EPILOGUE - Moscow Safe House, Three Months Later #3
“I’m real.” I arch toward him, wanting his hands on me. “I’m here. I’m yours.”
“Da.” He closes the distance between us and pinches my nipple, making me gasp, pleasure spiking sharp and sweet through my body. “Moya”.
He releases me and steps back. “Arms above your head.”
I climb onto the mattress and arrange myself the way he likes, arms stretched toward the headboard, legs slightly parted, completely vulnerable and trusting him with every exposed inch.
He watches me for a long moment, drinking in the sight of me spread out and waiting for him.
I look at him back—the way the lamplight catches the angles of his face, the tattoo visible above his collar, the broad shoulders that carry an empire, the hands that have killed and healed and brought me more pleasure than I knew my body could hold.
He’s beautiful in the way dangerous things are beautiful. In the way fire is beautiful, or storms, or the edge of a blade catching light.
And he’s mine.
He produces silk restraints from the nightstand, and my breath catches at the sight of them, anticipation sparking along every nerve ending as he approaches the bed.
“Color?” he asks as he loops the fabric around my wrists, his damaged right hand working slower than the left but still capable, still careful, still devoted to doing this right.
“Green. So green. Please, Roman.”
The silk tightens, secure without cutting off circulation, and he checks the knots twice before he’s satisfied.
“Beautiful.” He traces a finger down my restrained arm, following the line of muscle to my shoulder, my collarbone, the swell of my breast. “My girl. Bound and waiting for me.”
He’s still fully dressed.
“Roman—”
“Patience.” He moves to the foot of the bed and starts unbuttoning his shirt with deliberate slowness, revealing scarred skin inch by inch. “Watch.”
I do.
His chest emerges from the fabric, and I drink in the sight of him—scattered scars from old wounds and newer ones from the factory and the warehouse and every fight he’s survived to get here.
The tattoo rippling across muscles that have regained most of their definition.
Shoulders broad enough to make me feel small in the best way.
Abs carved from years of violence and discipline.
The trail of dark hair leading down from his navel to where his hands are working his belt.
He’s gorgeous.
He’s the kind of beautiful that comes from surviving things that should have killed him and coming out the other side harder and sharper and more himself.
The belt slides free. The zipper follows. He pushes everything down until he’s as naked as I am, and I make a sound in my throat at the sight of his cock—thick and flushed and straining toward me with need that matches my own.
“Like what you see?” His voice is amused, but his eyes are dark with want.
“You know I do. Now come here and fuck me.”
“So impatient.” He climbs onto the bed between my spread legs, his body covering mine, and I arch up toward him. “I’m going to taste you first. Every inch. Until you’re crying and begging and completely incoherent.”
His lips find my ankle, and I shiver, the touch electric even somewhere so innocuous. He presses a kiss there, then another further up my calf, then the inside of my knee, where I’m already trembling with anticipation.
“Then I’m going to fuck you until the only word you remember is my name.”
He bites gently where thigh meets hip, and I cry out, pulling against my restraints, desperate for more.
“Roman, pozhaluysta—”
“Shh.” He spreads my thighs wider with his hands, looking at the wet mess of me with naked hunger that makes my face flush and my hips buck toward him. “Did you think about this on the plane? About my mouth on your cunt while you pretended to read that magazine?”
“Yes—” The word comes out broken. “Bozhe, Roman, da, ya dumala o—”
He seals his lips around my clit and sucks hard, and I lose the ability to form sentences, my back arching off the bed with a moan that echoes off the walls of our bedroom.
He works me with devastating skill, his mouth and tongue knowing exactly how to take me apart, alternating pressure and speed, bringing me to the edge and backing off, building me higher and higher until I’m sobbing with need.
The orgasm hits without warning—his tongue flicking my clit while two fingers push inside me, curling against the spot that makes my vision white out—and I come so hard I lose track of everything except pleasure and his name torn from my throat like a prayer.
He doesn’t stop.
“Again.” He adds a third finger and stretches me open while his mouth keeps working my oversensitive clit. “Give me another one, solnyshko. I want to feel you come on my fingers.”
The second orgasm builds faster than the first, pleasure and overstimulation blurring together into something that borders on pain but tips into ecstasy when he crooks his fingers just right.
I shatter again, clenching around him with rhythmic pulses while he groans against my flesh like my pleasure is the best thing he’s ever tasted.
