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2
VIKTOR
It feels like hours before we know the outcome of Anika’s surgery. The doctor emerges, looking drawn and exhausted, but without the fear that I would have expected if it had gone poorly.
“She’s stable,” he tells Caterina and me. “I can’t say for sure which way it will go. I have her on fluids and antibiotics to fight infection. All of her vitals look remarkably good for such trauma. But I can’t make promises, nor would I,pakhan.The coming days will tell us what the outcome will be.”
I nod, feeling tenser than I’ve ever been. I can feel the anger bubbling just beneath the surface, but my more rational side reminds me that there’s no reason to take it out on this man. He’s done his best, and I can’t deny that. He’s not the one responsible for what’s happened to my daughter.
I intend to make sure that those who are, pay with their lives.
“Let’s go to bed, Viktor,” Caterina says gently, resting a hand on my arm. “We can’t do anything more tonight, and you need rest. Someone will come to get us if anything changes in the night.”
“As much as you might want to sit up with her,” the doctor agrees, “it isn’t wise. You’ll need your own strength. Your wife is right.”
There’s a small, twitching smile on Caterina’s lips at that. “Can he check on the others?” she asks softly. “Sofia didn’t look well—”
“Yes.” I glance at the doctor. “I’d appreciate it if you would examine the others here. Luca Romano’s wife is pregnant, and the shock may have been difficult for her. She should take priority, but everyone here should be checked to ensure their health.”
“Of course,pakhan.”
I stand up slowly, feeling Caterina at my elbow. She stays there as we walk towards the stairs, and it’s all I can do not to turn to go to Anika’s bedroom. “Let’s check on her once,” I say, pausing. “Before we go to our rooms.”
“Alright.” The worry in Caterina’s eyes is clear. “It’ll make us both feel better to see her, I think. I hope.”
Very little looks as if it’s changed, when we open the door to look in on her. A nurse is sitting at her bedside, monitoring her vitals and waiting to change the fluids when need be. Anika herself is sleeping quietly, changed into clean pajamas, with the edge of her bandages visible where the blanket is pushed aside. Seeing us at the door, the nurse quickly adjusts the blanket, covering her up entirely.
“She’s sleeping well,” the nurse says quietly, a flicker of nervousness in her eyes as she looks at me, and I nod.
“There’s nothing else we can do for tonight,” Caterina says quietly, and I know she’s right. Sitting up at Anika’s side will only make me exhausted and groggy when what I need is to be clearheaded in the days to come, to make sure that Alexei and his men meet a bloody end to their jumped-up mutiny. “You need rest, Viktor.”
I nod, following her to our suite of rooms. I can feel the exhaustion down to my bones, the flood of adrenaline beginning with our encounter in the garden through the firefight in the house all the way through my daughter’s surgery finally ebbing and leaving me entirely drained. It’s hard to remember why I was angry with her or what animosity there was between us. Right now, all I know is that I desperately need her, my wife, to be someone I can lean on. And despite what I know are her misgivings about me—aboutus—she’s done exactly that.
Caterina pushes the door to our room open, and I see that there’s already a fire roaring, thanks to the maids. I sink into one of the chairs in front of it, undoing one of the top buttons of my shirt. Behind me, I can hear the rustling of her clothing as she starts to change, and I feel a sudden deep throb of desire for her—but not the kind I’m accustomed to feeling.
She often makes me feel almost mad with the need to possess her, brutal in my need, nearly crazed with the desire to make her submit to me, to own her, to make her mine in such a way that she could never think of being separate from me.One flesh, I think often, and how I can make her physically mine so thoroughly that she could never exist apart from me. It feels hungry, primal, but tonight that’s not what I feel.
Tonight, all I want is to hold her close, to lose myself in the sweetness of her body, to feel the pleasure that could wipe away some of the grief that I can feel aching in my bones. I want to forget briefly, have some respite from it, to feel wanted. To feel the warm comfort of another person surrounding me, just for a little while. Long enough for me to fall asleep afterward and hopefully not dream.
“Come here,” I say gruffly, but I hope that she can hear in my voice that it’s a request, not an order.
I canfeelher hesitation even from behind where I’m sitting, but then her footsteps come closer, and I see her come around to the front of the wing chair, her expression wary. She’s in nothing but her bra and a pair of lavender panties that cling to her hipbones, and I suddenly want her with an intensity that makes my mouth feel dry.
She’s my wife. I don’t need an excuse to want her, yet I feel myself trying to justify it.I need to forget for a little while. I need comfort. I needher—that last thought is almost frightening in its intensity, because since Vera died, I’ve been resolute that I wouldn’tneedanother woman, not in a specific way. Not beyond the ordinary needs of my body. But something about Caterina’s particular mixture of strength and fragility makes me want to protect and possess her all at once, keep her safe and break her all at the same time.
Caterina shifts her weight, looking down at me, and then suddenly, with a sharp breath as if she’s made up her mind about something, she sinks to her knees in front of me.
“Is this what you need?” she asks softly, sliding her hands up my thighs. “A distraction?”
I nod, speechless at how quickly she picked up on what I was thinking, on what I needed.She’s a good wife,I think, as her hands slide up my thighs, her body moving in between my legs.She could be a better one, if you could be the man she needs. If you could change the things that hurt her.
Another woman had needed those same things from me. She had needed change, for me to be a better man, a different one, and I hadn’t been able to do that for her. I don’t know that I can do it for Caterina. I don’t know that I can be more than I was made to be, more than what I was taught. I don’t know who elsetobe. But looking at the woman kneeling between my legs, her beautiful face soft and open as her dark hair tumbles around her shoulders and she reaches for my belt buckle, I wonder if there’s some other choice besides the one that I thought I’d irrevocably made.
Could I be better for her?I hadn’t been able to, for Vera. The thought that I might make changes for Caterina, when I couldn’t for my first wife, who died as a result of my neglect, makes me feel a wave of guilt so deep and overwhelming that I nearly push Caterina away, my desire briefly ebbing. But her hands are on my buckle, pulling down my zipper, and when her fingers slip inside to brush against my naked flesh, it comes roaring back.
I’m nothing if not a man who can put aside his moral quandaries,I think grimly as she wraps her hand around me, slipping my cock out and running her hand along the length of it. She looks so beautiful, her ripe, luscious lips parting as she leans forward to trail her tongue over me, sliding up my length to the tip, and in an instant, I’m fully hard, my cock throbbing in her grasp as she slides her lips over the head of it.
“Ohgod, Caterina—bladya—” I curse under my breath as she takes more of it in her mouth, her soft hair tumbling over my thighs as her warm, wet mouth suctions around my length, sliding down inch by inch as her tongue tangles around it and her head bobs. Her tongue lashes over the tip, and then she slips down further, taking me into her throat as she goes all the way down, the muscles of her throat squeezing pleasurably around my cock as I grip the arms of the chair.
