Page 15

Katya

My head is ringing, but it is not from a headache. It feels like someone is stomping their feet inside it, and I can’t tell why. What I do know for certain is that I’ve just saved Nikolai. I’m freaked out, in a way, by this mostly because, before this cabin, I’d have been the happiest and most relieved to watch someone take him out. But seeing it happen in front of me now felt vastly wrong.

And Nikolai is staring really hard right now. “The bartender?”

I swallow hard, my eyes falling on the bartender’s lifeless form. The same man who’d warned me about this place when I was tailing Nikolai. “Yeah. Him.”

“Who is he?”

“He was on duty, a small pub on Fifth. After I heard your conversation on the phone. I went there while following you. He told me about this cabin. About how bad things happen here and to stay away if I had any sense.”

Nikolai’s stare narrows. “So why the hell would he come after you?”

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out. He warned me. Told me to stay away. So why show up here? Why warn me at all? What’s the point of pretending to be helpful just to come here and—”

“Kill you?” Nikolai finishes the sentence. “Maybe he was trying to push you here. Herd you into a trap. Or maybe he was just another piece on someone else’s chessboard. Disposable.”

“That’s... possible.” My mind races, trying to piece it together. “He must’ve known I was following you. Maybe he was supposed to keep an eye on me. Gain my trust, then...”

“Then lead you right into this. But he didn’t know I was coming here. How could he?” Nikolai’s eyes glint with something dark and calculating. “You talk to anyone? Other than him?”

“No. Just him.”

“Then he followed you. Simple as that. And he didn’t come alone because he was probably briefed to bring backup.”

“An accomplice,” I whisper, glancing at the other body sprawled across the floor. “That’s who the other guy was.”

Nikolai nods. “Someone’s got eyes on you. And if they’re willing to send men to take you out, they’re not going to stop until they succeed.”

“So, what do we do?” I ask, my voice quivering despite my effort to keep it steady.

“Someone is playing us. I’m going to find out who. Don’t you worry.”

I nod, and I’m about to say something when he asks again. “Are you alright, though? Did they hurt you?”

I shake my head, still unable to form the actual words on the tip of my tongue. Around us, the lifeless bodies of the men we killed lay around, bleeding. He hasn’t closed the distance between us. He just keeps staring, which I suspect is his own way of trying to give whatever he’s feeling right now, space.

But fuck it. I’m done pretending. I walk towards him, my fingers trembling as I clutch Nikolai’s shirt, pulling him closer. Blood seeps through the tear in his sleeve, staining his skin dark red. I barely see it.

Just the idea of him crumpling to the ground, lifeless, his eyes dull and empty. That’s all I can see.

The thought tears at me.

I saved him. Threw myself between him and that bartender like I had some suicidal instinct to be the hero.

Except I wasn’t trying to be a hero. I just couldn’t let him die. Not him. Not before I—

“But what the hell were you thinking, Katya?” Nikolai’s voice cuts in when we are face to face. “You don’t step in the way of a fight like that. Are you insane?”

“I just—” My words falter, choking me. “I just did what I had to do.”

He glares at me, but something’s off. His breaths come quicker, his chest heaving like he’s fighting more than the pain. Like he’s fighting me.

“Why?” His voice drops. “Why save me, Katya? Was it some pathetic need to play savior?”

“No,” I snap, my grip tightening around his shirt. “I could’ve let them take you out. I should’ve.”

“But you didn’t.” He shoves my hand away, that hard, bitter smile twisting his mouth. “You think that earns you some special place? Makes me feel something for you? I’ve told you what this is already.”

“That’s not what this is.” My throat tightens. “You think I give a damn about what you feel? I didn’t want to lose you. That’s it.”

“Lose me? Please Katya, that is exactly the kind of thing people who are just fucking don’t say to each other. We are not that important.”

“You are,” I say. The words come out hard and furious. “You are because I’m not done with you. Because this... this thing between us? It’s real, Nikolai. What just happened now made me see that. No matter how many times you and I try to shove it away, it’s still there.”

