Chapter 23
The road to the dacha is forty kilometers of frozen birch forest, and I’ve been watching Anya sleep against my shoulder for thirty-seven of them.
Her mouth has softened in sleep, stripped of the sharp edges she wears against the world.
She is defenseless here, in my car, in my territory, and the sight of that seatbelt crease on her cheek makes something twist violently behind my ribs.
She’s a contradiction I’m desperate to solve—a creature of light I’m dragging into my darkness.
She whimpered twice from dreams I can’t protect her from, and both times my hand found her thigh.
Both times, I didn’t pull away.
Chyort. I’m losing my fucking mind over this woman.
The convoy winds through the forest that’s been Volkov territory for three generations—two SUVs ahead, two behind, Luka driving this one. He has been silent for the entire trip, but his eyes keep reverting to us.
“She’s not ready for this.” His voice is low enough that it won’t wake her. “The bratki are talking. Saying you’ve gone soft.”
For half a second, I imagine slamming his head into the steering wheel, feeling the bone give under my palm. The urge passes. Luka is necessary.
“Let them talk. When half of them are dead next month, the survivors can talk about that instead.”
“Roman—”
“Say what you’re thinking, Luka. Before I lose patience.”
His jaw tightens. Smart man. He shuts up.
I look at her sleeping face.
My father would call this weakness.
My father is dead.
She shifts in her sleep, her knee pressing against my thigh. The small bones of her wrist rest on my leg. How easily that wrist would break. How the bruises would bloom purple against her pale skin. How I’d kill anyone who left those marks.
Anyone except me.
Yob tvoyu mat’. I need to get my head straight.
But then she makes a sound—soft, wounded, something from a nightmare—and my hand is in her hair before I can stop it, stroking, soothing, whispering Russian nonsense against her temple.
“Tikho, kroshka. Ya zdes’.” Quiet, little one. I’m here.
She settles. Her breathing evens.
And I sit there in the armored car with my hand in her hair, knowing with absolute certainty that Luka is right.
* * *
The dacha appears through the trees like a fortress pretending to be a home.
Three stories of reinforced concrete hidden behind traditional wooden facades.
Security cameras in the bird feeders. A helicopter pad behind the banya that officially doesn’t exist. My grandfather built it during the Soviet collapse as a fallback position—somewhere to run when Moscow burned. My father used it for interrogations.
I still remember the sounds that came from the basement when I was seven years old, the way my mother would turn up the television and pour herself more vodka and pretend we couldn’t hear the screaming.
Anya wakes as the car stops, consciousness returning in stages—first the tension in her shoulders, then the flutter of her lashes, then those grey eyes focusing on me.
“We’re here,” I say.
She straightens, and I catch the way she winces—subtle, almost hidden. Her thighs press together when she shifts, remembering the knife, the blood.
“It’s beautiful.” She’s already scanning the perimeter.
“The beauty is camouflage.”
“Like you?”
The observation lodges like shrapnel.
One of my soldiers—Dimitri, twenty-three, good with a knife—looks at her too long. His eyes drop when he catches me watching, but not fast enough.
If he looks again, I’ll break his fingers. If he touches her, I’ll make him dig his own grave in the frozen ground and kneel in it while I put a bullet in his skull.
The thought settles me.
“Like both of us now,” I say. “Come. I want to show you something.”
I take her to the master suite first—wolf-carved headboard, reinforced windows, panic room behind the wardrobe—but I don’t stop there.
Through the bedroom, down a narrow hallway, to a room that exists on no blueprints. The door is solid steel behind a wooden facade. The lock requires a code, a fingerprint, and a key I’ve worn on me since I was seventeen.
“Roman, what—”
I push the door open and immediately wonder what the fuck I’m doing.
Another violin sits in a climate-controlled case by the window—the Guarneri. Next to it, a wall of books—read books, spines cracked and pages soft from handling. In the corner, a small wall icon of the Theotokos, my mother insisted on, candle wax stains pooled at its base.
Anya’s breath catches.
“This is—” I stop. “No one knows about this room.”
“Then why are you showing me?”
Because I’m a fucking idiot. Because I can’t stop myself. Because if I die, I want you to have something of me that wasn’t covered in blood.
“Emergency exit,” I say. “The panic room connects to a tunnel. Comes out half a kilometer into the forest. If something happens—”
“Roman.” She crosses the space between her hand and us and finds my chest, right over the scar from the bullet that almost killed me at nineteen. “Nothing is going to happen to you.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know you.” Her eyes hold mine—grey and steady and too fucking certain. “I know what you’re capable of. I know you’ll burn the world before you let anything touch what’s yours.”
