ROMAN — Private Office, 0723
Vadim is cleaning the Nagant when I walk into his office, and that’s how I know this meeting is going to be bad.
I’m guessing that someone is me.
“Sit,” he says without looking up. The cloth moves over the barrel in slow strokes while I take the chair across from his desk and wait for whatever shit he’s about to dump in my lap.
Photographs are spread across the blotter. I can see them from here—bodies in a nightclub bathroom, teenagers with foam on their lips.
“Three children died last night in Tverskoy.” Vadim sets down the Nagant and picks up one of the photos.
A girl’s face, young and pretty and completely ruined.
“Sixteen years old. Birthday party. Her father is connected to three Duma members who are currently very interested in why a Volkov product is killing their daughters.”
“It’s not our product.”
“It carries our signature. Our distribution. Our reputation.” He drops the photo and looks at me with those flat amber eyes. “Three days. The Chechens arrive Friday. By then I need testable variants and proof your wife’s expertise is worth the investment I’ve made in keeping her breathing.”
“That’s not enough time—”
“Then she works faster.” He leans back in his chair, fingers steepled. “Dmitri has been asking about her, you know. Your little performance at dinner only made him more interested. He’d like to borrow her. See if her chemistry skills translate to other forms of… compliance.”
My vision narrows to the Nagant on his desk.
“She’s my wife.”
“She’s an employee.” Vadim stands and moves toward me. “A resource. If she doesn’t deliver, she gets sold. Three days, nephew.”
“Ponyal.”
“Good.” He returns to his desk and picks up the Nagant again. “Site 4 is prepared. Take her there tonight—the isolation will help her focus.” The cloth pauses over the trigger guard. “And Roman? Don’t disappoint me. I’ve buried nephews before.”
I leave before I do something that gets us both killed.
Anya is still in the lab, bent over the bench with her hair falling out of its tie and a smudge of something dark on her cheek. She’s been working for fourteen hours straight and she looks exhausted.
I pull out my phone and find the photographs Vadim showed me.
“You need to see something.”
She looks up, startled, as I hand her the phone. The color drains from her skin as she scrolls through image after image.
“Oh god.” Her hand comes up to cover her mouth. “The degradation pathway—if it’s accelerating this fast—”
“Then people are going to keep dying until you give them something that works.” I take the phone back and slip it into my pocket. “I have a facility outside the city. Better equipment, complete isolation, everything you need to work faster. We leave in ten minutes.”
“Ten minutes?”
“Pack whatever you need from the lab. Luka will handle the rest.”
She starts gathering notebooks and samples with shaking hands while I watch.
* * *
Anya presses herself against the car door the entire drive, putting as much distance between us as the seat allows. Her arms are crossed over her chest and her legs are tucked up underneath her.
The bunker appears through the trees after forty minutes—concrete and steel sunk into a hillside, Soviet construction built to survive things that don’t exist anymore except in nightmares and classified files.
The biometric locks read my palm and iris, and heavy doors groan open to swallow us into fluorescent corridors.
“How deep does this go?” she asks as we step into the elevator.
“Deep enough.”
The doors close and she’s pressed against the back wall.
I crowd her against the elevator wall and watch her pupils dilate.
“Roman—”
“You’ve been working for fourteen hours.” My hand finds her hip, thumb pressing into the bone through her jeans. “You haven’t eaten. Haven’t slept. Haven’t done anything except stare at molecular structures and blame yourself for deaths you didn’t cause.”
“I need to work—”
“You need to stop.” I lean close enough that my lips brush her ear when I speak. “You’re no good to anyone if you collapse from exhaustion. And I’m not interested in a wife who works herself into the ground before I’ve had a chance to properly enjoy her.”
Her breath catches.
“The lab can wait an hour.”
“An hour?”
“Maybe two.” I pull back just enough to look at her face. “Depending on how long it takes me to make you forget everything except what I’m doing to you.”
The elevator doors open. I step back and gesture for her to exit first. She hesitates before walking past me into the corridor.
The west laboratory is everything I promised. She barely glances at it as I lead her through to the adjacent office, where there’s a leather couch and a door that locks.
“Sit.”