His shoulders tense, jaw clenching like he’s biting back a thousand words. But I see it, the truth he tries to hide behind anger.

“What’s real is that you’re useful to me,” he says. “Nothing more.”

“Then why do you care so much?” I fling the words at him like knives. “Why did you pull me out of the snow and keep me alive three days ago? You missed on purpose that day. I’ve seen you shoot, Nikolai. You don’t miss. So why didn’t you just kill me when you found out I’d been tailing you? Why follow me to my house, intimidate me, then walk away without leaving a scratch, just an orgasm? Why do you touch me and call me krasivaya, moya lyubov? Why do you keep saying it’s just fucking when everything you do, every way you look at me, is anything but that? And why the hell did you save me just now? You could’ve let that man kill me, shot him and his partner, and walked away without a scratch. So why?”

“I’m keeping you alive,” he growls. “Because dead, you’re worthless.”

“Liar.” I step closer, my heart pounding against my ribs. “I see how you look at me, how you notice everything I do. Even now, you’re trying so damn hard to pretend you don’t care.”

“I don’t.”

“Then stop lying to yourself,” I fire back. “Just like I have. You want to pretend I’m nothing? Fine. But we both know that’s not true.”

He doesn’t move. Doesn’t speak. His stare drills into me, furious and desperate all at once.

“I was terrified,” I admit, the words ripping out of me. “When I thought they were going to kill you. Because it would be just like Irina all over again. Losing someone I care about without saying goodbye. Without making it count.”

His expression shifts, something raw breaking through his guarded mask.

“I told myself I saved you because I want to take you out myself. Because you deserve it.” My voice is shuddering. “But that’s not the truth. The truth is I want you. And I don’t even know why. But I do.”

He shakes his head like he can shake me off, but I see the crack forming.

“I’ve learned to seize the moment, Nikolai.” I inch closer, close enough that I can feel his breath against my cheek. “To go after what I want and who I want. And right now, that’s you.”

His fists clench, arms trembling as if he’s forcing himself to stay still.

“Don’t,” he warns. “Don’t get any closer.”

“But you don’t want me to stop.” I reach for him, fingers skimming his arm, tracing the blood that leaks from his wound. “You keep telling me not to get attached to you, but then you look at me like this.”

“Katya...”

“Push me away,” I dare him, sliding my hands down his chest and roughly cup his already hard dick through his pants. “Prove to me you don’t feel anything.”

His breath comes out ragged, a harsh rasp. “You have no idea what you’re doing.”

“Maybe not.” I stroke my hands against his thick length, my palms flat and moving unevenly, daring him to stop me. “But I’m not the one running from it.”

A muscle twitches in his jaw. He’s shaking, fighting whatever war he’s got raging inside him.

And then he snaps.

His mouth crashes against mine with a force that steals the air from my lungs. It’s reckless, bruising, a mess of teeth and heat and need. His arms circle me, gripping tightly like I might vanish if he loosens his hold.

I clutch at him just as desperately, my fingers digging into his shoulders. Despite the blood on his arm, despite everything, I can’t pull away.

The kiss is wild, angry, like we’re trying to hurt each other just as much as we’re trying to consume each other. My back hits the wall and he presses into me, his body heat scorching through the layers of my clothes.

“You make me want things I shouldn’t want,” he rasps against my mouth. “Things I shouldn’t need.”

“Then stop pretending you don’t.”

He growls something low, fierce, and his mouth finds mine again. His hand slides down my back, pressing me closer, like he’s trying to melt me into him.

I don’t know if anyone else will ever touch me like he has. Don’t know if we’re about to walk out of this room and straight into another fight.

But right now, none of that matters.

Because I’m kissing him like it’s my last day on earth.

And he’s kissing me like it’s his, too.

I take in everything all at once. He puts one hand around my waist, holds me tight and firmly, crushed into his chest. With the other hand, he caresses my hair, my cheeks, my neck, touching and kissing like this is a hello and a goodbye merged into one.

