Page 59 of Bred By the Tsar

"I'm staying," I tell him and for the first time since I arrived, I don't hear the cold little voice insisting it won't last.

He doesn’t answer with words. He just reaches down, cups the back of my head, and presses his forehead to mine while the children cling, and for a moment the whole palace falls away. Only when Lena’s breathing has steadied and Misha has gone heavy and soft against my shoulder does he straighten.

He takes them from me himself—quiet, careful, the same hands that once felt like danger now settling his daughter’s head against his chest and carrying his son as if they weigh nothing. I follow him up the stairs. We put them to bed together. Lena doesn’t let go of my hand until her eyes close. Misha makes a small, contented sound when Konstantin tucks the blanket around him. Then the nursery door shuts, and we are alone in the corridor.

He turns to me.

The look on his face is the same one from the study that first night, only sharper now, stripped of every last defense. He walks me backward into his rooms without a word, shuts the door, and locks it. The sound is final.

“I’m keeping you,” he says, voice raw. “Do you understand? There is no more leaving. No more planes. No more of my mother’s quiet little schemes. You are mine. You stay. You wear my name. You take my children—the ones we already have and the ones I’m going to put in you.”

I open my mouth and he kisses me like a man who nearly lost the only warm thing in his life. Hard. Open. Desperate. His hands are already under my coat, shoving it off my shoulders, then my dress, then everything else until I’m bare in the middle of his bedroom and he’s still fully clothed, breathing like he’s been running.

He lifts me onto the bed, follows me down, and spreads my thighs with his knees.

“Look at me.”

I do.

“I love you.” The words come out rough, almost angry with how true they are. “I have loved you since you stood in that doorway in a secondhand nightshirt and looked at me like you were already mine. I am never letting you go again. I’m going to fuck a baby into you tonight, Hazel. And tomorrow. And every day after until it takes. Until you’re round and claimed and no one in this palace—or this country—can ever doubt who you belong to.”

He pushes into me in one long, relentless stroke.

I’m still soft from everything we’ve done, still a little sore, and the stretch is immediate, overwhelming, perfect. He buries himself to the hilt and stays there, forehead to mine, shaking.

“Feel that,” he growls. “That’s where you live now. On my cock. Full of me. I’m going to keep you like this—wet and open and dripping with what I put in you—until you give me a child. Say you want it.”

“I want it—” My voice breaks. “I want your baby. I love you. Please—”

He starts to move.

Deep. Hard. Possessive.

Every thrust drives the words home—his cock dragging almost all the way out before slamming back in to the root, the wet, filthy sound of it filling the room, the force of it rocking the entire bed. My thighs shake around his hips. I can feel every thick inch of him stretching me open, claiming space that already belongs to him, and still he goes deeper, like he’s trying to fuck the future into me by sheer force of will.

His hand slides between us, two fingers finding my clit—swollen, slick, aching—and he works it in tight, merciless circles timed perfectly to every brutal thrust. Pressure builds so fast it borders on pain, the kind that makes my toes curl hard against the sheets and my back arch off the mattress.

“Good girl. Take it. Take all of me.” His voice is pure gravel, broken open. “This cunt is mine. This body is mine. The next heartbeat that grows inside you is going to be mine.” He drops his mouth to my ear, breath hot and wrecked, and drives into me even harder, the head of his cock punching against that deep, secret place that makes my eyes roll back.

“I’m keeping you. I’m breeding you. I’m going to fill you so full you’ll feel me for days—thick and dripping down your thighs every time you walk, every time you sit, every time you breathe. And when you walk these halls tomorrow everyone will know—my wife, my nanny, my queen, carrying my child.”

He grinds deep on the last word, circling his hips so I feel the heavy pulse of him inside me, and his fingers never stop. The wet slide of his cock, the relentless pressure on my clit, the filthy promises poured straight into my ear—it’s too much.

My whole body draws tight like a bowstring. I can already feel how hard I’m going to come, how desperately my walls are going to clamp down and try to keep him, how ready I am to take everything he’s about to pour into me.

I come first, hard and sudden, clenching around him with a broken cry of his name. He doesn’t stop. He fucks me through it, chasing his own release with short, punishing strokes, then buries himself as deep as he can go and spills with a low, guttural sound that sounds like a vow.

Hot. Thick. Endless.

He keeps coming, pulsing inside me, grinding deep to push every drop as far as it will go, his hand pressing low on my belly like he can already feel the future taking root.

“I love you,” he says against my mouth, still buried, still hard, still moving in tiny aftershocks. “I’m keeping you. Forever. And I’m putting my baby in you until the whole empire knows it.”

He doesn’t pull out.

He just stays there, deep and claiming, kissing me slowly while the aftershocks fade—forehead to mine, still buried inside me like he’s found the only home he’s ever wanted—and whispers against my lips,

“I’m keeping you. Forever. And everything that grows from this night will know it was made in love.”