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“The way you speak about her to me is enough.” I glare at her, though not angrily. “Your attitude comes across, Olga. When you’reacceptingof her, the girls will follow suit. They need to see respect from you; they love you dearly.”
“And I love them.” Olga glances over at Caterina and the two girls. “Yelena has really warmed up to her,” she admits. “I think the difference in ages changes things. Anika was always closer to her mother. And Yelena remembers less.”
“Then hopefully, Anika will learn from her younger sister.” I stride forward, greeting Caterina with a kiss on the cheek and then bending down to greet both of my daughters.
My new wife has been remarkably good at pretending that all is well in front of the staff, reserving her coldness towards me for when we’re alone. But I catch the glances that she gives me occasionally, the curious looks, the way her gaze will catch on my face or my body for just a moment, and I know she’s remembering that brief time during our wedding night when we both lost control.
It makes it even harder for me to keep that control now.
I spend the morning of our appointment in my study, working on ledgers from home and taking lunch in my office. When I finally emerge in time to have the driver take us into the city, I find Caterina already waiting in the living room, dressed impeccably in a dark red sheath dress with a black leather belt and leather pointed pumps. Her hair is pinned back with a diamond clip that matches the diamond solitaires at her ears and neck and the tennis bracelet on her wrist. She looks beautiful in diamonds, and I wonder where she acquired those from. She doesn’t seem like the kind of woman to keep gifts from a former husband that she hated.
“Ready to go, I see.” I smile tightly at her as I walk into the room. “Very punctual of you, my dear.”
“I thought you didn’t like to be kept waiting.” Caterina’s smile is equally as icy, her voice clipped. “So I made sure to be on time.”
“And thoughtful, too. What a lovely bride I’ve chosen.” As we walk towards the door, I offer her my arm, brushing my fingers over the bracelet as I open the door for her. “I don’t recall giving you anything as beautiful as this.”
“You didn’t.” Caterina gives me a tight smile as she strides out of the door towards the car. “Jealous?”
Without the servants around to hear, her tongue is as barbed as ever.I can think of a few other uses for it.If only. The fact that I’m driving my wife to a clinic to have someone else inseminate her with sperm I could so easily—and happily—give her myself feels more insulting by the minute. As I slide in next to her, I can’t help but hope that every dime I spend will be wasted money, if only so I can enjoy filling her with my cum a few months from now without guilt.
“No. But I am curious. Gifts from Franco?”
Caterina opens her mouth as if to shoot back a response, but her shoulders sag a little, and she lets out a long breath. “They were my mother’s,” she says tiredly. “I have a decent amount of jewelry from her.”
In her tone, I can hear everything behind those words that she’s not saying—that her mother died because of her former husband’s actions, because ofmyactions, because of so many other things. That she doesn’t want or need gifts from me, she has her own things.Good,I think angrily in my head, looking at her elegant profile as she looks out of the car window.I didn’t intend to give her jewelry, anyway.
“Thank you for making the appointment,” Caterina says quietly, still not looking at me, and I wonder if that’s her way of trying to stop the fight before it really begins. “I know you would have preferred to do things—differently.”
That’s putting it mildly.“I thought Catholics believed IVF was a sin,” I say shortly, still irritable.
“I’ll go to confession,” she quips, her mouth twitching. “Besides, I’m hardly devout. I’ve only gone when absolutely necessary for a long time.”
“Neither am I,” I admit. “Church isn’t exactly a place I feel comfortable, these days. And confession even less so.”
I wonder if she’ll ask about that, about what sins I’ve committed that make the inside of a church feel uncomfortably warm to me, but she doesn’t. She simply continues looking out of the window, her hands folded primly in her lap.
The clinic is everything one would expect from a swanky downtown Manhattan fertility clinic, where couples undoubtedly pour thousands and thousands of dollars into trying to have a child of their own. It’s full of airy windows and green plants, furnishings upholstered in soft pink, and soothing music playing from the speakers above. Caterina remains absolutely silent until we check-in, and then she simply gives the receptionist the information she requests and goes to find a seat.
After seeing the spitfire side of her on our first day together, her calm silence is almost unnerving. She stays that way, pale and tight-lipped, all the way through them separating us for exams, then when we reunite in the doctor’s office, a dark-haired man who looks a few years older than I am. He looks at me warily, and I know then that he has some idea of who I am.
I can always feel that flicker of fear, the charge in the air when someone knows me. When they know to be afraid of me. Knowing what our family went through to get to this point, to command this sort of fear and respect, means that reaction never fails to send an almost arousing flush of power through me every time.
He flicks through our charts, frowning, and then looks up at us. “Mr. and Mrs. Andreyev, I have to say, this is unusual. There’s nothing to suggest that you would have any trouble at all conceiving naturally. How long have you been trying?”
I feel Caterina flinch next to me. “We haven’t,” she says quietly. “We were married a week ago, and we’ve had intercourse once.”
Intercourse.It almost makes me want to laugh. It’s too clinical a word, too cold for what happened between us that night, for the way Caterina shook and trembled when her orgasm took over her body, the way it felt to thrust into her and feel her squeeze around me, the heat of her so intense it felt as if it was searing into my cock—no,intercourseisn’t the term I would use.
The doctor’s frown deepens. “I’m confused, Mrs. Andreyev. So you haven’t even been trying to conceive for a full cycle, and you’ve only had intercourse once, but you want to pursue IVF? These treatments are very expensive, and I might suggest—”
“Money is not an object,” I interrupt, my voice sharp. There’s a condescending note in the doctor’s voice as he speaks to Caterina that sparks a flare of anger in me. This might not be whatIwant, but it is what Caterina wants, and the decision should be between us. Not with the input of some meddling doctor who I’m paying handsomely to do as we ask. “We’re here because we’ve made the decision—”
“IVF is an invasive process,” the doctor says calmly. “Injections, hormones, mood swings—couples often find it to be a strain on their marriage. I would be remiss, Mr. Andreyev, if I took your money without going over all of the options with you first.”
What will be a strain on my marriage is forcing my wife to have sex with me against her will.“I appreciate your commitment to your work,” I tell him coolly. “But we’re here because we’ve made this decision after our own discussions, and we simply would like to move forward with the proceedings.”
Privately, I wish that the doctor’s caution would change Caterina’s mind. I can’t quite believe that she’s willing to go to such lengths to stay out of my bed, that she’d rather suffer through hormone injections and changes in her body before she even becomes pregnant to avoid sex with me. To avoidpleasure,because I know she enjoyed it. In fact, I’d be willing to bet that has something to do with this whole rigmarole.