He moans into the kiss, before pausing. “I think…I…I…think this is…”

He doesn’t know what to say? Damn, I need a camera. For the first time, Nikolai is lost for words. I want to capture this moment but really, what I desperately want is to never forget the look he gives me now. The look of torture, of knowing deep down that this isn’t the end, and he’s falling, and the world has begun to tip over on its axis. That’s the sort of look he gives me now. He’s not smiling, and his eyes have turned more grey than anything else, stormy and hollowed out with something feral clawing underneath.

“Don’t talk,” I whisper as if stoned. “I need the relief right now or I think I’m going to burst right open.”

“There’s blood…”

“Since when have you cared about that?”

“Never,” he snarls, and then he’s kissing me again, devouring me whole. The ground beneath my feet must have opened sometime during his small stutters because, now, as he kisses me, I feel as though I’m left floating, untethered and sinking into him.

His lips are soft, but the touches are wild and fast-paced and breathless as though we have no time again. And maybe we don’t. We still don’t know if there are others, like these men, creeping toward us, and if we’ll soon be surrounded again, but for the moment, none of that seems to matter. I just want to have him close to me; I want to feel his body on mine again, and to know and understand the dynamics of something so fragile, so fucked up it’s shredding us both apart.

He’s so fucking hard. Panting.

He breaks the kiss to mutter something in Russian, which I don’t get until he’s trapped me against the wall and pushing my pants down my legs with rough hands, scraping my skin.

“Ty moyo nachalo i konets.” My beginning and end is you.

I don’t know if he meant to say this or if, like all the things he’s said before, he’d meant to keep this hidden. Shit, with him, I can never quite tell but I like it. Like how he seems to be in control all the time, but slips when it gets too much for him. Like that, it makes him human somehow, even as he’s breaking me open.

“God—I don’t think I can control how much I want you right now, Katya,” he says, voice pinched, trembling. “I don’t think I can be slow right now.”

“What do you want?”

“I want to take you and claim you. Dominate you. Wreck you until there’s nothing left but us.” His voice is rough, and his hunger is almost violent. “I want to fuck you until neither of us can breathe. Until it’s all you feel, all you know.” His eyes burn into me, and my nipples stiffen, his cock straining blatantly against his pants. “I’m so hard for you, Katya. Like granite. And maybe if I take you—if I devour you one more time—I’ll finally get this craving out of my system.”

My legs tremble, nearly giving out. My skin scorches, my pussy pulses with a desperate ache. He isn’t promising me love. He isn’t even hinting at companionship. What he dangles before me is a primal, no-holds-barred fuck with a body sculpted by divine hands.

I don’t think about the fallout. About what it’ll mean to share the remaining hours with him before going back home, and pretend this moment doesn’t change everything. I don’t think about the ache that comes when it’s over and he walks away.

I don’t picture the torment of facing him again—that’s if I do—unable to run my hands over him. I don’t dwell on what this night could cost me, the hollow ache that might linger when I can’t relive it.

I should think about all of that.

But I don’t.

Instead, I lock onto his shadowed, ravenous stare.

“You’re dying to fuck me that much? Then stop talking, Nikolai, and do it.”

He gives me one of those pained looks again, like it’s taking him all of his willpower not to indulge me, not to ruin me right there. “You don’t understand, baby. I won’t be gentle when I enter inside you. I’m gonna fuck you like I hate you. I’m gonna be rough, gonna make you scream until you can’t take it anymore.”

“My body is yours, Nikolai. Take it however you want,” I say, voice cracking, offering myself up like a sacrifice to his hunger.

He mouths something else, a guttural curse, but lets my words be the thing that stays between us. The first time, he asked me to lie to him about it and I had, but saying this now doesn’t feel like a lie, no matter how many times I will myself to insist that it is.

It’s real, and it’s tainted me from the inside out.

With slow uneven ease, Nikolai pulls his throbbing cock out, massages and caresses it from the crown to the base. His eyes remain wild on mine the whole time, his pupils blown black with lust, before he stops to slip his fingers inside my pussy, stretching me with no warning.

