Page 50 of Bred By the Tsar

And I begin to move.

Slow and deep, drawing nearly out and pressing back to the root, every stroke a claim staked and re-staked. The wet drag of her around me is filthy, perfect, the kind of heat that makes a man lose his mind. Her arms lock around my back, her ankles cross behind me, and the sounds coming out of her change—hurt to startled to something that builds in helpless little waves, rising, and the leash I’ve held all night begins to fray strand by strand.

“That’s it,” I growl against her throat. “Take it. Take me. You were made for this—made for me—” Her body answers, rolling up to meet every thrust now, greedy, no fear left in her at all, and the last of my control goes the way snow goes. All at once. Silently. Gone. I start fucking her harder, deeper, the wet slap of our bodies filling the room, her cunt taking every inch like it was carved for me.

“Mine.” I say it into her mouth, into her throat, like I can drive it under her skin. “Say it.”

“Yours—”

“Going to fill you.” It comes up out of the oldest part of me, the part with no manners and no crown, all teeth. “Going to put my child in you, Hazel. Going to breed you and crown you and make the whole empire bow to what we made. Not a princess. Not an alliance. You. This.” I drive deeper, harder now that she can take it, and she cries out and lifts to meet me. The thought of flooding her, of marking her from the inside, of watching her swell with what I put in her, nearly undoes me on the next thrust. “Tell me you want it.”

“I want it—” She’s past shame, past everything, sobbing, clinging. “I want your baby, please, sir, please!”

I break.

I come into her with her name in my mouth and her legs locked around me, emptying every cold and careful year of myself into the warmest thing I’ve ever touched—thick, endless pulses that flood her so deep I can feel them spill around my cock. And I feel her go over the edge with me, clenching, sobbing, milking every drop, mine, mine, finally and completely mine.

The room is very quiet, and the snow comes down past the window the way it always does, patient, in no hurry, and for the first time in three years I watch it without feeling the cold of it at all.

She's crying a little. I know enough to know it isn't sorrow.

"Hey." I gather her in, pull the blankets up over us both, tuck her against my chest where I can feel her heart going. "I have you. That's the drop — it'll pass. You did so well. You were perfect." I kiss the top of her head, the temple, the corner of her wet eye. "I have you, kotyonok. I'm not going anywhere, and neither are you."

"That was—" She hiccups a laugh into my chest. "I don't have a word for what that was."

"You don't need one." I find the strand of hair, tuck it back, leave my hand cradling her skull. "I'll find all the words. You just have to let me keep you."

She's quiet for a long moment. Then, small, against my heart: "Okay."

Okay. As if she's the one granting permission. As if a half-starved girl from a state file has the power to ruin a Tsar, and has just, mercifully, decided to use it.

She does. She has.

I have never in my life been so glad to lose.

I hold her until she sleeps, and I do not sleep, because I don't want to miss a second of it — the weight of her, the warmth, the future I was certain I'd been born without, breathing slow against my chest.

Mine, the new thing in me says, settling in for good.

For once in my life, I have no argument at all.

6

Hazel

Iwake up with his cock inside me.

That's the first thing, before my eyes open, before I remember the room or the night or my own name — the heavy, impossible fact of him, still seated deep, both of us on our sides, his chest a wall against my back and one thick arm banded across my middle, holding me onto him like even sleep wasn't going to be allowed to take me away.

We slept like this. All night. Joined.

I lie very still and take inventory of myself, because I'm not sure who I am this morning. Sore. A deep, used ache low in my body that flares when I shift and makes me gasp, and the gasp makes me clench, and clenching makes me aware all over again of exactly how much of him I'm still holding. He's soft now, or softer, but even soft he's a presence I can't ignore, a fullness I didn't know a body could just live with, all night, like it's normal, like we're something that fits.

And I'm wet — not just from him, but from last night, from what he put in me and what he said while he did it. I can feel it, the slick proof of him deep inside, and I should be ashamed and I'm the opposite of ashamed, I'm something with no name that pulses low and hot at the thought: I fell asleep full of him and woke up exactly the same way.

It should feel strange. It does feel strange. It also feels like the safest I have ever been in my life, anchored to a sleeping man by the most intimate part of me, and that's the part that scares me, because I've never had a thing I was afraid to lose before. You can't lose what you never let yourself want.

I let myself want this. Sometime in the night, somewhere between his mouth and his voice and the careful, shaking way he held himself back from hurting me, I let the wall come all the way down.