She lifts one knee onto the couch beside my hip as I absently reach to place my glass on the small table beside the couch. Then the other knee boxes me between her thighs. The dress pools around us and she settles onto my lap. Her weight presses down against me, and every thought I've had for three weeks about patience and restraint and careful, measured control burns down to ash.
She can feel how hard I am. There's no hiding it in this position. Her eyes widen slightly, a fraction, the first lick of surprise. But she doesn't pull back. She shifts her weight, adjusting, and the movement presses her against me in a way that makes the air leave my lungs.
"This is who I am," she says. Her voice is quiet but clear. "I'm not some girl in a file, Yevgeny. I'm not an obedient sister or a quiet bride. I go out at night. I find men who hurt women. And I make them stop."
She says it in such a way that it’s clear she does this without apology.
My cock jerks against the zipper of my trousers.
"I've handled eleven in six years. Some I killed. Some I scared. Some I handed to the police on a plate because the system couldn't be bothered to do its job. I'm good at it. I'm careful. And I'm telling you this because you said you wanted to see me." She lowers her face and looks directly into my eyes. "So, see me."
I look at her. This woman in white silk who just confessed to something that would terrify most men. Who is sitting in my lapwith her thighs pressed against mine and her pulse visible in her throat and her eyes daring me to flinch.
"I already told you," I say. "I'm not afraid of what you are."
"I didn’t think you would be. But no man wants to be married to a woman who sneaks out at night to make people pay for the bad things they did."
I bring my hands up slowly. I give her time to see them. My palms settle on her hips, over the dress, firm enough that she can feel the pressure but not so tight that she can't move away.
"You're my wife," I say. "All of you. The parts they see and the parts they don't. I don't want one without the other."
Her breath shifts. Something in her eyes goes liquid, just for a second, and I realize that no one has ever said this to her before. No one has ever known what she is and wanted her because of it. She's been carrying this alone for six years and the weight of that is written in the tension she holds in her shoulders and the way her hands are gripping the front of my shirt like she's not sure if she's pulling me closer or bracing herself.
She kisses me.
She leans in and her mouth meets mine and she takes. Her lips are warm, firm, and she kisses me like she's making a point. Like she needs me to understand that this isn't surrender, it's a claiming of her own.
I let her lead. My hands stay on her hips while her fingers twist in my shirt and her mouth opens against mine and the taste of her, vodka and icing sugar from the wedding cake she ate earlier, hits me low in the stomach.
She pulls back, breathless. Her lips are wet and her cheeks are flushed and she's looking at me with something that isn't control anymore. It's want. Raw and real and so new to her that she doesn't quite know what to do with it.
"Show me," she says.
I tighten my grip on her hips. "Show you what?"
"Everything." She swallows. "I haven't done this before."
My hands go still on her body. She hasn't done this before. She's spent six years being a weapon, a shadow, a thing that hunts in the dark, and no one has ever touched her.
"Stefania."
"Don't." Her voice sharpens. "Don't make it tender. Don't treat me like I'm fragile. I'm telling you because you should know, not because I want you to be careful."
I look at the flush on her cheeks and the defiance in her eyes and the way her fingers are still twisted in my shirt, holding on.
"I'll be whatever you need me to be," I say. "But I won't pretend I don't care that I'm the first man who gets to touch you. That means something to me, even if you don't want it to."
For a second she looks like she might argue. Then something shifts in her expression. Softens. The tiniest fracture in all that composure.
"Okay," she whispers.
I pull her closer. My mouth finds the line of her jaw and I press my lips to the skin below her ear and she shivers. A full-body tremor that runs through her and into me and I feel it in my chest, in my hands, in the grip of her thighs around my hips.
My hands slide up her back. I find the zipper of her dress and pull it down slowly, feeling the fabric part beneath my fingers and the warmth of her skin underneath. She arches into me and I feel her gasp more than I hear it, a sharp intake of breath that vibrates against my lips where they're pressed to her neck.
The dress loosens around her shoulders. She pulls back enough to shrug it down her arms, letting it fall to her waist where it's already bunched between us. White laceunderneath. Simple. The same no-nonsense approach she takes to everything.
I look at her and something in my chest locks into place. The kind of irreversible shift that doesn't come undone.
