As she masturbated in front of me I did so in return, feeling a pulse in my balls as she arched her neck back in silent, almost painful pleasure. But when she lowered her face again, watching herself in the mirror, her eyes were misty—not with pleasure but with sadness. Whispering to herself in the mirror, she spoke to me without even fucking knowing it.
“But why can’t you like me, Maksim? Why can’t you love me?”
I love you more than anything in the entire fucking world.
The sight of her body, the sound of her talking to me, got me closer and closer. The first tidal wave of my orgasm hit me hard and fast. Closing my eyes, I imagined pressing into her. In our wedding bed. On our wedding night.
I was so fucking gone for her that I groaned, loud, as I splattered pulse after pulse of cum onto the passageway wall.
CHAPTER 7
Anika
I froze with my fingers between my legs. I had heard something. I was sure of it. It didn’t even sound human. It sounded like an animal. Like a male deer in the rut. That primal groan of desire.
It didn’t make any sense. I inhaled and shook my head, scolding myself for being so ridiculous. I was alone here, in my private dressing room. Private was the key word. There were no animals for miles and miles.
Unless I counted my brother. That beast. And he wasn’t anywhere near me. I knew that for sure.
A knock at the door interrupted my thoughts. I couldn’t see past the screen, but I knew it was Maria. I’d have known her knock anywhere. And more than likely, whatever sound I heard was just her approaching the door. The hinges squeaked slightly to say the door was just partly open, not all the way; the windows creaked when there was a strong breeze.
There were all sorts of noises in the castle, the groaning I thought I heard was surely just another of those.
“Bath is all ready for you,” Maria said. “Nice and hot, just like you like it.”
With a roll of my shoulders, I slipped out of Maksim’s shirt. I folded it carefully, sleeve to sleeve and cuff to cuff, and then tucked it under a large cabinet against the stone wall, where I kept things that were important to me. Then I grabbed a silk robe from the hook beside me and wrapped myself up, padding after Maria down the hallway into the bath chamber.
The steaming copper tub was almost the only thing in the room, and the scent of rosemary oil wafted up from the steaming water.
Maria opened up a bath sheet wide, and turned away to give me some privacy. I stepped into the warm water, and inhaled with surprise at its heat. When it hit my most private of parts, the throbbing still there from touching myself, I felt a jolt run through me and the flash of Maksim’s face had me biting my lip and holding back the shameful sensations, only exacerbated by the hot water.
“You’re so quiet,” Maria said, still looking away, but now smiling. “Don’t tell me you’re swooning over that hulking brute of a brother of yours. Again.”
“Stepbrother,” I corrected as I slid down into the hot water, “as he’s always quick to tell me. If he’s even that,” I added, remembering his words.
What exactly were we to each other if not brother and sister? Were we just two people who happened to have common acquaintances?
“Mmm-hmm,” Maria said, smiling so hard now that her dimples showed. Once I was submerged up to my shoulders in the water, she gathered up the sheet and opened her eyes, raising an eyebrow at me.
Annoying as it was to apparently be so readable, Maria had been aware of my less-than-sisterly feelings towards my step-brother for as long as I’d been having them. She was canny, as the scullery maids would say, and very little slipped past her. A little glance here, a blush there, and Maria had known exactly what was going on in my head. And she never let me forget that she knew.
“Don’t be silly,” I said, letting my back rest against the warm copper back of the tub, and wiggling my toes in the water, milky with oat milk to moisturize my skin. “That would be disgusting. And anyway, he’s nothing but a bully,” I added, desperately trying to believe what I was saying. I tried to summon up the sting of his words, his threat against Maria, but what came instead was pure desire and need. I could still smell his scent somehow, as if I still had my face buried in his shirt. “He’s always so nasty to me and I’ve had enough of it. Nobody treats me like that, nobody. I’m done trying to figure him out.”