Page 56 of My Wedding Night Massacre

He looks up at me. His eyes in the low light are dark, fully present, fixed on my face with the attention he gives everything that matters to him.

“I want you inside me,” I say. “Just that. Just you.”

He holds my gaze for a moment, then nods once, the nod of a man who understands exactly what’s being asked and intends to give it.

He moves up my body, settling between my thighs, his cock hard against me. I feel the head of him pressing at my entrance, the heat of it, and I exhale before he’s even moved.

He pushes in slowly.

The stretch of him, the fullness, the slow drag as he sinks into me inch by inch, his mouth finding mine as he does it, kissing me while his cock fills me. I make a sound against his lips that’s somewhere between relief and want. He goes all the way in and holds there, his forehead dropping to mine, both of us breathing the same air for a moment.

Then he starts to move.

Not hard, not urgent, just deep and thorough, pulling back until almost nothing remains inside me before pressing forward again, burying himself completely on every stroke. His hips roll in a slow rhythm, his cock dragging through the slick heat of my pussy on every pull, finding that spot inside me that makes my toes curl each time he hits it. I wrap my legs around him and hold on, my hands moving across his back, feeling the muscle shift under my palms.

He kisses me while he fucks me. That’s what undoes me, the kissing, his mouth on mine, unhurried, as if he has all night and intends to spend it exactly here. My hips rise to meet his, matching his rhythm, my pussy soft and wet around his cock, taking him fully on every stroke.

“Like this,” I breathe against his mouth. “Keep going. Don’t stop.”

He doesn’t stop. His hips keep moving, the same deep roll, his cock pressing into me again and again. I feel the build starting from somewhere low, spreading outward, my cunt beginning to flutter around him as the sensation gathers. His breath changes against my mouth, faster, more ragged, the controlled pace costing him something I can feel in the tension of his shoulders under my hands.

“Pavlina,” he says, against my lips.

“I know,” I say back, repeating his past words back at him. “I’ve got you.”

He drives deeper, the angle shifting, and I gasp, my nails finding his back, my hips pushing up into him. He does it again, and again, his cock hitting that place inside me that makes thinking impossible, his mouth still on mine, swallowing every sound. The orgasm builds fast after that, rolling up through me, my cunt clenching tight around his cock, my whole body tensing, and then it breaks, washing through me in long waves, my pussy locking down around him, pulling at him.

He follows me over with his face pressed to my neck, a low broken sound against my skin, his cock driving in one final time and grinding there while he comes inside me, thick and warm, pulse after pulse, his body shaking with the effort of staying still through it, his arms crushing me against him.

After, he stays. His weight on me, then shifting to the side, his arm pulling me against him. My head on his chest, his heartbeat slowing under my ear.

I feel the warmth of him still inside me, and I think about Denis. Denis at the window tomorrow. Denis coming out into the dark with Nadia’s arms around him, seeing my face at the perimeter. Denis coming home with me for the first time since I had him. The thought moves through me and behind it, quieter, almost too quiet to catch, the thought of a brother or a sister. Another small person with his coloring and his jaw, his grey eyes. A child who’d grow up knowing both of us from the start.

I let the thought exist without pulling it back. It’s not the time. But it’s there, warm and real, and I don’t push it away.

Slava’s hand moves in a slow circle on my back.

Tomorrow, I think. First tomorrow. Then everything else.

35

Slava

Three-forty-eight.

The street is empty, the kind of empty that only happens in the outer boroughs at this hour, no foot traffic, one car parked three blocks east that hasn’t moved since Romeo flagged it at midnight. The safe house sits in the middle of the block, ordinary, dark, nothing about it announcing what it holds.

Misha is at my left. Francesco and Diego take the right flank, Luigi and Giorgio covering the rear approach to box the fixed guard, Romeo and Lorenzo at the south end of the street holding the perimeter. Two more with Pavlina at the far end, keeping her back, keeping her line of sight clear for when it matters.

She’s there. I don’t look. If I look, I won’t stop looking.

“Rotation gap in four,” Misha says, his voice barely sounding.

I nod.

The four minutes pass the way pre-operation minutes always pass, slower than real time, each second taking up more space than it should. I run the floor plan again. Entry point, front left, standard five-pin lock, thirty seconds maximum. Interior, four rooms confirmed. Denis’s room is at the rear, second door on the left. Fixed guard at the rear entrance, neutralized by Luigi before we breach the front. I’ve run it enough times that it exists in my body as much as my head, the sequence of it is muscle memory before I’ve taken a single step.

The rotation guard rounds the corner at the far end and walks away from us, moving north, his back to the street. Twenty-two minutes before he returns.