It’s wrong, it’s sick, but it takes less than a minute before I come, his hard, driving rhythm hurling me over the edge with an intensity that wrenches a scream from my throat and brings tears to my eyes. My body shudders in dark ecstasy, clenching around his thick length, and I cry out his name, raking my nails down his back as he continues fucking me, taking me to the peak twice more before he comes himself.
In the aftermath, I lie draped over him, our limbs tangled together as he lazily strokes my back. With my head pillowed on his shoulder, I hear the steady thumping of his heart, and the glow of sexual satisfaction gives way to the familiar tangle of shame and desolation.
I hate him, and I hate myself.
I hate myself because something perverse inside me was glad for his ultimatum.
It felt good not to have a choice.
“You won’t be moving in a couple of weeks,” he murmurs, not pausing in his gentle stroking. “The lawyer couple no longer owns this house—I do. Or rather one of my shell corporations does.”
I should be surprised, but I’m not. I must’ve expected this on some level. My fingers tighten, crushing the corner of the pillow. “Did you threaten them? Kill them?”
He chuckles, his powerful chest moving underneath me. “I paid them double what the house is worth. Same goes for your would-be landlord. He’s well compensated for the lease you broke.”
I close my eyes, so relieved I could cry. I don’t know what I would’ve done if someone else had suffered because of me, how I could’ve lived with myself.
When I’m sure my voice won’t shake, I pull back and meet his shadowed gaze. “So that’s it? We’re just going to go on like this?”
“We are… for now.” His eyes gleam darkly. “Afterward, we’ll see.”
And tugging me back down to his shoulder, he drapes his arm around me, holding me as though that’s where I belong.
Part III
41
Sara
* * *
As the days pass, we fall into a bizarre pattern of domesticity. Every evening, Peter makes a delicious dinner for us, and the food is already waiting on the table when I walk in. We eat together, and then he fucks me, often taking me twice or more before we fall asleep. If he’s there in the morning when I wake up—and he frequently is—he also feeds me breakfast.
It’s as if I acquired a house husband, only one who does black-ops-style assassinations in his spare time.
“What do you do all day?” I ask when I come home after a particularly grueling day in the hospital and discover a gourmet meal of lamb chops and beet-based Russian salad. “You don’t just stay here and cook, right?”
“No, of course not.” He gives me an amused look. “What we do takes a lot of logistical planning, so I work with my guys on that, and also take care of the business side of things.”
“The business side of things?”
“Client interactions, securing payments, investment and distribution of funds, acquisition of weapons and supplies, that sort of thing,” he replies, and I listen in fascination as he gives me a glimpse into a world where insane sums of money exchange hands and assassination is a method of business expansion.
“We do a lot of work for the cartels and other powerful organizations and individuals,” he tells me as we polish off the lamb. “The Mexico job, for instance, was a case of one cartel leader hiring us to eliminate his rival so he could move into his territory. Other clients of ours include Russian oligarchs, dictators of various flavors, Middle Eastern royals, and a few of the better-run mafia organizations. Sometimes, if we’re between jobs, we’ll take on some smaller gigs, dealing with local thugs and such, but those pay next to nothing so we consider them pro-bono work, a way for us to stay sharp in downtime.”
“Right, pro bono.” I don’t try to hide my sarcasm. “Like my work at the clinic.”
“Exactly like that,” Peter says, and grins. He knows he’s shocking me, and he’s doing it on purpose. It’s a game he plays sometimes, horrifying me and then seducing me into welcoming his touch despite the revulsion I feel—or should feel.
It’s part of the sickness of our relationship that almost nothing he says or does has any lasting effect on my desire for him. My inability to resist him is a bleeding ulcer in my chest, and I can’t heal it no matter what I do. Each time I eat the food he makes, each time I sleep in his arms and find pleasure in his touch, the wound reopens, leaving me sick with shame and crippled with self-loathing.
I’m living in domestic bliss with my husband’s murderer, and it’s not nearly as terrible as it should be.