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“We’ll try again,” Viktor says, and I take a shaky breath, feeling my hand tremble around the gun.
“I need a second,” I tell him quickly. “I need to catch my breath.” He doesn’t say anything as I turn to face him, and I realize suddenly that he’s still very close, less than a hand’s breadth between us. It does nothing to slow the racing of my heart or make it easier for me to catch my breath—if anything, I can feel my pulse leap into my throat, my chest tightening as I look up at him.
Viktor’s blue eyes are bright in the cold Russian sunshine, his face set in hard lines, but I can see a glimmer of something shining through in those eyes, something softer. Pride, maybe. Desire, possibly, however impossible that seems. I don’t know how he could want me, but his gaze is fixed on mine, unwavering. My pulse gallops in my chest as all other thoughts flee my head except for how close he is, how handsome he is, the adrenaline from the shot turning into something else.Kiss me,I think out of nowhere, my eyes flicking down to his mouth. I know how good it feels on mine, in other places, and I suddenly want him to kiss me more than almost anything else in the world.
And I don’t fucking know why.
Is it being out here in the middle of nowhere, the world beyond us so hazy after everything that’s happened that it’s hard to remember that it exists at all? Is it the things he’s done for me over the past days, the way he’s cared for me, so different from the man I thought I knew? Is it the way he’s pushed me today, as if he really cares about whether or not I can survive this?
It’s as if hewantsme to be strong. It goes against every paranoid thought I’ve had, but if it’s true, it means he wants more than what we’ve had before.
It means he wants a partner. A real marriage.
I don’t know how that’s possible for us. But right now, I don’t care. I only care that he’s standing close to me and that it’s been so long since he’s kissed me, and I feel as if my blood is thundering hotly through my veins.
“Viktor,” I whisper his name without meaning to, my tongue flicking out over my dry lips, and I see Viktor’s gaze drop to my mouth immediately. It feels like it did in our bedroom, when I came home, when he pushed me down to my knees, when he made me want things that I hadn’t known I could. When I let myself forget what Ishouldwant, and simply felt, when I’d let him give me pleasure in the most shameful ways he possibly could.
I shouldn’t want him. But I do, in a way that I’ve never wanted any other man.
Franco hadn’t been able to command me. He hadn’t even been my equal. He’d been a sniveling child, a man who wanted power given to him because he had none of his own. He hadn’t known what to do with a woman like me, one who had been born with a place in the world and a power to hand out.
But Viktor does. Viktor could do things with me—tome—that I’d never imagined.
I want him to kiss me.
I want to find out.
“Caterina.” Viktor’s voice is a hoarse whisper in the cold, and I know there are eyes all around us, his men, possibly even Levin, but I don’t care. A thrill runs through me at the sound of my name on his lips, from my chest and out through my body, over every nerve and vein, until I feel like I’m pulsing with it, with want and need, and I can see that same dark heat in his eyes.
He wants me. I don’t know how or why, but he does.
I want to ask him to kiss me, want tobeg, and I won’t do it. I won’t sayplease, no matter how badly I want to, but I don’t think I need to. I can feel myself flushing despite the cold, my heart pounding so loudly that I think he must be able to hear it, and I know he can see it in my eyes. I feel embarrassed at how naked the desire must be, flooding up the way it had in my dream last night. Yet, I’m aching suddenly, my body pulsing with a second heartbeat of need.
How can he do this to me? I shouldn’t—
“Caterina—” Viktor says my name again as if he’s going to tell me we can’t, or get back to the lesson. Then he groans, his eyes darkening as he reaches out, his fingers gripping my chin as he drags my mouth towards his.
“Oh fuck,” he growls, and then before I can breathe or think, his mouth is crashing down on mine, hard and rough and everything that I’d needed.
I hadn’t thought I could take pleasure in roughness ever again, but maybe this is what I need. All I know is that it feels fuckinggood, fierce and hard as his lips press against mine, his tongue sliding over the seam, pushing inside, demanding entrance into my mouth, and I give it to him. I’ve never been one for public displays of affection. I feel myself arch towards him, forgetting that there are others here to see, to see me falling into him, needing the hot onslaught of his mouth as it slants over mine and starts to devour me in a way that I hadn’t known until right now that I was so desperate for.
I want a touch that feels good, a touch that I actually desire. I want to forget all of the pain, all of the fear. There’s still pain, every wound in my body screaming after the exercise and tension, and now the roughness of Viktor dragging me towards him, but I barely feel it. All I can think about is the sensation of my mouth opening for him, the heat of his tongue, the taste of him, and I can feel the longing in his kiss. The same need echoed in the way he’s touching me.
It makes no fucking sense, but I can feel the suppressed desire, the nights that he’s been wanting me, his hands cupping my face as he holds my lips to his, and then running over my arms, down to my waist and hips, pulling me against him as he groans aloud again, as if he doesn’t care who might see or hear either. The sound dances over my skin, firing over every nerve, and I moan, so flushed with heat that it could be Russian summer for all I know and not frigid spring cold. I feel as if I’m burning up from the inside, and I can feel how hard he is, the thick ridge of him pressing against my inner thigh. It reminds me of every night we’ve spent together, everything he’s ever done to me, and suddenly I want it all over again.
I want itall.
“Oh god,” Viktor groans, his tongue sliding into my mouth again, and I have a sudden vision of him bearing me down to the hard cold ground, yanking down my sweatpants, driving inside of me so that I can feel all of that hard, hot thickness filling me. It makes me feel insane—I’ve never imagined being fucked in front of anyone else. I’ve always been a little shy, proper even, not the kind of woman who wildly makes out with anyone in public, not even my husband.
But right now, I’m not sure if I would stop him if he tried.
He can’t possibly mean it,I think wildly, even as he’s still kissing me.This is some kind of trick, a trap. How could he want me like this?It feels almost desperate, the way he’s touching me and kissing me, like an obsession, like he was afraid of losing me and never wants to stop touching me again.
But that’s not the Viktor I married.
My husband is cold and self-controlled, violent only when necessary, a man who compels fear and obedience. He doesn’t have obsessions; he doesn’t lose control. That’s not him.
I pull back, gasping, stumbling back with the gun still clutched in my hand. For one wild moment, an image of myself lifting it and pointing it at my husband flashes through my head, of me pulling the trigger and firing, the way his skull would open, the way the bullet would end all of this. My marriage, my torment, and probably my life too.
