Her eyes flutter open, glassy and wrecked and full of trust.
I notch the head of my cock at her entrance and push in slowly, just like she asked. Inch by thick inch, stretching her open until I’m buried to the hilt, balls pressed tight against her ass.
“Fuck,” I groan. “So tight. So fucking perfect. This pussy was made for me. You feel that? Every inch of me owning you.”
She moans, nails digging into my shoulders. “More. Give me more. Please.”
I start to thrust in deep, deliberate strokes that drag over every sensitive spot inside her. “That’s it, Nadia. Take my cock. Take every fucking inch like the good little wife you’re going to be. This cunt is mine now. No one else ever gets to touch it. No one else ever gets to make you come like this.”
I pick up the pace, hips snapping harder, the wet slap of skin filling the room. “I can barely control myself around you. I’m going to fuck you full every morning. Wake you up with my tongue and my cock until you can’t remember what it felt like to be anything other than mine. You’re going to come on me again, Nadia. Right now. Milk my cock while I fill you up.”
Her walls clamp down around me, the second orgasm ripping through her with a broken cry. I follow her over the edge, burying myself deep and coming hard, pulsing inside her as I whimper her name like a desperate plea.
Epilogue
Nadia
The morning of my wedding, Darya cries before I do.
She's standing behind me in my room at home, buttoning the back of my dress one tiny pearl at a time, when I hear the sniff. I look at her in the mirror and her eyes are glassy and her chin is wobbling and she's trying so hard to keep it together that it makes my chest ache.
"Don't," I say. "If you start, I'll start, and Mom spent forty-five minutes on this eyeliner."
"I can't help it." She fastens the last button and steps back. "Look at you, Nad."
I look.
The dress is simple. Cream silk, fitted through the bodice, a skirt that moves like water when I walk. The shop on Birch Street came through. My mother found it on the first rack she touched and held it up with the quiet certainty of a woman who has been picturing this moment for twenty-two years.
My hair is down. Loose waves over my shoulders the way Rafferty likes it, though I haven't told anyone that's why. There's a bruise on my cheek still, faded now to a yellowish green that mom covered with three layers of concealer and a prayer. It's there if you know where to look. I know where to look. I don'tmind. It's part of the story. My story. And the ending is nothing like I feared.
"You look beautiful," Darya says. "You look like you again."
"I feel like me again."
She hugs me carefully, one arm around my shoulders, the other hand hovering to avoid the dress. "I don't know what happened to you, Nadia. I don't know what changed. But whatever it was, I'm glad it's over."
I hold her tighter than she expects. My little sister. Nineteen and sharp and braver than she knows. She has no idea what I carried. Maybe someday I'll tell her. Maybe I won't. Either way, the weight is gone.
My mother appears in the doorway. She's wearing navy blue and her reading glasses are pushed up on her head and she's carrying a small velvet box.
"Your grandmother's earrings," she says. "Something old, and blue."
She opens the box. Two small sapphires set in silver, delicate, beautiful. I remember them from childhood, glinting at my grandmother's ears across the dinner table. My mother puts them on me, one at a time, her fingers steady, her eyes bright.
"You are the most beautiful bride I have ever seen," she says. "And I'm not just saying that because I'm your mother."
"You're absolutely saying that because you're her mother," Darya says.
"Hush."
There's a knock at the door. Iris pokes her head in, her auburn hair twisted up with flowers woven through it. She's in a soft green dress and she's practically vibrating with energy.
"Ten minutes until the car is here," she says. "The garden is ready. Everyone's seated. Ma is crying already according toGrace and we haven't even started. Katya had to sit down twice on the way to her chair and Killian is hovering like she's made of porcelain, which she loves and will deny." She grins at me. "You look incredible."
"Thank you, Iris."
"Rafferty is going to lose his mind." She ducks back out, and I hear her footsteps disappearing down the hallway, already calling instructions to someone about the bouquet.
