Chapter 34 ROMAN - Winter Dacha, 4 Jan — 2247
The bonfire spits sparks into January dark, and I’ve been out here for three hours, splitting birch until my shoulders burn and my palms blister and the feeling finally comes back into my legs in waves of pins and needles that make me want to scream.
She watched from the window the whole time.
I could feel her eyes on me through the glass, tracking every swing of the axe, probably checking whether I’d collapse, whether the paralysis would come back, whether the antidote she shoved into my thigh actually worked or just delayed the inevitable.
I didn’t look at her. Because if I looked at her, I’d have to think about the floor, the cold marble against my spine, the way my lungs kept working, but my legs didn’t, the way she made me lie there helpless while she decided whether I deserved to live.
Helpless.
I haven’t been helpless since I was twelve years old.
She made me feel that again.
And then she saved me.
The math doesn’t work. I’ve run it a hundred times while I split this wood, while sweat froze on my skin and my muscles screamed, and I kept swinging because the alternative was going inside and putting my hands on her, and I don’t trust what I’ll do when I finally touch her again.
She’s walking toward me through snow that glows amber in the firelight. She’s wearing my shirt and nothing else, white cotton hanging to mid-thigh with the buttons done wrong so I can see the curve of her breast through the gap.
Her hair is down because she knows I like it that way, dark waves spilling over her shoulders. She’s got her feet shoved into my spare boots, the ones I keep by the woodpile, laces dragging through the snow because she didn’t bother tying them.
“I can’t stop thinking about me dying.” I drop the axe into the snow and turn to face her fully.
She stops six feet from the flames. Her chin lifts in that angle that makes me want to fuck it out of her until she forgets how to do anything but beg. “You drank both glasses.”
“I couldn’t move.” I take a step toward her, and the snow crunches under my boots. Her throat works as she swallows. “I watched you run to save me, and I couldn’t follow. Couldn’t help. Couldn’t do anything but lie there and wait to find out if you loved me enough to let me live.”
“I came back.” Her voice wavers, and I see tears starting in her eyes, and I don’t fucking care.
“After you made me feel like a corpse.” Another step. She holds her ground, but her hands are shaking at her sides, and I can see her nipples hard against the cotton. “After you took my legs. My hands. My voice. Left me trapped inside a body that wouldn’t obey.”
“Roman—”
“You wanted me to know what it felt like.” I’m close enough now to see her pulse jumping in her throat, to count the freckles on her collarbone, to watch goosebumps rise on her skin from the cold or the fear or both.
“To be powerless. To watch someone you love and not be able to stop what’s happening to them. ”
Her eyes are wet, and her lower lip is trembling. She looks so fucking beautiful, I want to break her.
“Yes,” she whispers. “I wanted you to know.”
Gentle won’t fix this. Only pain can fix this.
“Don’t be kind,” she says, like she can read my thoughts, like she knows exactly what I need to hear. “I can’t survive, kind.”
“Then you understand what comes next.”
I grab her wrist before she can react, my fingers closing around bones that feel so small I could snap them without trying, and I drag her toward the birch tree at the edge of the firelight. She doesn’t fight. Just stumbles after me, wearing nothing but my shirt and my boots.
I spin her to face the trunk and press her palms flat against the bark.
“Do you want this?”
“Yes.” Her voice breaks, but there’s iron underneath it. “Don’t be gentle.”
“I wasn’t planning to.”
I kick off my coat and spread it on the snow beneath her feet.
I need her on her knees for what comes next.
I pull my belt free from the loops, and the leather makes a sound as it slides through the fabric, a whisper that makes her whole body shudder.
I take her wrists and bind them together before tying the excess around a low branch and pulling until her arms stretch above her head.
“You made me watch. Now you’re going to see how it feels.”
Her whole body is trembling. “Punish me. I’m still here.”
“Color.”
“Green.” Her voice cracks on the word. “Green, Roman. Make it mean something.”
I step back and look at what I’ve made.
My wife, bound to a tree, on her knees in the snow, firelight painting her skin gold and shadow, the shirt riding up her thighs and her legs shaking from anticipation.
I can see the curve of her ass beneath the white cotton, can see the outline of her spine, can see her shoulders already straining from the position I’ve put her in.
