She laughs in that quiet, breathless way I’m becoming addicted to, and tightens her legs around my waist to keep me right where I am.
“Good,” she whispers, lips brushing my ear. “Because I’m nowhere near done learning what I want. And I want you to keep breeding me until it sticks.”
I groan and feel myself twitch inside her again already.
This woman is going to ruin me. And I’m going to love every second of it.
Epilogue
Katya
Three months later
The café Matilda chose is small and warm and tucked into a side street that I'd never have found on my own. But Matilda knows this city the way she knows everything, with a quiet authority that used to intimidate me and now just makes me proud.
My sister is sitting across from me in a cashmere jumper that strains slightly across her bump, seven months now, round and unmistakable, with a slice of chocolate cake in front of her and a look of absolute bliss on her face.
"Don't judge me," she says, fork already loaded. "This baby wants what it wants, and what it wants is chocolate cake. Constantly. And apples. Which is a combination I can't explain and have stopped trying to."
"Chocolate cake and apples?" I raise my eyebrows.
"Don't ask. Gennady found me eating Nutella on apple slices at two in the morning last week and I thought he was going to have me committed." She grins. The grin is easy, open, utterly lacking in the careful composure I remember from our childhood. Matilda Petrova doesn't compose herself anymore. She just... is."But enough about my unhinged dietary choices. Tell me about your week."
My week. I think about my week and feel the same quiet thrill I've felt every time I've sat across from my sister over the past two months.
The first visit was the hardest. Killian drove me to the Petrov estate and walked me to the door and told me he'd be in the car when I was done, for as long as I needed, and when Matilda opened the door we'd stared at each other for eleven seconds, I counted, before she pulled me into a hug so tight I felt something inside my chest realign with an almost audible click.
We'd cried. Both of us, standing in her hallway while Gennady Petrov, the man who ordered our brother's death, the man my sister chose over everything she'd ever known, quietly closed the door to his study and left us alone.
We'd talked for four hours. About everything. About Sergei and our father and the night the world split in two. About the guilt she carried for leaving me behind and the resentment I carried for being the one left. About the months between then and now, the silence that calcified into distance that became something neither of us knew how to bridge until a quiet man with steady eyes told me that my father didn't get to decide who I spoke to anymore.
We meet every week now. Tuesdays. Lunch. The café with the chocolate cake that Matilda can't resist, which I've noticed I've been ordering too, the last three visits in a row.
I'm thinking about that while Matilda tells me about the nursery Gennady is having decorated, about how he's already bought more stuffed animals than any child could conceivably need, about the way his hand finds her belly every time they're in the same room, the same unconscious gesture that…
That Killian does. The hand on my stomach. Every night, in bed, his palm flat against my lower belly, fingers spread, the weight and warmth of it becoming so familiar I barely register it anymore.
Except I'm registering it now.
I'm registering everything now. The chocolate cake I've been craving. The apples I bought three bags of last week without thinking about why. The tiredness that's been creeping up on me for the past fortnight, the kind that sits behind my eyes and makes me fall asleep in the study armchair at three in the afternoon. The way my breasts have been tender in a way I attributed to the time of the month except…Except my time of the month hasn't come.
I set my fork down.
"Katya?" Matilda tilts her head. "You've gone pale."
"When did your cravings start?" I ask, and my voice sounds strange to my own ears. Distant. Like it's coming from the end of a very long corridor.
"Early. Really early, actually. Like five, six weeks? The chocolate was first, then the apples, then the completely deranged combination of—" She stops. Looks at me. Looks at the slice of chocolate cake I've eaten three-quarters of. Looks at my face.
Her fork clatters onto the plate.
"Katya."
"I'm probably just—"
"Katya. How late are you?"
I count. My mouth opens. Closes.
