Page 49 of Bred By the Tsar

Konstantin

Icarry her over my own threshold at two in the morning and I do not give a single damn who saw it.

A day. That had been the plan — one reasonable day, let the girl sleep on it and come to me clear-eyed and certain. I held that plan right up until she came apart on my hand in that chair with her face buried in my throat, and then the reasonable man stood up and walked out of the room, and what's left is only this: me, carrying a half-starved orphan through the dark with my pulse going like a fist against a door.

I gave her the out. At the threshold, with every nerve I own screaming, I gave it to her — tell me no and I put you down. I meant it. I have taken a great many things in this life that were never offered to me. I will not take this one. It has to be hers, freely, or it's nothing at all.

Don't put me down, she said.

So I won't. Not tonight. Not ever.

Three years I was certain there was a door in me painted shut. She walks through it like it was never there.

I kick the bedroom door closed behind us and lay her down in the middle of the bed, and she looks up at me — flushed, wide-eyed, still trembling — and even now, even shaking, my brave girl needs me to hear it:

"I'm choosing this," she says. "Not because of what you are. Because I want to."

"I know," I tell her, and my voice is not as steady as I'd like, and I find I don't care.

I take my time undressing her, because she's never been seen, and I intend to be the standard she measures every kindness against for the rest of her life. The nightshirt goes. I look at her where she lies until she tries to cover herself, and I move her hands away. "No. Don't hide from me. Not ever."

Then I make myself slow down, and it is the hardest thing I have done in years.

Every animal instinct I own is roaring at me to cover her, spread her, bury myself to the root and feel her stretch around me — three years of nothing and a want that's been sharpening its teeth since she squinted up at me across my own study. The thing in me has claws now. It wants. God, it wants.

But she's a virgin, and she's small, and I have a head of height and forty kilos and a lifetime of violence on her, and I would put my own hand through the wall before I let one ounce of that touch her wrong. So I take the feral thing by the throat and I hold it down, and I make it a promise: not yet. Not until she's ready. Not one second before — and if you hurt her, I'll cut you out of me myself.

“You’ll be sore tomorrow no matter what I do,” I tell her, low, kissing the inside of her knee, her thigh, the soft crease of her hip. “But you won’t be hurt. There’s a difference, and I’m going to make very sure of it.”

I open her slowly. One finger first, easing in, and she’s so tight around just that—so hot, so unused—that I have to stop and breathe through the snarl of my own need. Her walls flutter and clench like they’re trying to pull me deeper and push me out at the same time. Virgin. Untouched. Mine to ruin carefully.

“That’s it. Let me in. Good girl.”

When she softens I give her a second, working her open, curling up into the place that jolts her hips off the bed, and I watch her face the entire time. Every flicker. Every catch of breath. The way her mouth falls open on a silent cry when I press that exact spot again and again. I read her like a man defusing something precious, because that is exactly what I am doing—learning the map of her pleasure so I can wreck her with it later.

Then I put my mouth on her.

She comes apart almost at once, sobbing, my title breaking out of her—sir, sir, please, sir—and I don’t stop. I work her through it and keep going, tongue flat and relentless over her clit while three fingers stretch her open, because I need her past thinking, past fear, soaked and loose and begging, before I take what’s mine. A second orgasm rolls through her with those three fingers buried inside her now, stretching her, getting her ready, and she’s shaking and slick and finally, finally clutching at me, trying to drag me up her body. Her cunt is dripping down my wrist. Perfect.

“Please,” she gasps. “I need— I don’t even know what I—”

“I know what you need.” I rise over her. I’m so hard it’s its own kind of pain, the head of my cock flushed dark and already leaking against her thigh. I notch myself against her and feel her go tense—the soft, wet kiss of her entrance against the blunt pressure of me. “Eyes on me. I want to watch you become mine.”

She looks at me. And I start to push in.

The restraint nearly finishes me on the spot.

She’s a storm of heat and resistance, impossibly tight, and every muscle in my body is screaming to drive, to take, to finally have—and instead I move slower than I have ever moved in my life. Easing in by degrees. Feeling the way her body fights the stretch, then yields in tiny increments, coating me in slick heat. Stopping every time her breath hitches. Holding there, jaw locked, sweat at my temples, while the animal in me throws itself against its chain.

“Breathe. I know. I know, kotyonok. Almost there. Let your body open for me—” Another inch. She whimpers and I freeze instantly, buried halfway in the tightest, sweetest heat I have ever felt, shaking with the effort of not moving. The pressure around me is devastating—hot, wet, clenched like a fist. “Does it hurt?”

“A little—” Her nails bite into my shoulders. “Don’t stop. Please don’t stop—”

“I’m not going anywhere.” I press the rest of the way home, slow and final, until I’m as deep as I can go and we both go still—and I stay there, forehead to hers, every muscle in my back drawn wire-tight with the work of holding back. She’s so full of me there’s no room left for anything else. I can feel her heartbeat around my cock. “There. All of me. You took all of me.” My voice has gone to gravel; it isn’t mine anymore. “Look at you. You’re perfect. You feel like the first warm thing in a thirty-year winter.”

I don’t move until she does. Until her hips shift, testing, and the line of her face changes—the hurt loosening into something curious, then something that climbs toward hungry. Her walls flutter around me in tiny, instinctive pulses, as if her body is already learning how to keep me.

“There she is,” I breathe. “There she is.”