He doesn’t manage to finish the sentence before my fist connects with his face.
That’s when I lose it. Whatever veneer of control I’d had, whatever pretending I’d been doing to try to maintain some semblance of a cool head, it’s all gone. All I can feel is the burning, visceral rage that had bubbled up in me when I’d first seen Caterina’s broken body curled on that filthy mattress, an anger that’s been boiling steadily ever since, waiting to erupt.
And now, this is it. This is the moment when I can no longer hold it in.
It feels so fucking good to beat the shit out of him.
It’s only through the barest of self-control that I manage to stop before I beat him to death. It would have felt good to feel his life drain out underneath the pummeling of my fists. My knuckles are bruised, bleeding in spots, but I don’t care. I’ve never wanted to take a man’s life as badly as I want to take Stepan’s at this moment.
There’s only one thing that stops me.
His life isn’t mine to take.
“You’re going to regret saying every single word of that,” I snarl as I pull him upright by his hair, leaning down so that I’m only inches away from his battered and swollen face. “Mark my words.”
And then I really get to work.
When I leave the shed, my shirt clinging to me with blood and sweat, Stepan has felt every ounce of the pain he’s inflicted on Caterina and more. And yet, I still don’t feel as if it’s enough.
I stalk past Levin and back into the cabin, going directly to my room. The blood is still pounding through my veins, my pulse beating hard in my throat, and I realize dimly that I’m fucking hard, my cock pressing against the tight confines of my jeans as if it’s going to burst through my fly. If I had more presence of mind, I might have found it alarming—I’ve never been sexually aroused by torturing a man. There might be something to unpack there when I have the capacity for it.
But it’s not Stepan that I’m thinking about when I slam the bedroom door behind me and lean back against the door, yanking at my zipper and dragging my cock out into my fist desperately, as if I can’t go another minute without touching it. It’s been days since I’ve fucked, but it’s not just that. It’s a primal, almost instinctual urge, the need to rut after a fight, the adrenaline and rush of power all concentrating in my veins and shooting straight down to my rock-hard length.
If I could, I’d go to Caterina this second and fuck her. There’s nothing I want more than to sink into her pussy, to feel her tight, wet heat clenching around me as I drive myself into her again and again, filling her so completely that no other cock could ever satisfy her again. But I know that I can’t do that. She’s in no condition for me to touch her in any way, let alone fuck her.
But the moment my hand wraps around my cock, all I can think about is how desperately I need to come.
It throbs in my fist as I start to stroke it, my hand moving in quick, fast jerks that are nearly a blur as my hips thrust into my hand again and again. I brace myself against the door, biting back a groan as I feel myself throb, imagining the soft, slender curve of Caterina’s waist, the way her small breast felt in my hand, the hard peak of her nipple against my palm. I rub that same palm over the head of my cock, sliding my own arousal down the length of it to slicken it. It feels so fucking good, and I can’t stop thinking about her, about the sound of her moan or the way her thighs tightened around me when I’d knelt down on the floor in the Moscow apartment and gone down on her, devouring her pussy the way I’d hungered to since our wedding night.
It’s so easy to imagine her as my hand slides over my rigid length—the way she looks up at me in bed, that fiery defiance softening to a hungry need that she won’t admit out loud but is plain in her face whenever I take her, in the way she moans, the way she comes for me. It’s easy to imagine the way her skin feels against mine, the way it feels to slide my cockhead against the velvet softness of her folds, teasing her before I finally slip inside—
“Bladya!” I curse aloud, squeezing my cock as I stroke harder. I want to fuck her more than I want any fucking thing on earth right now. Yet, I can’t do anything other than lean back against the door, alone in my room, as I stroke myself to an orgasm that feels as if it’s about to come at any moment. A flurry of images runs through my head—Caterina in her wedding night lingerie, Caterina’s body tightening around me as she came without warning that night, her pale ass striped red from my belt, her eyes looking up at me as I fed her my cock, demanding her submission on her knees after she’d come back home. Her body around mine, her mouth, her sweet tight pussy, her ass that I’d taken so thoroughly.
She’s mine. Mine, mine, mine.The word thunders through my head like another pulse, beating in my ears as I feel the orgasm come up from my very toes, exploding through my length with a rush of pleasure so strong I have to grind my teeth to keep from making a sound.
I squeeze my cock as I come hard, the waves of pleasure rolling through me as my hips jerk, my palm rubbing over the sensitive tip as I cup my hand over it, my cum filling my fist as I hunch forward, shuddering with the final throes of the climax.
For a moment, I can’t breathe. And my erection won’t seem to subside. Usually, after I come, I start to soften fairly quickly. However, my cock is still pulsing, pressing into my hand as if it plans to stay hard even after that fast, rough orgasm. I still feel that aching need, the rush of adrenaline and desire, and just the thought that my cock might decide to stay hard is enough to make me feel a throb from root to tip, my hips rocking forward at the idea.
What the fuck is going on with me?I swallow hard, squeezing my still-aching length as I try to pull myself together. I can’t stay in this room and jerk myself raw. I have things to do, business to attend to. I shouldn’t even be stopping to do this in the first place, but the tide of arousal that had washed over me had been too strong to ignore.
Even after everything, I still want my wife. In some ways, I feel as if I might want her more than ever. She’s proven to be everything I ever thought she was—strong, intelligent, resilient, and brave. All of those things and more, the perfect wife for a man like me. Beautiful and capable.
But deep down, even as I stride to the bathroom to clean up and tell myself that that’s all it is—that I’m impressed by her beauty and moxie all in one person—I feel that tightness in my chest that tells me it’s more than that. That she’s someone I want for reasons beyond just her beauty and value as a wife.
That I’m beginning to feel things for her that I’d sworn I would never feel again.
CATERINA
We’re back in the bed in Moscow.
Viktor is lying next to me, his fingers trailing down between my breasts, curving around the swell of each one as if he’s tracing the lines of my body, committing it to memory. As if hewantsto be here, wants to be here withme, and not just any woman who could salve his desire.
He pinches my nipples. “Do friends not do this?”
“None of my friends have ever done that.”
I’d wanted to laugh at that thought. I’ve never been interested in women, but I can’t imagine shy and innocent Sofia ever touching me that way. Not even some of the girls I went to college with, girls who were more experimental, who teased me about being virginal and innocent and planning to stay that way. Who didn’t understand the burden of responsibility on my shoulders.