The number lands heavily in the space between us. He's twenty-five years older than me. Could have been at my birth. Old enough that when I was learning to walk, he was already...
What? Killing people? Is that what Bratvakapitansdo?
"I'm twenty," I say, though he obviously knows this.
"I know." He glances at me, those ice-blue eyes reading something in my face I don't want him to see. "I know everything about you, Vera. Your coffee order. Your class schedule. That you study in the library's third floor because it's alwaysempty. That you sleep on your left side. That you're afraid of thunderstorms and keep a nightlight plugged in by your bed. That you have a journal under your mattress where you write about feeling lost."
Each detail is a violation. A trespass. He's been cataloging me like a scientist studying a specimen, learning my patterns, my habits, my private thoughts.
The anger I expect doesn't come.
Instead, that warm, shameful feeling again. Because my father never knew I was afraid of storms. Never knew I took my coffee black. Never asked what I studied in school beyond "how are your grades?"
This stranger has spent two years learning about me. Two years paying attention.
And some broken part of me wants to lean into that attention like a plant toward sunlight.
"Three days," he says, turning off the main road onto a private drive. Trees close in on both sides, blocking out the world. "Then I make you my wife. And then..." His hand slides higher, stopping just below where my thighs meet. Heat radiates from his palm through the thin fabric of my dress. "Then I breed you."
My body responds before my brain can intervene: heat flooding low in my belly, pulse jumping in my throat. The clinical wordbreedshould sound wrong. Dehumanizing. Like I'm livestock instead of a person.
But my virgin body doesn't care about linguistics. It just feels his hand on my thigh, hears the dark promise in his voice, andwants.
I turn to look out the window so he can't see whatever truth is written on my face. The trees thin, and a massive estate appears, all stone and glass and isolated elegance. Beautiful. Remote. No neighbors for miles, probably.
"Welcome home,malyshka," he says as iron gates swing open before us. His hand flexes possessively on my thigh. "Your new life starts now."
The car rolls through. The gates close behind us with a final, definitiveclang.
Soon, I become Vera Maksimova. Before this man takes everything I am and remakes it into what he wants.
And the most terrifying part isn't that he's doing this.
It's that some part of me—some sick, broken part I didn't know existed—has already stopped fighting.
3
Pyotr
The hot water pounds against my back, but it does nothing to ease the tension coiled in every muscle. Forty-eight hours until I can finally take what's mine.
My cock is so hard it's painful, jutting out obscenely as I brace one hand against the tile. I've been hard since I collected her yesterday. Since I watched her climb into my car with those wide, frightened eyes. Since I felt her warmth beside me all night, kept her locked in my arms so she couldn't run.
She's sleeping in my bed right now. In my shirt because I dressed her last night after she showered, too exhausted to fight me. The image of her small body drowning in my clothes makes my cock throb.
I wrap my hand around myself, groaning at the contact. I've jerked off thinking about her hundreds of times over the past two years, but knowing she's just through that door makes this different. More desperate.
I stroke myself roughly, no finesse, chasing release. Images flood my mind: Vera beneath me, legs spread, virgin pussy taking my cock for the first time. Her belly swelling with my baby. Those innocent eyes looking up at me while I breed her over and over until she can't remember being empty.
"Fuck," I grit out, pumping faster. My other hand slaps against the tile, bracing myself. "Vera.Verochka."
I come hard, painting the shower wall with thick ropes of cum. It takes longer than usual to stop shaking, to get my breathing under control. And I'm still half-hard when I finally shut off the water.
I dry off and wrap the towel around my waist, running another through my wet hair. When I open the bathroom door, steam billows out into the bedroom.
She's awake.
Vera sits on the edge of my bed looking small and lost in my t-shirt. It falls to mid-thigh on her, covering everything but somehow more tempting than if she were naked. Her dark hair is messy from sleep, and she's staring at her hands folded in her lap.
