“I’m not married.”
Lili doesn’t know why that twists her stomach.
“Do you have anything to drink?” she asks. Suddenly nervous, she turns around, looking for a bar cart—too fast, her balance fails, expensive rug and restored wooden floors rushing up.
Arms steady her. A hand comes to rest where her neck meets her shoulder.
“You don’t need another drink, sweetheart.”
A shiver sinks into the base of her spine. Stern and soothing, his voice runs over her scalp, somehow both reassuring and dangerous. It makes her lean into him, and his grip around her neck shifts, thumb brushing over her windpipe.
Lili’s eyes widen.
Aleksandr lifts an eyebrow. “No?” he murmurs, breath against her lips.
She surges forward, kissing him so hard she stumbles.
Wrenching her dress off her shoulders—a sudden intake of breath that’s not her own, vaguely remembering that she isn’t wearing a bra—frantic fingers unbuttoning his shirt—shoes discarded, somewhere—a too-big bed, sheets that are too soft—her nails scraping across his scalp, and the way he almost growls, pushing her against the mattress—her underwear down her thighs, dangling off her ankle, too impatient to kick them off—and the heat of his mouth at the hollow of her throat, hot and demanding at her breasts—a drag of his palm up her inner thigh; a traceof cold, and she realizes he’s wearing a ring just before he slides two fingers inside of her, a sudden stretch that should hurt but goes easily because she’s wet, so fucking wet—and he doesn’t relent, pinning her to the bed—she scrambles for his belt buckle, feels him hard through his trousers, and—
Suddenly, his weight is gone. Air and emptiness rush around her, destabilizing.
“Get on your knees.”
Fast, without full thinking—without considering saying no—she does as he says. She barely finds her hands and knees before he’s behind her, heat pushing inside of her without warning.
“Oh—” Lili drops to her elbows. Stretched and full, her breath comes in short bursts, white-knuckled grip straining the sheets. It’s close to the wrong side of too much.
“Shh,” he murmurs, placing a hand on the back of her neck. He strokes the notches of her vertebrae, the delicate bones of her spine. It’s a soothing touch entirely disconnected from how he starts to fuck her: slow shifts of his hips, coaxing her to sink deeper into the sheets, relax just a bit further—before he thrusts hard into her again, and she shudders.
“We need to break you in,” he says. The moan he forces out of her then is near animal. Her mind washes clean of thought. Just her body, full of feeling and him, fucking her into his bed like she doesn’t deserve to walk, like he wants to suffocate her in his sheets.
Andthis—this is what she’s after. The bleach of sex, tears and mascara on the pillow, these sounds of her begging—because that’s what she’s doing, she realizes, under his hands heavy on her body—she’s begging him for more with barely coherent words.
She’s always craved rough sex, but this is something else. The astounding wash of surprise—no one has ever known to fuck her like this—is flooded fast by the relief of letting go. Fears, failure, lack, everything out of her hands, finally out of her control for a few moments. She starts to feel herself slip away; it feels like the release she’s always imagined and never truly tasted.
Bruising grip, brutal pace: He forces breaths out of her, breaking into gasps. She can’t see straight—can’t think straight; seams of her thoughts coming apart, and she wants more. Pressure builds, heat inside her, and Lili reaches down, fingers between the sheets and her skin—
Her arm gets snatched away, twisted behind the small of her back.
“You don’t come until I fucking tell you to,” Aleksandr orders.
The thought makes her desolate, and she groans through her teeth. “No, please,please—”
He grabs her hair in a fist. Wrenching her upright, he pulls her flush against him, her head against his shoulder. “You don’t tell me no,” he breathes in her ear. “You take what I give you.”
Heat surges through her; his words provoke the type of desire she’s often held back, bitten down, buried away. His hand finds her neck, then. The muscles of her throat constrict under his hold as she swallows, struggles to breathe.
Lili lays her palm over his grip, and squeezes his wrist.
Take more,she thinks.
Please, just take more.
“Harder,” she whispers, hoarse. “Please, harder.”
A groan against her hair. His hold tightens around her throat. The rhythm of his hips grows deeper, and she feels like nothing in his arms. This new angle hits depth inside of her that makes her hips tighten, pressure at the base of her spine growing hotter—harder, darker, something that feels shattering and all-encompassing like pain but tastes sweet like pleasure.
Black spots flicker across her vision. She can taste silence at the edge of her mind—there, finally.