“God—”

He teases and lolls around my pussy, not caring about the fire he seems to be starting everywhere across my body. “You’re wet,” he growls with possession.

“For you…” I whimper, already lost to him.

He brings his fingers out, wet and slick with my arousal, and sticks them in his mouth. Tasting me. Licking me off his fingers like I am a juicy fruit and he’s exploring, savoring every drop like a man starved. “I can never get used to how you taste. I don’t know how I survived this long without your body…without having you with me, under me every waking minute.”

“I’m here now.”

“I’m never letting you go,” he vows, a promise laced with obsession.

“I don’t want to.” He jerks me up and thrusts inside my dripping pussy in one swift, brutal move, burying his face in the crook of my neck, and sinks his teeth into my skin until I yelp. I wrap my legs around his waist in response, and take my time to feel the searing pain and pleasure from having his large erection buried deep inside of me.

“You’re stuck with me now for a long time,” I gasp, clawing at his back with my nails, digging in until I draw blood.

He kisses me again, one final time, possessive and bruising, before letting go and resuming his movements. His thrusts are powerful, charged like he’s been caged for far too long, and this is his body’s way of telling him he’s alive, telling me I’m his to break.

“Ah, Christ. You’re always so ready for me, baby, so fucking tight and perfect.”

“Mmmmm,” I cry out, spiraling out of control, body buckling under him. “This is too…much…”

He pounds in, not caring or stopping, persistent as he drives me past my limits. I don’t even think I want him to stop. When he said he was going to be rough, I didn’t think he meant that for real, didn’t think he’d fuck me into oblivion like this.

He grounds out into my ears, “Take my cock in, baby. Let me fill this beautiful pussy up. Don’t you see how good we are together? How were you made for me to end?”

“Yes…yes!” I’m screaming because it just feels so good, too good, too much. “I love how you fuck my pussy! More, please. Harder,” I beg.

I don’t care now about anything else. For all I know we could be killed here by an atomic bomb. Or attacked by a wild animal, and Nikolai could save himself and I’d die here alone. Okay, that’s stupid. I don’t think he will. Not when he fucks my pussy like this; like he’s been waiting for me his whole life, like I’m the only thing keeping him from unraveling completely.

At this point, I barely even care about control. I just go right ahead and say what I want; saying what makes me happy and right now, it’s the sure way he’s working my body like it’s got a mind of its own, like it belongs to him entirely.

“Oh, good,” he’s panting as sweat drips from his brow. “Ah, baby…you feel…bloody marvellous. Fuck. Fuck. This is so damn good. Tell me you feel how sweet this is too, how fucking perfectly I fuck you.”

“Please, don’t let it stop. Keep fucking me like that, Nik. I need you. Please…” I wrap my legs even tighter to him, so there can be no space between us, because all I want to feel against my body is his very hard, defined muscles pressing into me, owning me. All I want to hear are his rough moans, my screams, and his breathless whispers as he claims me. “Faster…”

He smacks my ass, and the pleasure doubles. Speeding. Rough. Wild.

“Hmmm, give me that sweet ass, let me mark it red,” he snarls.

I grind my pelvis against him, wrapping my arms tighter around his neck, and bouncing up and down his length, chasing the edge he’s pushing me toward. He grunts his approval and smacks me again. Once. Twice. All in the same spot, the sting blooming into something twisted and delicious.

“You’re fucking perfect,” he moans, eyes locked on mine. “…perfect. Hot. Say it, baby. Tell me you belong to me, body and soul, while I fuck you senseless.”

“I belong to you body and soul,” I scream, my body shuddering as he rips the words from me. “Nikolai, fuck—keep going, don’t stop!”

He snarls, and one of his hands slides up to wrap around my throat. His fingers clamp down hard until my breath catches as his thumb presses into my windpipe.

“Say you’re nothing,” he demands, with a vicious thrust that’s harder, deeper. “Say it, Katya. Say you’re nothing without me fucking you like this.”

