Page 21 of My Wedding Night Massacre

I wrap my hand around his cock first, thick, hard, and already leaking at the tip. I stroke slowly, watching his jaw tighten. He’s watching me with those grey eyes, and the control in them is already fraying at the edges, even though I haven’t even started yet.

I put my mouth on him.

He exhales sharply through his nose, his hand coming to my hair, not pushing, just resting. I take my time, working him slowly with my lips and tongue, tasting the salt of him, feeling him twitch in my mouth when I do something he likes. I’ve always loved this, the specific power of having him at my complete mercy, this man who controls everything giving that control up the moment I get my mouth on him.

I take him deeper, my hand working the base of him. He makes a low sound that I feel everywhere, his fingers tightening slightly in my hair.

“Pavlina.” My name in his voice, wrecked and low.

I pull back slowly, drag my tongue along the underside of him, and look up at his face. What I find there is the thing I’ve been starving for, not the composed version, not the controlled version, just him, completely undone, looking at me like I’m the only thing in the room.

I’ve always loved that most.

I reach for him and pull him back toward me, done waiting. He comes.

When he pushes inside me, and I make a sound I can’t help, low and broken, because three years is a long time and my body has forgotten what it feels like to be filled like this, stretched around him, his cock thick, deep, and exactly right in a way that makes my eyes sting. I have to hold still for a moment, both hands gripping his shoulders, just breathing and adjusting. He holds still with me, his forehead against mine, his breathing ragged, waiting.

“Okay?” he asks.

I answer by rolling my hips.

He groans low in his throat and pulls back slowly, every inch of the drag registering, then pushes back in, and I feel it everywhere, in my spine, behind my sternum, in the three years of absence that this is filling all at once. I wrap my legs around him and pull him deeper, needing more, needing all of it. He gives it, setting a slow rhythm that is almost unbearably thorough, like he’s intent on feeling every part of me.

He pulls back until just the tip of his cock remains inside me, holds there for one torturous second while I clench around him, trying to pull him back. Then drives in deep and stays, grinding slow circles that make me gasp into his throat.

“Don’t stop,” I say. “Don’t you dare stop.”

Lucky for me, the hallucination of him obeys.

The rhythm builds, deeper, harder, his hands on my hips angling me to take him better, and I let him, I give him everything, meeting every thrust with my whole body because three years of surviving, performing, and holding everything together has left me with nothing to protect anymore. And even if it did, I don’t want to protect it. His cock drags against that spot inside me on every stroke. I dig my nails into his back and stop trying to muffle anything.

He says my name twice, wrecked and low, like it’s being pulled out of him.

I say his. Slava, into the skin of his throat. It sounds different than it has in three years because this time something answers, this time the name lands somewhere real.

When I come, the orgasm tears through me from the inside out, my pussy clenching tight around him, my whole body shaking. I hold onto him like he’s the only solid thing in the room because right now he is. He follows seconds later, burying himself to the root and shuddering, his face in my neck. I feel him empty inside me and I hold him through every wave of it, my hands in his hair, my lips against his temple.

Right now, I don’t care what this is. I don’t care if it dissolves the moment I open my eyes. I’m here and it’s him and I’m taking every second of it.

After, he stays. That’s the thing that’s different from every other version. The others dissolved when I reached for them after. This one stays solid and warm, his arm around me, my head on his chest where I can feel his heartbeat. It’s steady, real, and present.

I know I should ask. I should open my eyes, look at him properly, and ask if he’s real.

But the pill pulls me under before I can finish the thought.

I fall asleep completely unguarded for the first time in three years, breathing in the warmth of him, telling myself I’ll figure it out in the morning, telling myself it doesn’t matter, telling myself that three days from now I’ll be Gachev’s wife and that this is the last thing I’m allowing myself, so I’m taking all of it, right down to the heartbeat under my ear.

The curtain shifts again.

The window opens.

But I sleep.

15

Slava

I sit in the car for longer than I should.