I swallow. “Yes, please.”
"Pozhaluysta," he corrects softly. The Russian word for please, said the way he says everything that matters — like he has all the time in the world and intends to use it. "Say it properly."
"Pozhaluysta," I say. The word comes out unsteady, which I have decided I am not embarrassed about.
"Khoroshaya devochka." Good girl. Low, unhurried, the specific warmth of a man who is deeply satisfied with how this is going.
His hands move, and I stop thinking in coherent sentences.
He is not rushed — he is never rushed, it is one of the most infuriating and devastating things about him. He takes his time. He takes considerable time. And I learn things about myself in the process that I did not know before, which is the specific kind of education that leaves you permanently changed.
“Victor—"
"Tikho," he says. Quiet.
A single word, said against my skin, and I go quiet because my body has decided that this man's voice in this register overrides everything else. My hands tighten in the sheets beneath me, my breath trembling out against the pillow as he presses another kiss to my spine. Slower this time. Like he has all the time in the world and every intention of using it.
His mouth moves lower, his hands following, and all thought disintegrates before it finishes forming. He’s not gentle in the way soft men are gentle. There is nothing hesitant about him. Even now, with his mouth on my skin and his hands spreading over me, he is entirely Victor.
Controlled. Intentional. Possessive that makes me arch into him. His palm slides up my side, over my ribs, then down again, tracing the shape of me with a savory attention that makes my throat tighten. For once, he is quiet, but that has everything to do with the heat of his body against mine. The roughness of his breath against my shoulder, the feeling of every ounce of his desire held on a leash so thin I can feel it fraying.
I turn my face into the pillow, trying to muffle the sound that escapes me. His hand stills at my hip.
“No,” he says, low against my ear.
Then his mouth brushes the side of my throat, and his hands come up to grip my breasts, not harsh, just pulling me back, away from the pillow. “I want to hear every sound you make.”
I close my eyes because looking at him right now would be dangerous to my control. Hearing that from him, in this bed, right now, after our vows, I barely know how to contain everything that I feel. And that terrifies the part of me that still strains to keep pieces of myself separate.
His mouth returns to my skin, moving one hand back to my hip, fingers gripping into it. My body answers him instantly, heat rolls through me in another slow, merciless wave, and I shake beneath him, furious with myself for how easily he pulls that sound from me.
Victor has fought for every inch of this. Every bit of trust. Every place inside me that no one else has been allowed to touch. He has taken nothing I didn’t choose to give him, and somehow that makes the surrender sharper.
When he finally moves over me, his weight settling against my back, his mouth at my ear, I am past the point of holding out. I am entirely lost to him, entirely his in the way that I said at the altar.
There’s just him. The warmth of him. The strength of him. The rough sound he makes when I move against him. His hand slides beneath me and closes over mine, threading our fingers together against the sheets. The gesture is so unexpectedly intimate that my chest tightens harder than my body does.
“Victor,” I whisper desperately.
His name makes him go still behind me, and for one suspended breath, I think I have broken something in him. Then his mouth presses to the back of my shoulder, just once, almost reverent.
“Moya zhena,” he says, the words rough and low. My wife.
I reach back for him, needing more of him, needing to see him, needing to see the expression on his face. Feeling it is too much and not enough at the same time.
He understands exactly what I’m reaching for, flipping me over, then controlled and effortless, securing my legs on either side of his hips as he settles between them. The shift steals the breath from my lungs. Looking at him now, all heat and muscle, eyes gone dark with need, and I know there will never be anywhere I can hide from him. Even if I wanted to.
His usual composure is gone completely. Replaced by something raw enough to make my throat ache. Need. Hunger. But beneath it, something far more dangerous in our world. Love.
The kind of love men like Victor are not supposed to be capable of.
"Smotri na menya," he says. Look at me.
I look at him — those pale eyes, dark now, the composure that is usually present gone, replaced by desperate need.
"I want to see you break," he says.
I lift my hand to his face. My fingers trace the edge of his jaw, then the scar along his cheek, and his eyes close for half a second. Then he moves, and I stop thinking entirely. The first slow roll of his hips drags a guttural sound out of me. My hand slips from his face to his shoulder, gripping hard, nails biting into his skin. He doesn’t flinch. If anything, the pain seems to pull him further under. His control frays, one breath at a time, one thrust at a time, until the rhythm between us feels insatiable.