I kneel behind her, and I push the fabric up until it bunches around her waist.
Bare underneath. The skin of her ass is pale and perfect and waiting for my marks, and I run my palm over her right cheek just to feel her shiver, just to hear the sound she makes when I touch her after everything.
“You were going to die.” My voice cracks, and I hate it, hate that she can still do this to me, make me feel things I buried twenty years ago in a church crypt.
“You were going to make me watch you drink poison and then lie there paralyzed while your heart stopped. While I couldn’t hold you.
Couldn’t save you. Couldn’t even close your fucking eyes afterward. ”
“I’m sorry—”
“I didn’t say you could speak.”
She goes silent, and I can see tears tracking down her face, catching the firelight.
I slap her ass.
Raw ragged fury that’s been building since I woke up on that study floor with her hands on my face and the antidote burning through my veins. The crack of my palm against her ass echoes across the snow, and she jerks against the restraints, a sob tearing from her throat.
“That’s for the first glass.” I hit her again, same spot, watching the skin bloom red beneath my hand. “That’s for the second.”
“Fuck,” she gasps, and her hips twitch forward.
“That’s for making me lie there.” Another strike, harder. “That’s for making me watch you run.” Another. “That’s for every second I couldn’t fucking move while you decided if I was worth saving.”
I’m not counting. Neither is she.
I hit her until my palm burns and my arm aches, and she’s crying openly, her body sagging against the restraints, her ass crimson and hot under my hand.
I grab a fistful of her hair and yank her head back.
“Open your mouth.”
Her eyes go wide, but she obeys, lips parting, tongue visible, and I use my free hand to open my trousers and pull my cock out. I’m so fucking hard it hurts, have been since she walked toward me in nothing but my shirt.
“Tap my thigh twice with your elbow if you need air.”
She nods, and I push into her mouth. She chokes but takes me, lips stretching around my shaft, her bound hands straining above her head while I hold her skull and fuck her throat.
“This is what helplessness feels like. You don’t control this.
You don’t decide when it ends. You just take what I give you. ”
She gags, and I pull back enough to let her breathe, then push forward again, deeper, until I feel the back of her throat, and her eyes are watering, and drool is sliding down her chin.
“That’s it.” I thrust again, slower this time, watching her face, watching the way her cheeks hollow when she sucks, the way her eyes flutter closed. “Take it. All of it. Show me you’re fucking sorry.”
She moans around my cock, and the vibration goes straight to my balls. I have to stop, have to pull out, because I’m not coming in her mouth. Not tonight. Tonight I’m coming inside her cunt while she’s so full she can barely breathe.
I reach into my coat pocket and pull out the plug I brough. The metal is cold from the winter air, and I warm it against my palm while she watches, her chest heaving, her ass still glowing red from my hand.
“This stays inside you.” I hold it in front of her face so she can see. “So you remember who owns you. Even when I’m not inside.”
“Roman—”
“Color.”
“Green.” The word comes out shaky but sure. “Fucking green, just do it.”
I spread her, run my thumb over her asshole and feel her clench, then press the tip of the plug against her and push.
She makes a sound that isn’t quite a word, something between a moan and a whimper, her body stretching to take it. The metal disappears inside her inch by inch while she trembles and gasps, and her fingers curl against the bark above her head.
“Good girl.” I sit it fully and tap the base, and she jerks, her whole body shuddering. “Now you’re not empty anymore.”
I line my cock up with her cunt, and I don’t bother checking if she’s ready. I can see she is, can see the wetness glistening on her thighs, can smell how turned on she is even through the cold air and the woodsmoke.
I thrust into her in one stroke, and she screams.
Not pain. I know her sounds by now, know the difference between hurt and overwhelmed.
“Fuck,” she sobs, her voice breaking. “Roman, fuck, I can’t—”
“You can.” I pull back and thrust again, and every movement shifts the plug inside her. “You’re going to take everything I give you.”
“It’s too much—”
“It’s not enough.” I fuck her harder, one hand on her hip, the other wrapped around her throat, feeling her pulse race under my palm. “Not after what you did. Not after you made me lie there wondering if you loved me enough to let me live.”
