After that, all the control turns into force.
He fucks me like he’s been trying not to since the minute I got in his car. Every stroke hard enough to drive the breath out of me, every kiss rough and hungry, every sound he makes low and unguarded and somehow worse than words.
The bed pounds softly against the wall.
I wrap both legs around him and take it because there is nothing else to do. Nothing else I want to do. His cock drags against everything inside me that already feels too sensitive from his mouth, and the combination is almost cruel.
“You feel so good,” he says into my neck, and there’s no polish left in him now, no distance, no careful control. Just heat and need and too much of both.
I hold his face and kiss him because I can’t bear not to.
He changes the angle and I fall apart as his cock throbs inside my pussy mercilessly.
My whole body locks around him and I come with his name on my mouth, not loud but desperate enough to make him curse and thrust harder, chasing his own end with the same relentless focus he uses for everything else.
A few seconds later he comes too, buried deep, face pressed against my throat, body shaking once, hard.
For a long moment neither of us moves.
He’s heavy over me, and I let him be.
The room is silent except for our breathing.
My pussy throbs around the fading fullness of him. My whole body feels used in the best and worst possible way. Somewhere beneath the heat and the exhaustion and the stupid satisfaction of having him like this again, I know I should be horrified with myself.
Instead I’m lying in his bed with my legs tangled around his waist, still wanting more.
Roman lifts his head first.
He brushes the hair off my face with the backs of his fingers and says nothing.
For once, that’s almost kinder than words.
29
ROMAN
I wakeup with my hand already reaching for a gun that isn’t there.
For one blind second, I don’t know where I am. The room is dark. My heart is pounding hard enough to hurt. I can still hear my mother screaming.
Then the dark settles into shape around me. The apartment. The low lamp near the door. The outline of the dresser. The soft warmth beside me.
Katerina pushes herself up on one elbow. “Roman?”
My chest is still heaving. Sweat clings cold between my shoulder blades. I drag a hand over my face and sit up too fast, the sheets tangling around my waist.
“It’s nothing,” I say.
Even in the dark, I feel her looking at me.
It’s a lie, and not even a good one.
She sits up too, pulling the sheet over herself more from habit than modesty. Her hair is a mess from sleep, her voice rough with it when she says, “That didn’t sound like nothing.”
I don’t answer.
For a long moment, neither of us moves. I can feel the remains of the dream still crawling over my skin. My mother’s face. The hallway. The sound of wood splintering. The smell of blood and old cigarette smoke and fear so thick it seemed to have a taste.
