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“I mean, I’m still mostly covered up—” I look away again, wanting suddenly to be anywhere else, to curl up into a ball and disappear. I don’t know how to have this conversation with Viktor, a man I’ve never been able to be myself with, who has never been my husband in anything but the strictest sense. I can’t open up to him, besides the things I’ve already stupidly blurted out.
“Then let me take all of this off, and I’ll show you exactly how beautiful I still think you are.”
There’s something deep and serious in his voice, a caring sincerity that I’ve never heard before, and it startles me. My eyes fly back to his, and I can feel myself stiffen as his lips go to my neck again, brushing over the lingering bruises where Stepan choked me. His hand is on my waist, not pushing the shirt up yet, just resting there as he kisses me, small brushes of his mouth that make me feel a lump of emotion rising in my throat.
He doesn’t ask me if he can keep going, not quite. I don’t think it’s in a man like Viktor’s nature to ask for what he wants. But he goes so slowly that I could stop him if I wanted to, push him away, tell him no. His lips linger on my throat for a long time, brushing over every bruise until they slide down to my collarbone.
His hand comes up then, tugging down the neck of my shirt just enough that he can let his lips drag over the ridge of bone. It sends a shiver down my spine, a gasp slipping from my lips, and his eyes roll up to meet mine, obviously pleased.
“Let me see you, Caterina,” he murmurs, his hands returning to the edge of my shirt. “You’ll see that my desire for you hasn’t changed.”
I swallow hard. It’s almost as if he’s asking my permission, something he’s never done before, and I don’t know how to tell him yes or no. I feel paralyzed, wanting his touch and at the same time terrified to want it, scared to let him keep going, terrified of the look on his face when he realizes that he can’t possibly want me like this after all.
Franco was cruel. Andrei was cruel, Stepan was cruel. My father never physically hurt me, but in his own ways, he was cruel too. How long before Viktor turns cruel to me, too?
What if he already is?
But his hands start to slide the shirt upwards, over my waist and up my ribs, his hands sliding over skin that is bandaged and hovering over still-wounded places, and I can’t stop him. I can’t open my mouth to say anything, and I know that deep down, I’m hoping that I won’t see the disgust on his face that I’m so afraid of.
That this isn’t just some elaborate trap.
And I know how foolish I am for that.
Viktor’s hands push the shirt up, up, up, until it slides over my breasts, baring my nipples to the chill air of the room, and I feel them tighten before he even touches them. My heart stutters in my chest, and I close my eyes tightly, not wanting to see the look on his face when he finally looks down at me. His body is hovering over mine, hiding the worst of it, and then he pulls the shirt up over my head, leaving me bare beneath him, and him still fully clothed.
“Take your clothes off too, then,” I whisper, still not opening my eyes. “I can’t be the only one naked.” My heart rises up into my throat as I say it, choking me, and I feel like I can’t breathe, like I might dissolve at any moment if this goes the wrong way. This isn’t what Viktor and I do. It’s too romantic, too intimate. I’m feeling things I shouldn’t feel, that I don’t want to feel, that Ican’tfeel, not for him.
“I’ve never told a beautiful woman no when she asks me to get naked,” Viktor says above me in his deep voice, rough around the edges with desire, and for some reason, the thought of another woman telling him to take his clothes off sends a hot pulse of jealousy through me. It’s stupid, I shouldn’t care, but I suddenly hate the idea of any other woman being beneath him like this, of him wanting someone else, fucking someone else with either the rough, desperate need that he just fucked me with or the soft touches that he’d given me a moment ago.
I can feel him shift above me, feel the fingers of one hand go to the neck of his shirt, and I can feel him pulling it off. I reach up without meaning to, running my hand over the smooth skin of his chest, the fine hair there, and my fingertips skim down the taut skin of his flat stomach, down his abdomen, and I hear his sharp intake of breath. I feel him shift again as he pushes his jeans down his hips, kicks off his shoes. When I feel him kneeling over me again, his voice fills my ears with that rough, silky sound, like fingertips catching on fine material.
“Open your eyes, Caterina.”
I know better than to disobey an order from him. I open my eyes slowly, and I see my devastatingly handsome husband straddling my hips, kneeling on the bed over me, his blue gaze fixed on my face and nothing else. It’s as if he was waiting for me to open my eyes to look at me as if he wants part of it to be me seeing the expression on his face. I feel my chest tighten, fear skittering over my nerves as he leans forward, pressing his lips against the top of my breast, one of the few unmarred spots of skin.
“You are beautiful,” he tells me, his tone full of a sincerity deeper than anything I’ve ever heard from him before. “Every—” he brushes his lips over my nipple, his breath skating over a spot that he can’t touch because of the cut there, just below the curve of my breast. I’m littered with them, and there are more spots that he can’t touch or kiss than ones that he can. “Single—” he kisses a bare spot of skin on my ribs, then between my breasts. “Inch.”
He rolls his eyes up to look at me then, his hands resting lightly on my waist. “I want to kiss you all over, Caterina, every inch of you, until you see how much every part of your body turns me on. It has since the moment I saw you walk past the room while I was meeting with your father, and it still does.”
“You didn’t even want to marry me at first. You wanted—”
“Sofia would have been expedient for my position,” he says, a hint of irritation entering his tone. “I didn’twanther. She is extremely beautiful, but I’ve desired you for a long time, Caterina. But it was clear that your father had no interest in marrying his daughter to the Bratvapakhan. He preferred blood.”
“And what do you prefer?” My voice sounds hoarse, too, choked with emotion.
“I prefer you naked in my bed over anything else.”
I gasp as Viktor presses his mouth to a bare patch of skin on my belly, his fingers skimming over every unhurt part of me, dragging his mouth lower. His hands rest on my inner thighs, missing the bandaged wound and careful of the cuts leading up towards the place where I suddenly want his mouth more than anything. I can’t believe he’s moving down there, after having just fucked me, his mouth grazes over one hipbone and then the other, and then his fingers are between my thighs, opening my folds, and his lips are on my clit.
“Viktor!” I gasp his name aloud, my body tightening in a way that makes every wounded part of my body sting and ache and burn, but I can’t quite bring myself to care. He’s looking up at me with a hunger that says clearly that there’s nowhere else he wants to be, nothing else that he wants, his tongue flicking out over my sensitive bundle of nerves and making me gasp and twitch.
“I want to find out what touches you like, my lovely bride,” he murmurs, the words vibrating against my flesh. “If you like it long and slow—” he drags his tongue over my pussy, flat and soft, rubbing it over my clit as I gasp again, moaning as he presses his tongue against me. “Or quick and fast.”
His tongue starts to flick over the hard bud, quick and fluttering. My thighs tighten, another moan escaping from my lips as my toes begin to curl with the bursts of pleasure that rush through me every time his tongue passes over my clit.
“Or circles, maybe?” Viktor’s lips curl in a smile as he swirls his tongue around, and I gasp again, my head falling back. His mouth feels warm and wet and soft, his lips pressing against me and his tongue working to send the pleasure rushing over me again and again. It’s not until he leans forward, his lips fastening around my clit and his tongue fluttering as he starts to suck, that I make a sound that’s very close to a scream.
This is the kind of pleasure that’s addictive.
