Page 25 of Bred By the Tsar

My knuckle grazes her jaw on the way. Once. Slow.

She goes absolutely still. Her breath catches. I hear it, feel it, the small broken inhale, and her eyes come up to mine, enormous. I watch her body answer a question her mind hasn't even finished asking yet.

"You looked," I say. Low. "When I stood. Down, and then away."

The colour climbs higher in her face; her mouth opens and nothing comes out of it.

"Don't." I let her see I mean it. "I'm hard, Hazel. Have been since you walked through that door, and I'm not going to insult either of us by pretending otherwise. You felt it too — I watched you feel it. The only shameful thing a person can do with a want this plain is lie about it." My thumb moves once along her jaw. "And I don't lie."

She's scarlet now — all the way to the tips of her ears, the flush gone helpless and blotchy down the side of her throat. She can't hold my eyes anymore; they drop, not to my body this time, just down, to the floor, to anywhere that isn't me. When she finally finds her voice it's barely more than breath.

"I'm sorry," she whispers. "I shouldn't have looked. I didn't mean to—" The smallest swallow. "...Sir."

Sorry. As though wanting were something she'd done to me, instead of the first honest thing carried into this room in years. She apologises for the exact thing I intend to build the rest of her life around.

She doesn't know what she is yet. She will.

"You'll stay," I tell her. Quiet. Absolute. Not an offer.

Then I step back, and return to my desk, and pick up my pen as though nothing on this earth has shifted, and say without looking up, "That's all, Hazel. Go back to my children."

She goes. The door closes. Her footsteps are quick and uneven down the corridor, almost running, fleeing a thing she can't name and won't outrun.

I open the drawer. I look at the severance, signed, generous, meaningless.

I tear it in half, and then in half again, and I drop the pieces in the fire, and I watch a stranger's exit burn while the snow comes down past the window, patient as ever, in no hurry at all.

The door closes. Her footsteps fade.

I stand in the centre of the study for a long moment, listening to the quiet settle back into the walls. The fire ticks. Snow brushes the window. My cock is still so hard it aches, trapped against the heavy fabric of my trousers, throbbing with every heartbeat in a way I have not allowed myself to feel in years.

I lock the door.

Then I walk back to the desk, unbuckle my belt with deliberate hands, and free myself.

The first touch is almost enough. I am already wet at the tip, the head flushed dark and sensitive, and when I close my fist around the thick length of my cock a low sound escapes me. I lean forward, one hand braced on the desk, and start to stroke.

Slow at first. Tight. The way I would take her if she were still here—if I had bent her over this desk the way the animal in me wanted the second she walked through the door. I picture it with brutal clarity: that secondhand dress shoved up over her hips, her small body braced against the wood, the soft, startled cry she would make when I pushed into her for the first time.

Virgin. I am certain of it.

The way she looked at me, the way her breath caught when I touched her jaw—she has never been touched properly. Never been opened. Never been filled.

I stroke harder.

In my mind I am already inside her, already fucking her through the shock of the stretch, already telling her to take it, to be quiet, to be good. I can almost feel how tight she would be around me, how she would shake, how she would try not to make a sound and fail. I work my fist in long, twisting pulls, thumb dragging over the head on every upstroke, spreading the slickness, imagining it is her instead—her cunt, her mouth, the soft hollow of her throat.

“Hazel,” I growl under my breath, and the name alone nearly finishes me.

I picture her on her knees in front of this desk. Looking up at me with those enormous eyes. Mouth open. Taking what I give her. I would be careful the first time, but the second time I would not.

The second time I would put her on her back on this very desk and breed her properly, hold her thighs open and drive into her until she came around me sobbing, until I poured everything I had into her and kept her full of it.

Breed her. .

My rhythm turns rough, almost punishing. I brace both hands on the edge of the desk now, hips fucking into my fist the way they would fuck into her, the wet sound of it filthy in the quiet room. Every stroke is a claim. Every drop of precome that slides over my knuckles is for her. I am already deciding how I will take her—how many times, how deep, how thoroughly I will mark her before the night is over.

The orgasm builds low and brutal, a pressure that has nothing to do with relief and everything to do with possession. When it breaks it nearly takes my knees out from under me. I come hard, thick ropes spilling over my fist and onto the desk, onto the papers, onto the place where the severance used to sit. I keep stroking through it, milking every pulse, eyes shut, jaw locked, her name still locked behind my teeth.