“Hating me was understandable.” He tilts my chin up. His eyes hold mine, and in them, underneath the possession, is an unexpected gentleness. “I’m sorry I made it necessary.”
It’s not the full answer. It’s not thewhy.But it’s honest. My hands, already on his forearms, stop fighting. “I still hate you a little,” I tell him.
“You were going to marry another man. So, same…” His mouth takes mine.
This time I don’t pull back. This is not like the first time. The first time, I was terrified and wanted something I couldn't ask for. This time I know exactly what I want, and I’m not shy about it. I can't be after these long months. The anger is still in the background, which makes the craving sharper, darker, more honest than anything tender could be.
He strips what’s left of the wedding dress like a man dismantling a lie. The lace is already ruined—from the drive, but he treats the remaining silk as an insult to be destroyed. Buttons scatter across the safe house floor, pinging against the wood like small gunshots. The bodice tears with a sound that makesme flinch, but his hands are steady, methodical, almost reverent beneath the violence. He is unmaking the bride. Erasing the version of me that almost walked down an aisle toward the wrong man.
“Look at you,” he says against my throat, his voice a gravel ruin. “A whole year.”
“Don’t.” My nails dig into his shoulders, hard enough to hurt. I need him to hurt. I need some proof that this is real and not another dream I’ve tortured myself with since the morning he sent me away.
“A whole year and you’re still—”
“Less talking, Maxim. We can analyze it later.”
The sound he makes isn’t quite a laugh. It is possession wearing the mask of amusement. “Still a lot opinions.”
“You’d be bored without them.”
“Yes.” He lifts his head and looks at me, and what’s in his face for just that moment makes my heart do a stupid, traitorous backflip. Need. Raw, unfiltered, boyish need layered under the Bratva armor. Then it’s gone, shuttered behind the predator’s mask, and his mouth finds where I need him—not gently. Not patiently.
He spreads my thighs with the rough authority of a man staking territory. His shoulders force them wider, his grip bruising the tender skin just above my knees. I feel his exhale, hot and deliberate, against my core before he even touches me. He licks through me in one long, humiliating, devastating stroke that uncurls something low in my spine. My hips buck off the mattress, but his hands pin me down. He feasts like a starving beast at a banquet he thought he’d lost forever. His tongue circles my clit with a precision that is almost cruel, retreats, then plunges deep, fucking me with his mouth while two thick fingers push inside, curling to find the spot that makes white sparks explode behind my eyes.
I am gasping. Sobbing. This is why I never made love to Larry. The year of celibacy—of emptiness—ends here, under his tongue, and my body remembers him instantly, weeps for him instantly, my arousal slick and shameless against his chin. He groans into my flesh, the vibration sending me careening toward the edge, then pulls back just enough to blow a cool stream of air over my swollen, throbbing clit.
“Beg,” he orders. “Beg me to let you come the way only I can.”
“Fuck you,” I choke out.
His fingers thrust deeper, crooking mercilessly. “Beg, Laura. Or I’ll keep you on this edge until Larry is nothing but a bad dream.”
The name should sting. Instead, it’s nothing. Less than nothing. There is only his mouth, wet and wicked, descending again. He sucks my clit between his lips and works it with his tongue until my vision blurs. I shatter apart with a scream that tears my throat, my whole body convulsing, my hands fisting in his hair so violently strands tear, but he doesn't flinch.
By the time he works back up my body, kissing a savage, claiming trail over my stomach, my ribs, the underside of my breast, I’m still shaking. My heart is a trapped bird. My skin is too small. When he settles over me, his weight pressing me deep into the mattress, his eyes meet mine, and there is nothing left to pretend. No walls. No Larry. No correct version of my life arranged carefully around what I actually wanted.
Just this. Just him. Just the infuriating, devastating truth of his body pinning mine.
“Say it,” he says. His cock is hot and heavy against my thigh, bare—he is bare, I realize with a shock that arrows straight to my core—and there is nothing between us but sweat and vengeance and longing.
I know what he wants. “No.” My jaw sets. I need to hold onto this last piece of myself, even while my body has already surrendered everything.
He shifts his hips, just slightly, the precise, gliding threat of his arousal slicking through my folds, nudging against where I am still fluttering from my orgasm, and my breath hisses out through my teeth. “Say it.”
“I’m not—”
“Laura.” My name is a warning. A prayer. A command.
“I want you.” The words tear out of me, honest and furious and shattered all at once. “I want you. I have always wanted you. Are you satisfied?”
“Not yet,” he says, and takes me.
He pushes inside in one long, unforgiving thrust. No hesitation. No barrier. He fills me to the root, and the stretch burns so perfectly I see stars. My back arches off the bed, a cry catching in my lungs as he seats himself fully, his pelvis grinding against my sensitive clit, his chest crushing my breasts.
He’s different. That’s the thing underneath the heat and the fury and the total claiming of a man who has decided. The first time he held something back—some restraint, some damage control, the part of him that knew he was going to send me home and was already constructing the distance. He is not holding anything back now.
He pulls out to the tip and slams back in so hard the bed frame shrieks against the wall. Then again. And again. He fucks me like the year of distance is a fortress he is dismantling with his body. He is deliberate, thorough, merciless, angling his hips so that every inward stroke hammers that perfect spot inside me while his pubic bone rasps against my clit. The rhythm is punishing, glorious, a war drum claiming every inch of surrendered territory.
