Page 39 of My Wedding Night Massacre

“Don’t,” I say.

She looks at me.

“Don’t,” I say again, quieter, my hands spreading across her hips, feeling the full curve of her under my palms, making sure she feels exactly how my hands want to be exactly here. Her breath catches. The self-consciousness doesn’t disappear entirely, it never does with her, but it makes room for something else, for the way I’m looking at her, for the fact that my hands haven’t moved and don’t want to.

I lay her down on the bed in the back room, the sheets cool under her, and I take my time.

My mouth finds her throat first, the soft skin below her jaw, the hollow of her collarbone. She tips her head back, her hand coming up to rest in my hair, not directing, just staying, a presence at the back of my head that says I’m here, I’m with you, keep going. I kiss down her collarbone, across her chest, take one nipple into my mouth, feel her inhale sharply, her fingers tightening slightly in my hair. I work it slowly, my tongue tracing circles, feeling her body respond, the small sounds she makes when I do it right.

I move to the other side, taking my time there too, my hand spreading flat across her stomach, feeling the soft warmth of her skin. She arches up slightly, not urgent, just present, her body telling me what it wants without demand. I trace my mouth down the center of her chest, across her stomach, feeling the slight tremor in her when I get lower, the way her thighs shift apart before I’ve even asked.

I press my lips to the inside of her thigh, one side then the other, my hands spreading warm over the full curve of her hips, gripping gently. She makes a low sound, her hand still in my hair, and I feel her relax under me in a way she hasn’t been able to relax all day, the last of the held tension draining out.

When I put my mouth on her pussy she exhales my name so quietly it’s barely a sound. I work her slowly, my tongue tracing her clit in unhurried circles, reading every catch in her breathing, every tightening of her fingers against my scalp. I slide one finger inside her, feeling how wet she is, how warm, her cunt soft around me. I take my time with that too, curling deep, finding what I know is there. She comes apart slowly, the orgasm building long before it breaks, her hips rocking in small movements against my mouth, her thighs trembling on either side of my head. When it finally rolls through her it’s a long, full-body thing, her cunt clenching around my finger, her back arching off the bed, my name in her throat again, fuller this time.

I move back up her body, taking the time to press my lips to her stomach, her ribs, her throat on the way. She’s still catching her breath when I get there, her chest rising and falling, her eyes finding mine in the low light. She reaches up and touches my face, her thumb moving across my jaw. I turn into it the same way I turned into her palm three nights ago in the bedroom I came through the window to reach.

She pulls me down.

I settle between her thighs, my cock pressing against her entrance. I hold there, looking at her face, making sure. She holds my gaze with her honey-brown eyes, clear, present, fully here, her hands at my shoulders, not pulling, not pushing, just resting, just staying. I push in slowly.

The sound she makes is low, barely audible, her eyes closing for a moment as I fill her, the drag of it slow enough that we both feel every inch. I go until I’m buried completely, her cunt warm around my cock, her body adjusting, her thighs rising to bracket my hips. I stay there, not moving, my forehead dropping to hers, both of us breathing in the same space.

“Okay?” I ask.

Her eyes open. She looks at me from very close, this woman I married three years ago, who kept our son alive, who kept herself alive for him, who stood at a second altar this morning and turned around when I walked through the door.

“Yes,” she says.

I move.

Not hard, not urgent, just deep and thorough, pulling back slowly until almost nothing remains inside her, then pressing forward again, filling her completely on every stroke. She breathes with each one, her hips rising slightly to meet me, her hands moving from my shoulders to my back, holding on without gripping, her body fluid under mine. I watch her face, every shift of expression, the way her lips part when I go deep, the way her brows draw together when I find the angle, the way she looks at me when I hold it there, grinding slow circles before pulling back again.

“Slava,” she says, not as a request, just my name, just the fact of me inside her, present, real, here.

I keep moving. Long, slow strokes, my cock dragging through the slick heat of her, her pussy soft, taking me fully, giving me everything. I press my mouth to her temple, her cheek, the corner of her mouth. She turns her face and catches my lips with hers, kissing me in the rhythm of it, both of us moving together in the quiet room, no urgency anywhere in it, just the warmth of her body beneath mine, the full weight of three years behind us, the first hour of something different ahead.

She comes the second time with her face pressed to my throat, her arms wrapped around me, her pussy clenching in slow pulses around my cock, her whole body shuddering in a long wave. I hold her through it, buried deep, feeling every contraction, my mouth against her hair. When she finishes, I let myself follow, my hips rolling forward once, twice, emptying inside her in slow, steady pulses that feel like everything I’ve been holding back for three years finding somewhere to go. I press my face to her neck, breathing her in, her hands moving in slow circles on my back.

After, she doesn’t move away.

That’s what tells me we’re somewhere new. Every other time today, she pulled back, gathered herself, and found the distance that kept her functional. This time she stays where she is, her head on my chest, her hand flat against my ribs, her breathing slowing into the rhythm of someone giving themselves over to sleep. I keep my arms around her, not reaching for distance either.

The room goes dark around us as the city light outside shifts from gold to grey. I look at the ceiling, at the stone of Leoni’s villa above me, at the maps on the table I can’t see anymore in the dark, at all the evidence of what I’ve been building toward for three years.

I think about a two-year-old boy somewhere across the city with my eyes, sitting with a nanny in a house that belongs to the man I came here to destroy. I think about him at the window, waiting for a car that isn’t going to come, not understanding why, not having the language for what he’s missing. I think about Pavlina doing that alone, every Tuesday, every Thursday, every Sunday that was permitted to her, leaving him again at the end of each visit because she had no other option.

He doesn’t know I exist. He doesn’t know his father is hiding in a villa on the outskirts of the city with his mother asleep on his chest, his father who has been alive the whole time, his father who is going to make sure he never waits at that window again.

The mission hasn’t changed. Bogdan’s head and everything he took, every man who helped him take it, every piece of what was mine returned to where it belongs. None of that has changed. What’s changed is the reason it matters, the weight behind it, the thing at the center of it that wasn’t there before today.

Pavlina breathes against my chest, slow, fully under, her body finally resting after the longest day either of us has had in three years.

I make the promise without sound, without words, directed at a boy I’ve never met, at the woman who kept him alive by keeping herself alive, at the version of this that hasn’t existed yet but is going to.

I will not leave again.

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