She doesn’t move. “I should be working.”
“You should be doing what I tell you.” I close the distance between us and cup her jaw, tilting her face up.
“You’ve been running on adrenaline and guilt for two days straight.
Your hands are shaking. Your eyes are bloodshot.
You’re going to make mistakes if you keep pushing, and mistakes in a toxicology lab get people killed. ”
“So what, you’re going to force me to take a break?”
“I’m going to make you come until your brain stops racing long enough to actually rest.” I brush my thumb across her lower lip and watch her mouth fall open slightly. “Unless you’d rather go back to the lab and keep torturing yourself with photographs of dead children.”
“That’s manipulative.”
“Yes. Is it working?”
She’s quiet for a long moment, and I can see her fighting with herself.
“Green,” she says finally. “Fine. Green.”
“Good girl.”
I kiss her before she can change her mind, backing her toward the couch until her knees hit the leather and she sits down hard. My hands are already working her shirt buttons while my mouth keeps her distracted.
“Arms up.”
She obeys without hesitation, and that little flash of submission goes straight to my cock. I pull her shirt over her head and toss it aside. I unhook the black bra and watch her nipples harden in the cold bunker air.
Her arms come up to cover herself.
“Don’t.” I grab her wrists and pin them to her sides. “I want to look at you.”
Her face flushes red.
“Lie back.”
She does, and I take my time looking.
I pull off her boots. Her socks. Work her jeans down her legs while she stares at the ceiling and tries to pretend this isn’t happening. Her underwear is wet when I drag my knuckles across the fabric, and I don’t hide my smile.
“Already soaking.” I press harder, feeling her hips jerk. “What does that say about you, solnyshko?”
“Fuck you.”
“Eventually.” I hook my fingers in her underwear and drag it down slowly, watching her face the whole time. “And you’re going to hate yourself for loving every second of it.”
She’s naked now. I spread her thighs with my hands and look at her cunt—pink and swollen and glistening wet—
“Look at you.” I drag one finger through her folds, feeling her whole body shudder. “Wet and desperate and pretending you don’t want this. We both know better.”
“I don’t—”
“You do.” I circle her clit with my thumb, barely any pressure, just enough to make her squirm. “Your pussy is begging for it even if your mouth won’t. Should I make your mouth beg too?”
Her face goes redder. She turns her head away, can’t look at me.
“Say it.” I slide one finger inside her—she’s so wet it goes in easy, her cunt clenching around me like it’s trying to pull me deeper. “Tell me what you want.”
“Roman—”
“Not my name.” I add a second finger, stretch her open, feeling her hips buck up against my hand. “Tell me what you want me to do to you. Use your words.”
“I want—” She swallows hard, still not looking at me. “I want your mouth.”
“Where?”
“You know where.”
“I want to hear you say it.” I curl my fingers against that spot inside her that makes her gasp, then pull them out completely. She whines at the loss—actually whines—and it takes everything I have not to laugh. “Say it or I stop.”
“On my—” Her voice cracks. “On my pussy. I want your mouth on my pussy.”
I don’t give her time to feel embarrassed about it. I drop between her thighs and bury my face in her cunt like I’m starving for it.
Because I am.
She tastes like salt and arousal and something musky underneath that’s purely her. I’ve been thinking about this for days—imagining how she’d taste, how she’d smell, how she’d sound with my tongue inside her—and reality is better than anything I imagined.
I lick through her folds and she moans, this desperate little sound that she immediately tries to swallow. I do it again just to hear her fight with herself. Again. Again. Each time she gets a little louder, a little less controlled, a little more obvious about how much she needs this.
“You taste so fucking good.” I spread her wider with my thumbs, open her up so I can see everything. Her clit is swollen and flushed, twitching every time my breath hits it. “Like you were made for my mouth.”
“Roman—”
I seal my lips around her clit and suck hard.
Her back arches off the couch and she screams—actually screams—and I hold her down with one arm across her hips while I keep sucking. She’s trying to close her legs, trying to get away from the intensity, but I don’t let her. I force her thighs open with my shoulders and eat her cunt like I own it.
