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It wasn’t until Sara that those conflicting impulses—punishment and pleasure, violence and tenderness—somehow merged. I treasure her, love her so much I ache with it, yet sometimes when I touch her, I can’t control myself, can’t fight the urge to punish her for being what she is.
For belonging to my enemy before she stole my heart.
“So with her… you never?”
The poorly concealed curiosity in Sara’s whisper makes me smile, even as a familiar ache constricts my heart. “You mean Tamila?”
“Yes.” Her hand splays over my chest, as if sensing the pain within. “You were never rough with her like this?”
“No.” I cover that slender hand with my palm, pressing it tighter against my skin. “It wasn’t like this with her.”
What I felt for Tamila was nothing like the intense, almost violent connection I have with Sara. With my wife, it was a pleasant mix of physical attraction and liking, even a friendship of sorts. I admired her for being brave, in the context of her upbringing, and for being a good mother to Pasha. It didn’t hurt that she was beautiful, either, and though we didn’t have much in common, I grew to care for her… maybe even love her, I thought. Now, however, I see that I was fooling myself.
My affection for Tamila was just that, a mere echo of the raw emotions Sara evokes in me.
Her hand twitches under my palm, and I hear her swallow. “I see.” There’s a strange note in Sara’s voice, something almost like hurt. “You must’ve loved her very much,” she continues in the same tone, and I smile again as I realize what the issue is.
“Are you jealous?” I ask softly, reaching over to turn on the bedside lamp. Sara blinks at the sudden light, and from the tight set of her pretty mouth, I see that I was right.
She misunderstood my admission, thinking that my gentle treatment of Tamila meant I cared for my wife more than I do for her.
Sara doesn’t answer me, just pulls her hand away, and I laugh, feeling peculiarly light despite the dark memories dancing on the fringes of my mind. My ptichka is jealous—of a dead woman, no less—and I couldn’t be more pleased.
At the sound of my amusement, Sara’s expression darkens further, her delicate brows drawing together into a full-fledged scowl. With a barely audible huff, she turns off the light and turns away, giving me a quite literal cold shoulder.
My amusement fades, replaced by the complex tangle of emotions she always elicits in me. Lust and tenderness, anger and possessiveness—it’s all part of the madness that is my love for Sara, of this obsession I know I’ll never shake.
“Come here, my love.” Ignoring her stiff posture, I pull her against me, curving my body around hers from the back. Burying my face in her hair, I breathe in her sweet scent—my favorite fragrance ever—and tighten my embrace, holding her in place as she struggles to move away.
“I do want to hurt you sometimes,” I murmur when she stills, her breathing ragged from exertion. “I want to do things to you I’ve never dreamed of doing to my wife. There are nights when I want to devour you, ptichka, to consume you until there’s nothing left… until this addiction fades and I can take a breath without wanting you, without feeling like I need you more than life itself.”
Her breathing catches. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that I love you, ptichka… and that I hate you. Because it hurts, you see, knowing you still love him, still think about him when you’re with me.” My voice roughens, my grip tightening as she again tries to scoot away. “Your husband’s killer—that’s how you see me, that’s all you sometimes see. If I could wipe him from your mind, I’d do it in a heartbeat. I’d erase every record of his existence, make him into the nothing that he is. In a different world, you’d have been born mine, but in this one, I had to fight for you… kill for you.”
Her entire body stiffens. “For me? What are you talking about? It was all about your vengeance, the list that you—”
“Yes, it was… until I met you. Then it became about something else.” It’s a truth I hadn’t admitted to myself until this moment, hadn’t known except within the most savage reaches of my soul.
When I stood over George Cobakis’s bedside, I hesitated when I thought of Sara, but it wasn’t because I wanted to spare him for her. It was because the murder was so pointless, his vegetative state as good as living death.
I ended up pulling the trigger not despite my attraction to Sara but because of it.
Because I wanted her forever free of him.
Because even then, I knew I had to make her mine.
