every touch he has withheld as his tongue parts my lips, deep and slow at first, while his hand anchors me against the hard length beneath his trousers. I open for him and find his shirt buttons, though he catches both wrists before my fingers reach the third.
Artur holds them behind my back with one hand.
His mouth travels down my throat, with stubble roughening the sensitive skin above my collarbone, and when he reaches my breast, he cups its weight without squeezing while his thumb passes lightly over the nipple.
Pleasure strikes sharper than expected.
I arch toward him.
That is all the answer he needs.
Artur bends his head, circling the tender peak with his tongue before his lips close around it, and heat gathers low inside me with every careful pull. The ache in my breast changes beneath his mouth, becoming a bright pulse that travels directly between my legs.
He gives the other breast the same unhurried attention, one hand supporting its new weight while his tongue passes over the swollen nipple without becoming careless with the tenderness.
My head falls back. In the mirror, his dark head bends over pale skin while the arm around my waist holds my naked body upright, and the contrast makes the image look indecently composed: his mouth, my open thighs, the hard planes of him surrounding every pregnancy-softened curve.
Being watched by him was the first dangerous pleasure I discovered at the club. Watching him want me may be worse.
“More,” I whisper.
He releases my wrists to lift me.
My thighs close around Artur’s hips as he carries me to the bed and lowers me onto the pillows without surrendering the weight of his body over mine. Beneath my palms, his shirt slides from his shoulders. I kiss beside his temple before he catches my chin and returns my mouth where he wants it.
Clothing disappears beneath decisive hands as his belt touches the floor and his trousers follow, leaving the heavy line of his cock rising against his stomach, its hardness tightening my muscles with memory.
Artur opens the nightstand drawer.
I laugh softly. “The great safety campaign finally reaches the bedroom.”
“This category existed before the campaign.”
He tears open a condom, rolls it over himself, then kneels between my open thighs.
His fingers test my wetness, one sliding inside slowly while his thumb finds my clitoris, and my body receives him with an eager contraction.
Artur watches my face without the frightened concentration he gives a medical article, his attention stripped down to possession and appetite.
He adds a second finger and curls both through the place that makes my hips rise; I grip the sheets. Pleasure builds in smooth layers, sharpened by every new sensitivity until my breath comes apart.
He stops before I come.
I open my eyes.
Artur braces one forearm beside my head. “You wanted proof.”
The blunt hunger in his voice sends another rush of heat through me.
He enters with one deliberate thrust.
My body stretches around him, the fullness intense after days without it and bordering on too much until he holds still long enough for me to adjust. Once the sensation eases into pleasure, I pull him closer with both legs.
Artur begins to move.
Each stroke is deep, slow, then harder when my body answers. The headboard touches the wall in a steady rhythm. His hand slides beneath my ass, changing the angle until his cock drags over the place his fingers found.
The stretch burns pleasantly now that my body has opened around him, and muscles shift across his shoulders beneath my hands. Sweat warms the hollow of his throat where I press my mouth, tasting salt while his next thrust drives the breath from me.
His remaining restraint narrows into exact attention, allowing him to read every tightening of my fingers and each involuntary movement of my hips before using those responses to take more.
My nails score his shoulders.
He takes my mouth before any unnecessary words can escape, and the kiss absorbs my moan while his hips drive forward. Pregnancy has sharpened desire until my entire body listens to the sensation gathering from my tender breasts, my swollen clitoris, and the relentless fullness inside me.
Artur lifts one of my legs over his forearm, allowing the next thrust to reach deeper.
I gasp against his mouth.
He slows at once.
“Good,” I breathe, pulling him back. “There.”
Control returns to his pace as he holds the angle, thrusting steadily while his thumb presses firm circles over my clitoris. My body tightens beneath him, and the pleasure climbs too quickly to resist, becoming a hot pressure that closes around every stroke.
I come with my mouth open beneath his.
The first contraction pulls a broken cry from me. Artur drives through the next, holding my thigh while my pussy pulses around his cock. Each wave leaves me more sensitive, yet he keeps the pressure exact until the last tremor fades.
I expect the intensity to frighten him back into caution. Instead, his eyes remain on my face with fierce satisfaction. He bends my leg farther without forcing the tender muscles, then gives me two deeper strokes that turn the fading contractions sharp again.
He lowers my leg, turns me onto my side, then fits himself behind me; one arm supports my upper body. The other hand spreads across my flat stomach without pressing.
His cock slides back inside.
The position is easier on my tired body and no less possessive. Artur surrounds me, chest against my back, mouth at my neck while each thrust rolls through my hips; I reach behind to grip his thigh.
His control finally roughens as his breathing turns ragged beside my ear, and he holds me securely against him before driving deep enough that his body locks.
The condom fills while his cock pulses inside me.
We remain joined until his breathing slows.
My body feels loose, heavy, satisfyingly used, with no pain following the pleasure or invisible disaster announcing itself. Artur’s mouth rests against my shoulder while his hand remains spread protectively below my navel.
Artur withdraws carefully, deals with the condom, then returns with a warm cloth. He cleans me with an attention that would be tender if his palm didn’t close around my thigh like a claim.
“Still attracted?” I ask.
His eyes move over my naked body. “I’m considering another safety inspection.”
“Your procedures appear invasive.”
“Thoroughness protects lives.”
I laugh, then regret it.
Nausea rises with brutal speed, clenching my stomach while saliva floods my mouth.
I make it halfway to the bathroom before Artur catches my hair in one hand. He kneels beside me as I bend over the toilet, his other palm moving slowly between my shoulders.
When the heaving stops, I rest my forehead against my arm.
“Three,” I mutter. “Your genetic ambition is disgusting.”
Artur offers water. “You encouraged the initial expansion.”
“I didn’t authorize a franchise.”
His laugh is quiet beside me.
The unfamiliar number calls while I am still on the bathroom floor.
I answer because Cherry’s name appears beneath it in a message sent seconds earlier.
Her voice arrives low and hurried as she says, “Don’t say my name. Lidia wants to confess who bought your address.”