“Fuck.” His voice is wrecked when he pulls back, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand while I lie there trembling and destroyed. “You taste so good. I could eat you for hours.”
“Please.” I’m beyond shame now, beyond anything except wanting him inside me.
“Since you ask so nicely.”
He moves up my body, and the blunt head of him presses against my entrance. I hold my breath as he pushes forward in one long, devastating stroke that seats him fully inside me.
Full.
So full I can’t think, can’t breathe, can only feel him everywhere—stretching me, claiming me, branding me from the inside out.
“Blyad’.” His forehead drops to mine, his breath ragged against my lips. “Anya. So tight. Always so fucking tight for me.”
He starts to move, and I lose track of everything except the slide of him inside me, the grip of his hands on my hips, the sound of our bodies meeting with each thrust.
“Look at me.”
I force my eyes open, find his gaze, and the intensity there steals what’s left of my breath. Grey eyes burning with want and love and something possessive that should frighten me, and instead makes me feel safer than I’ve ever felt in my life.
“This is mine.” He drives deeper, and I moan, the angle hitting something inside me that makes sparks explode behind my eyes. “This pussy. This body. This woman. Mine. Say it.”
“Tvoya.” The word tears out of me with a sob. “Yours. Only yours, always—”
He increases his pace, fucking me harder, deeper, each thrust punching the air out of my lungs and driving me closer to another orgasm I don’t think I can survive.
“Opyat’.” His thumb finds my oversensitive clit and circles. “Come for me again. I want to feel you come on my cock.”
I break.
The pleasure is so intense I lose myself in it, dimly aware that I’m screaming his name, that my body is clamping down on him, that he’s groaning and burying himself to the hilt, and he pulses inside me, filling me, claiming me completely.
“Blyad’, Anya—” His whole body shudders as he comes, his face buried in my neck, his cock throbbing inside me with each wave of his release. “I love you. I love you so much it hurts.”
He collapses forward, catching his weight on his forearms, his forehead dropping to mine while we both struggle to breathe.
“I love you.” I turn my head to kiss him, soft and sweet after all that intensity. “Now untie me so I can hold you properly.”
He laughs, breathless and warm, and reaches up to work the knots loose with trembling fingers.
The moment my hands are free, I wrap them around him, pulling him down against me.
We stay that way for a long time, tangled together, breathing together, existing in the quiet peace of the aftermath.
“Belgium,” he finally says. “Mishka’s face when he realized you were really there.”
“I know.” I press my smile against his shoulder. “He looked so happy, Roman. He looked like a normal kid seeing his sister.”
“He loves you.” His left hand strokes down my spine while his right rests between us, the tremor quieted for now. “The way he talked about you when you were getting coffee—like you’re his entire world.”
“What did he say?”
“That you used to sneak him chocolate when your mother said he’d had enough. That you helped him with math homework even when you were exhausted from your own studies. That you cried at his sixth-grade recital when he played chopsticks because you were so proud of him.”
“He told you that?”
“He told me everything.” Roman’s voice is soft with wonder. “I think he needed to share you with someone who would understand why you’re worth protecting.”
The tears come before I can stop them.
“Hey.” He gathers me closer. “Solnyshko, chto—”
“You talked about me.” I’m crying and laughing at the same time. “My brother and my husband talked about me, and it was good and normal, and I never thought—”
“Never thought what?”
“That I could have both.” I press my face against his neck. “You and him. Love and family. All of it.”
“You never had to choose.” He tilts my chin up, thumbs away my tears with his left hand. “You just had to survive long enough for the choosing to become unnecessary.”
“I love you.”
“I know.” His smile is soft. “I love you too. Now let me hold you while we figure out what comes next.”
* * *
Morning finds us in the kitchen, Roman making tea the way Galina taught him while I sit at the counter in his shirt and nothing else, watching the domesticity of it with wonder that hasn’t faded.
The samovar hisses in the corner—Galina insisted we keep it even though we have a perfectly good electric kettle—and the smell of black tea fills the air with something that feels like safety, like home, like all the things I never thought I’d have.
“The captains’ meeting is at ten,” I say. “Chernov wants to discuss the Odessa situation.”
“Polina.” Roman’s jaw tightens. “Suka is still recruiting.”
“Down to twelve defectors this month. Better than eighteen.”