“I’m nothing,” I choke out, gasping as he squeezes tighter, cutting off my air until my lungs burn, fucking me so hard my vision blurs. “I’m nothing—God, Nik, I’m nothing without you!”

“Good girl,” he smiles wickedly, and continues slamming into me with savage force, the wet smack of our bodies obscene in the blood-soaked air. “Now say I own your every filthy thought. Say it while I choke you, baby, say it while I possess every fucking inch of you.”

“You own my every filthy thought,” I whimper, my voice breaking as his grip tightens further, causing my head to swim and my body to tremble from being on the edge of blacking out. “You own me—fuck, Nik, I can’t—”

“You can,” he snaps. His hips piston on as he drives me into the wall, his hand choking me until my pulse hammers under his fingers. “Say you’ll never escape my grip. Say it, Katya, say it while I fuck you like you deserve, and have you gasping for me.”

“I’ll never escape your grip,” I sob, barely audible, stars bursting behind my eyes as he pounds me mercilessly, my body limp and needy under his control. “Never—Nik, I’ll never escape you, please—”

“That’s right,” he rasps, voice wrecked, animalistic, his hand easing off my throat just enough for me to suck in a desperate breath before he clamps down again, harder, slamming into me like he’s trying to fuse us together. “You’re my toy to break, my hole to fuck, my soul to ruin. You crave this, don’t you? You’d let me choke you till you’re gone, fuck you till you’re almost lifeless, and you’d still beg for more.”

“Yes,” I moan, delirious, clinging to him as my body shakes, teetering on the edge of collapse. “I want it—choke me harder, fuck me deeper, break me, I don’t care—I need it, Nik, I need you like this.”

“I’m gonna come—” he grunts, charging into me harder, deeper, relentless. “I want you shaking, begging, breaking before I let you fall.”

I stifle a scream, my body screaming with the effort. “It’s too much…”

“I know…” He puts both hands under my ass, lifts me like I weigh nothing, and slams me down against his cock loudly, the wet slap of skin on skin echoing in the chaos around us. His fingers dig into my flesh, bruising, possessive. “But you come only when I tell you to. Be good for me, Katya. Take it all. Take every fucking inch till you’re screaming my name and choking on it.”

“Yes…” I whimper, submitting completely, lost in the depravity of him, my head lolling as his thrusts shake me to my core.

He brings me up and slams me down again and I start moaning, thrashing, body a live wire under his control. “Say it again,” he growls with his hand shooting back to my throat, wrapping tight, squeezing until my eyes roll back, and my voice dies in my chest. “Say you belong to me body and soul, say you’re nothing, say you’ll never escape me—say it while I fuck you into the ground and choke the life out of you.”

“I belong to you body and soul,” I gasp, my voice a broken thread as his grip crushes my airway, my body jerking with each brutal thrust. “I’m nothing. I’m never escaping you—Nik, please—”

That’s when he lets me have it. “Go on, baby,” he says, hoarsely. “Come for me now. Let me feel you come on my dick, let me feel you shatter around me, Krasivaya.”

That’s all I need to tumble out and writhe against him, screaming his name as I come hard for this man, louder than I ever have. My voice tears through the air, throat raw under his unrelenting grip. I’m shaking, breaking, black spots swallowing my sight, but I don’t care—I’d go out like this, fucked meaningless by him, and still crave more. Because it’s him. Right now, and I suspect, for a long time, I’m always going to want him, always going to crave this sick, perverse pull between us.

He’s mine.

I’m his.

I don’t think there’s anything better than this, anything filthier than the way he’s claimed me.

He releases inside of me then, spilling his entire load inside my body, marking me from the inside out, his cock pulsing as he groans with his hand still tightly on my neck, “Moya Lyubov.”

My love.

That again, except this time when he says it, I feel something crack in my chest, a jagged split that bleeds out everything I’ve tried to hold back.

I want it. That’s how fucked up I am for this spiral of need deep he’s dragged me into.