Page 69 of The Pakhan’s Hidden Heir

“I’m not leaving you alone.” She pulls the bottle off the nightstand and tosses it in the trash. “Look at the state you’re in. Your father would turn over in his grave.”

Invoking my dead father’s name is a slap in the face, but it works. I push myself up, head splitting, and plant my feet on the floor. It’s been four years of this almost three times a week.

I drink myself to a stupor and forget I have life to live.

Ingrid stomps into my room, going more grey daily, and drags me out of my depressive hole to force me back to reality.

She reaches to steady me and I wrench my arm back harder than I mean to. “I said leave it. I don’t need you nursing me like an damn invalid. Get out.”

She frowns and sighs, stepping back from me like I hurt her physically, but she leaves just the way I’ve asked her.

I don’t need a nanny or a goddamn mother.

I need the woman I love back in my life.

I sit there hating myself, which is the one thing I still do well.

I should be over this by now.

With Agnya it passed in just a few years, but Raina has some hold on me.

Maybe because with my wife I knew she was gone, no way to ever have her back.

But mourning someone who’s still alive is different. There’s nowhere to put that hurt when you know they’re out there and you could have them but you can’t reach them.

Slumping to the shower, I stand under the water and let it run across my body, nearly scalding me.

Somewhere in the steam Raina comes to me the way she always does—not a memory exactly, more a wound that never closed.

I’ve buried a wife.

I know the shape grief is supposed to take, how it thins out over time and finally lets you go.

But this one doesn’t.

This is worse than a grave—a grave is final.

The water beats down on my skin as I brace one hand on the tile. My dick is already swelling just thinking of her, heavy with the ache that never leaves me.

I close my eyes and there she is on her knees in front of me, water sluicing over her breasts as she opens her mouth, eager for me.

I’ve never touched another woman since her, and I probably won’t. To do that is to taint her memory, and I never want to forget her.

I wrap my fist around my shaft and stroke, imagining her lips sliding around me.

She takes me deep, her tongue pressing along my underside while her eyes lock on mine. “That’s it,” I growl in my head. “Suck me like you need it.”

My hand moves faster. I picture her fingers digging into my thighs, pulling me closer as she works me with her tongue and her moans vibrate my cock.

I thrust into my grip, matching the rhythm I remember, the way she used to swallow every inch and look up at me like I was hers.

The pressure builds even as Raina’s voice fills my mind, that breathy demanding tone I crave to hear again. “Come for me. Fill my mouth.”

I pump harder, hips jerking and my balls tighten as I spill over in thick pulses, groaning her name as the orgasm rips through me.

It’s pleasure, but it’s deadness, something to numb me. And for a second the emptiness fades.

But then the water washes it all away and I’m alone again, chest heaving as the loneliness swarms back in.