“I love you.” The words tear out of her between sobs. “I fucking love you, you stupid bastard, that’s why I came back, that’s why I—”
“Don’t talk.” I squeeze her throat just enough to feel her swallow. “Just feel this. Feel me inside you. Remember this the next time you think about testing me.”
“I wasn’t testing you.” She’s crying and coming at the same time now, her cunt clenching around me in waves while tears stream down her face. “I needed to know what you’d choose—”
“And now you know.” I slam into her one last time and hold, buried as deep as I can get, feeling her convulse around me while my own orgasm tears through me with enough force to white out my vision. “Now you fucking know.”
I come inside her with my teeth against her shoulder, until the only thing left is heat and snow and the woman I love sobbing against the birch tree while I mark her from the inside.
For one perfect moment, there’s nothing but the sound of our breathing and the crackle of the fire and her body still shaking around me.
I pull out slowly and reach up to slice through the belt binding her wrists. She collapses against me, and I catch her, hold her up, wrap my coat around her shoulders. I’m not letting her freeze after everything we just did.
“I’ve got you,” I murmur against her hair. “I’ve got you, solnyshko.”
Then I hear it.
Footsteps. Crunching snow. Too many of them, coming from the treeline.
I go still.
Anya feels the change immediately. Her body tenses in my arms, and when I set her on her feet, she doesn’t make a sound, just turns her head and scans the darkness the way I taught her, eyes sharp despite the tears still wet on her cheeks.
“Tactical bag. Woodpile. Get the Glock.”
“Yes.”
I step away and reach for the Makarov I left propped against the birch trunk, close enough that I can grab it without having to cross open ground with my trousers still undone.
The first shot cracks the air.
A warning shot or someone with shit aim, and I drop into a crouch with my weapon up, scanning the muzzle flashes blooming in the trees in three different positions, north and east, and south.
Anya is already moving.
She’s already behind me, the rustle of my coat still draped over her shoulders, the click of the magazine seating in the Glock, the crunch of snow under those too-big boots as she takes position at my left with her back to mine.
My coat is hanging past her knees, and underneath that, just my shirt is hiked up around her hips from what we just did. The plug is still inside her, and every step must be a sharp reminder of what I put there.
“Behind you,” she says, and her voice is calm and cold in a way that makes my cock twitch even now.
Her gun cracks twice in quick succession, and somewhere in the dark, a man drops with a wet thud that sounds final.
She drops the gun.
“ROMAN VIKTOROVICH!” A voice cuts through the gunfire. “CEASE FIRE!”
The shooting stops.
Yuri Chernov steps into the firelight with his hands raised and blood spreading across his shoulder from a wound that looks fresh.
My cousin. The one Vadim promised my chair if I die.
The one who would inherit everything I’ve built, including Anya, if my uncle’s men put a bullet through my skull tonight.
Four men behind him, weapons lowered, faces I recognize from a dozen Bratva meetings where they sat at Vadim’s right hand and nodded along to everything he said.
“Give me one reason not to put a bullet through your skull,” I say.
“Vadim sent sixteen of us to kill you both.” Chernov spits blood into the snow, and his voice is rough with pain. “I brought four men who feel the same way I do. Put two bullets in Vadim’s captain on the way here. That leaves ten of his loyalists in those trees.”
“Why?”
“My sister was on one of those trafficking ships.”
That’s all I need to hear.
Automatic fire erupts from the treeline.
One of Chernov’s soldiers takes a round through the throat and drops without a sound, blood spraying black against the snow.
I count fast: Me. Anya. Chernov. His three remaining men. Six of us against ten of Vadim’s loyalists.
Anya’s hand finds my shoulder. Steady. Warm. Her fingers dig in hard, and I know she’s fighting with my cum still wet between her thighs and my coat the only thing keeping her warm.
“Trust the math,” she says.
I look at Chernov across the firelight.
“Defensive circle,” I shout. “NOW.”
They move as one unit. Chernov’s three remaining men fall into formation with weapons up. Anya pressed against my side, her Glock steady, her body still trembling from everything, but her hands absolutely still.
We form a ring around the bonfire with the dark shape of the dacha at our backs.
The next volley hits before I can breathe.