I grab her wrist—too hard, I know it’s too hard, but I can’t stop myself—and drag her hand up to my mouth, pressing my lips to her palm.
“You have no idea what I’m capable of,” I say against her skin. “What I’ve done. What I’ll do to keep you.”
* * *
I make her wait while I prepare.
The cabinet beside the wardrobe holds everything I selected for this moment: the steel plug, the warming lubricant, and restraints.
She watches me from the bed, still dressed, her fingers twisting the hem of her sweater. She breathes too fast, her thighs clamp together, the flush creeping up her throat.
“Strip.”
She hesitates.
I let her.
She pulls the sweater over her head, her fingers fumbling with her bra, and the fabric falls away until she’s standing in just her panties with her arms crossed over her chest.
“Hands down.”
She drops them.
Her nipples are already hard. The bruises on her hips from last night have bloomed purple and yellow, and the sight makes something savage uncurl in my chest.
Mine. Those marks are mine.
“The underwear too. Then get on the bed.”
She obeys. She climbs onto the sheets and lies back against the pillows with her thighs pressed together like she can hide how wet she already is.
I can see the slick shine on her inner thighs from here, and my cock throbs against my zipper at the sight.
“Safeword?”
“Glas.”
“Color system?”
“Green, yellow, red.” Her voice catches. “Two taps if I can’t speak.”
“Khorosho.” I select what I need and move to the bed, settling between her thighs.
The scent of her arousal hits me—salt and heat and something uniquely her—and I have to grip my own thigh to keep from just burying my face between her legs immediately.
“Tonight I’m going to fill you completely. Both holes. At the same time.”
Her throat works as she swallows.
“Double penetration. Simultaneous stimulation of—”
“Anya.” I grip her jaw, forcing her eyes to mine. “You don’t get to hide behind science. Not here. Not with me.”
Her breath shudders out.
“I’m scared,” she whispers.
“Good.” I release her jaw and trail my fingers down her throat, her collarbone, the soft swell of her breast. “Fear means you understand the stakes. But I’m not going to hurt you.”
“Liar.” But her lips twitch.
I pinch her nipple—making her gasp, soft enough that the pain melts into pleasure—and her back arches off the mattress.
“I’m going to wreck you,” I correct.
I start with my mouth. I’ve been thinking about the taste of her since the last time I had my face between her thighs.
My tongue traces down her stomach, over the curve of her hip, avoiding where she wants me until she’s writhing and cursing and her hands are fisting in my hair.
“Roman—fuck—please—”
“Please, what?”
“You know what.”
“I want to hear you say it.”
“I want your mouth on me.” Her voice is strained, desperate. “I want you to make me come.”
“Where do you want my mouth, Anya?” I blow cool air across her clit and watch her whole body jerk. “Be specific.”
“On my—” She breaks off, face flushing.
“Say it.”
“On my pussy. I want your mouth on my pussy. Please.”
“Good girl.”
I spread her open with my thumbs and look at what belongs to me. Pink. Swollen. Fucking soaked. The prettiest thing I’ve ever seen, and I’ve looked at a lot of beautiful things in my life—art, architecture, the Moscow skyline at night—but nothing compares to this.
I lick a stripe up her center, and she shivers so hard I have to hold her hips down.
“Blyad’—” she gasps.
The taste of her explodes across my tongue, and I groan against her flesh like a man dying of thirst who’s finally found water.
“You taste so fucking good,” I tell her between strokes of my tongue. “I could eat this pussy for hours.”
“Please—” Her hips buck against my mouth. “I need—”
“What do you need?”
“More. I need more.”
I slide two fingers inside her and curl them, finding the spot that makes her keen, and her thighs shake around my head as I work her higher. She’s making sounds I want to record and play back later—desperate, broken, animal sounds that go straight to my cock.
“You’re going to come,” I tell her, my voice rough against her clit. “Then I’m going to open you up and fill you completely.”
“I can’t—it’s too much—”
I add a third finger and press harder on that spot inside her while my tongue circles her clit. “You will. Because I’m telling you to.”
She shatters, screaming my name—walls clenching around my fingers, thighs clamping around my head, the sound torn out of her like I’ve ripped something loose. I work her through it, gentler, slower, until she’s boneless and gasping.
Then I pull back and reach for the lubricant.
“Color?”
“Green. Very, very green.”