Page 1 of My Wedding Night Massacre

1

Slava

“You have lipstick on your collar,” Misha says, appearing at my elbow from absolutely nowhere, which is both his specialty as well as his greatest flaw.

“I know.”

“Your father is lookin..”

“I know.”

I straighten my jacket and walk back into the reception without further comment, the taste of my wife still on my lips.

I’m still in disbelief that Pavlina is finally my wife.

We’ve managed to merge two empires through marriage, and one hundred and eighty people have come to celebrate the merger.

The champagne’s excellent, and my bride is perfect, but my father called this marriage a mistake. Bogdan Lyubimtsev, three glasses of vodka deep and beaming at anyone who’ll hold eye contact, would disagree. He’s been playing the proud father-in-law all evening, hand on shoulders, voice carrying, the picture of a man who’s gotten exactly what he wanted.

He’s not wrong. He just doesn’t know what I got out of it too.

I called it the best day of my life, which isn’t something I’ve ever said about anything, and which I won’t be repeating out loud to anyone, including her.

The private room Pavlina and I just left was my idea. I knew about it before the wedding, because knowing things before they become relevant is how I’ve stayed alive, and because some preparations matter more than others. Third floor, east wing, far enough from the main ballroom that the music becomes a murmur, close enough to know when guests start to miss us.

I’d whispered the suggestion to my beautiful wife to meet me there while her father was busy being warm and magnanimous with mine.

She looked up at me with those honey-brown eyes she keeps leashed in public and said, “How long do we have?”

Twenty minutes, I told her.

“That’s enough,” she said, and walked away first.

The room was dark when I arrived. She’d already turned the lights off. She was standing near the window, a strip of pale city light cutting across her, and the sight of her stopped me for half a second in the doorway.

Pavlina in the dark is a different thing than Pavlina in a room full of people. Every layer she wears for public consumption is gone. She’d taken her hair half-down earlier and now reached back to loosen the top buttons of the dress herself, the white fabric gaping slightly at her spine. I forgot what composure was supposed to feel like.

I crossed the room and had the back of her dress in my fists before the door latch had finished clicking.

“We’re going to ruin this,” she said against my jaw, meaning the dress, meaning her hair, meaning the performance we both had to return to in twenty minutes.

“I know,” I said, and kissed her hard. I’d been holding that back all day, through the vows, the photographs, two hours of dinner where she sat being infuriatingly and flawlessly poised.

She kissed me back like she’d been counting every one of those minutes too.

She tastes like champagne and underneath it like soft skin and a sweetness I’ve gotten greedy for. Every weakness I’ve ever had, I’ve buried. She’s the only one I ever chose to keep.

My hands moved to the remaining buttons at her back, unbuttoning them quickly. The dress loosened, and I pushed it down off her shoulders. I let it fall to her waist, my palms dragging over her curves. The sound she made when I touched her bare skin went straight through me.

She’s soft. Genuinely, completely soft, rounded in ways the world she was raised in probably told her to be ashamed of. Full hips, a heavy waist, and curves that fill my hands. Every time I get my hands on her, I find it physically difficult to think about anything else. My father thinks I chose poorly. But my father hasn’t seen what I’ve seen. He can go to hell.

I pressed her back against the wall, and she went without resistance, both hands gripping my shirt. I brought my mouth to her throat and bit down. She gasped, her head falling back. I did it again.

“Slava.”

I got the dress down past her hips. It fell, and she stepped out of it without looking down, her hands already working my belt, knowing exactly what she wanted. I watched her face while she worked, greedy for her expression, for the way her lower lip catches between her teeth when she concentrates.

My belt hit the floor. She got my shirt untucked and put her hands flat against my stomach. I watched the slight catch in her breath when she felt the muscle under her palms, the way her fingers spread across my abdomen.