“Please—” She’s pulling my hair now, hurting me. “It’s too much, I can’t—”
I slide two fingers inside her and curl them against her g-spot while my tongue works her clit. She goes rigid, every muscle locking up, and I know she’s close.
I pull back.
“No—” Her hips chase my mouth, trying to get the contact back. “Don’t stop, please don’t stop—”
“Tell me who you belong to.”
“What?”
“You heard me.” I circle her clit with my thumb, light and teasing, nowhere near enough to get her off. “Tell me who owns this pussy and I’ll let you come.”
Her face twists—shame, anger, need all fighting for control.
“You.” The word comes out choked. Furious. “I belong to you.”
“Say it again.”
“I belong to you, Roman. Now please—”
I reward her with my mouth.
I suck her clit hard while my fingers fuck into her with a rhythm designed to shatter her. She’s sobbing now, tears streaming down her face.
“Give it to me.” I thrust my fingers harder. “Now.”
She breaks.
Her pussy clamps down on my fingers so hard it hurts and she’s screaming my name, her whole body convulsing while I work her through it. I don’t ease up, just keep my mouth on her clit and my fingers inside her until she’s begging me to stop.
“Too much—Roman, please, it’s too much—”
I ignore her.
The second orgasm hits before she’s recovered from the first. Smaller, harder, wrenched out of her oversensitive body while she sobs and tries to push me away. I pin her hips to the couch and keep going, keep licking, keep fucking her with my fingers until she’s incoherent.
“One more.” I pull back just long enough to look at her face. Wrecked. Ruined. Exactly how I want her. “You’re going to give me one more.”
“I can’t—”
“You can.” I thrust my fingers deep and watch her whole body jerk. “And you will. Because I told you to.”
She’s crying now, actual tears, not just watery eyes. Her mascara is running down her cheeks and her lips are swollen from biting them and she looks absolutely destroyed.
Beautiful.
I drop back between her thighs and eat her pussy like it’s the last meal I’ll ever have.
She screams. Fights me. Begs me to stop. But she doesn’t say red, doesn’t say the one word that would actually make me stop.
The third orgasm takes everything she has.
She goes silent when it hits. Mouth open, back arched, frozen in place while her cunt pulses around my fingers in waves that seem to go on forever. Then she collapses, completely boneless, breathing in ragged gasps while I gently pull my fingers out of her and lick them.
I sit back and look at what I’ve done.
She’s a mess. Hair tangled, face streaked with tears and ruined makeup, thighs still trembling with aftershocks. There are marks on her hips from where I held her down. Her pussy is swollen and red and dripping wet, still twitching even though I’ve stopped touching her.
Good.
I find a blanket and drape it over her, then sit down and pull her into my lap. She goes limp against my chest, too exhausted to fight, too wrung out to do anything but let me hold her.
“You did so well.” I press my lips to her hair and breathe in the smell of her sweat and sex. “Three times. I knew you could do it.”
She doesn’t answer, just breathes against my chest while her body slowly stops shaking.
My cock is still hard, still aching, still desperate for release.
She falls asleep in my lap within minutes, exhausted and wrung out and completely vulnerable. I hold her while she sleeps, stroking her hair, watching her breathe, and try not to think about how fucked we both are.
My phone buzzes in my pocket.
It’s Luka. Alexei Petrov called a meeting with the eastern captains. Tomorrow night. You weren’t invited.
I stare at the message for a long time.
Petrov. One of Vadim’s old guard, a man who’s been watching me with barely concealed contempt since the day I took over my father’s seat. He’s never challenged me directly—never had the balls—but calling a meeting without me is a declaration.
My arms tighten around Anya without meaning to. She murmurs something in her sleep and burrows closer against my chest, and I force myself to relax before I wake her.
I have seventy-two hours to produce an antidote, a captain plotting against me, and a woman in my arms who’s going to hate me when she finds out what I’ve really been doing.
I text Luka back. Find out who else was invited. Names. Addresses. Everything.
Then I put the phone away and press one more kiss to Anya’s hair.
“Sleep, solnyshko,” I murmur against her skin. “Tomorrow I might have to kill someone.”
She doesn’t stir.
I hold her until dawn, and I don’t sleep at all.