Page 96 of Marrying the Savage

Carefully.

Even in fantasy, I can’t make myself take her roughly the first time.

I would want to. God knows, I would want to. I would want to bury myself in her until she understood there was no space left between us, until every old family in Moscow, every Antonov, every Sokolov, every man who watched her walk down that aisle to someone else understood that Sofia is mine now.

But the first push would have to be slow.

Her eyes would go wide. Her nails would bite into my shoulders. She would try to hide the pain and fail because Sofia hides too late. I would feel her body stretch around me, tight and hot and shaking, and I would stop no matter how badly it killed me.

Waiting while she curses me for waiting. Kissing her until her body softens. Letting her adjust. Watching her realize she can want more even after the fear. Watching anger become need again.

I groan, low and harsh, pressing my forehead against the wet tile.

My hand works faster now, slick with water and precome, each stroke rougher than the last. My body does not care about restraint. It wants the woman down the hall. It wants her mouth, her throat, her breasts, the tight heat of her. It wants to hear that first startled cry when I push all the way in. It wants to feel her come around my cock the way she came around my fingers.

It wants.

It wants.

It wants.

I think of the ring tied to her finger with black thread.

My father’s ring. Too large for her hand. Ridiculous. Heavy. Mine.

I think of her looking at it as if I had given her something too dangerous to hold.

I think of her saying it looks ridiculous, while her eyes said something else.

I come with my hand braced hard against the wall and her name held between my teeth, hiding my shame and sin. I’ve not lost control yet.

The orgasm hits hard enough to make my shoulders lock. Heat tears through me, brief and violent, and for several seconds there is only the water, my breathing, and the ugly satisfaction of release that fixes nothing.

When it passes, I remain still beneath the shower. My hand is on the tile. My forehead rests against my wrist. The water runs hot over my back.

Nothing has changed.

Sofia is still in my house. Still in my bedchamber wing. Still untouched in the ways that matter and marked in the ways that can’t be hidden.

I rinse my hand slowly and turn the water colder.

By the time I leave the shower, I have locked the wanting away again.

I dress in black trousers, a white shirt, and a dark coat. I wrap my wounded palm myself, tighter than the doctor would like. The cut Dmitri made is shallow enough to be an irritation, deep enough to ache when I flex my hand.

Good. Pain is useful. It reminds a man he still has flesh beneath discipline.

At three in the morning, the house is quiet. I pause once in the corridor outside Sofia’s room. No light under the door tonight. Either she sleeps, or she has learned to hide wakefulness better.

I stand there longer than I should. Then I leave before I do something stupid, like open the door just to see.

Mikhail waits downstairs with the car already running. He looks at me once and says nothing.

Wise man.

The drive to the warehouse takes forty minutes. The city at this hour is stripped down to bone: empty roads, sleeping buildings, sodium streetlights washing the pavement in sick yellow. Snow threatens but does not fall. The river lies black beneath the bridges, reflecting the city in broken pieces.

Mikhail sits beside me, reading through the night reports on his phone. “Sokolov men moved twice after midnight,” he says.