He glances at me, his fingers tightening on my wrist. “I’m not interested in sleep.”
My anxiety grows. “I don’t want to have sex with you either.”
“No?” He stops at the foot of the stairs and turns me to face him. “So if I reached into your jeans right now, I wouldn’t find your panties soaked through? Your little pussy swollen and needy, just waiting to be filled by my cock?”
Heat climbs up my neck and blazes all the way up to my hairline. I am wet, both from before and from the way he’s looking at me now. It’s like he wants to devour me, like his dirty words are turning him on as much as they’re arousing me. The mental haziness from the wine isn’t helping, either, and I realize I made a mistake, trying to drown my sorrows.
Resisting him with my head clear is difficult enough; like this, it’s nearly impossible.
Still, I have to try. “I don’t—”
“Ptichka…” He lifts his hand, curving his big palm around my jaw. His thumb strokes over my cheek as he gazes down at me, his eyes like molten steel. “Do we need to discuss alternative arrangements again?”
I stare at him, ice crystals forming in my veins. For the first time, I comprehend the full extent of his ultimatum. He doesn’t just expect me to stop fighting him over meals; he wants me fully compliant, welcoming him into my bed as though we’re in a real relationship.
As though he didn’t murder my husband and forcibly invade my life.
“No,” I whisper, closing my eyes as he bends his head and brushes his lips over mine… softly, gently. His tenderness tears me into pieces, juxtaposed as it is with the looming horror of his threat. If I fight him on this, he’ll kidnap me, take away all remnants of my freedom.
If I resist him, I’ll lose everything that matters, and if I don’t, I’ll lose myself.
* * *
I stumble as Peter leads me up the stairs, so he lifts me into his powerful arms, carrying me up the steps with ease. His strength is both terrifying and seductive. I know what it’s like to have it turned against me, yet something primitive within me is drawn to it, attracted by the promise of safety it provides.
When we reach the bedroom, he lowers me to my feet and undresses me, pulling off my sweater and jeans in a calm, unhurried manner. Only the dark heat in his silver gaze betrays his hunger, the desire that he’ll stop at nothing to satisfy.
Once I’m naked, he undresses too, and I spot a metallic glint inside his jacket as he hangs it on a chair. A gun? A knife? The idea of him bringing weapons into the bedroom should terrify me, but I’m too overwhelmed to react, my emotions already veering from shock to anger to icy fear. And underneath it all is a strange, illogical relief.
With all my choices gone, I can give in.
It’s the only way.
A tear trickles down my cheek as he approaches me, fully naked and aroused, his large body a study of hard angles and sculpted muscles, of violent beauty and dangerous masculinity. Monsters shouldn’t look like this, shouldn’t be as mesmerizing as they are lethal.
It’s too hard on one’s sanity.
“Don’t cry, ptichka,” he murmurs, stopping in front of me. His fingers brush across my cheeks, wiping away the moisture. “I won’t hurt you. It’s really not as bad as you think.”
Not as bad as I think? I want to laugh, but instead I just shake my head, my mind hazy both from the wine I consumed and the heat his nearness generates. He’s right: I do want him. I ache for him, my body burning with a need so strong I can scarcely contain it. And at the same time, I hate him.
I hate him for what he’s doing—and what he’s making me feel.
His fingers slide into my hair, cupping my skull, and I close my eyes as he kisses me again, his other hand gripping my hip to draw me closer to him. His erection presses against my stomach, huge and hard, but his kiss is gentle, his lips coaxing out the sensations instead of forcing them.
It feels good, so unbelievably good that for a moment, I forget I have no choice in this. My hands grip his sides, feeling the hard flex of muscle, and my lips part as the heat builds inside me. Taking advantage, he licks inside my mouth, his tongue bringing with it the dizzying taste of wine and sweet seduction. This isn’t our first time, but in this kiss, there is a sense of exploration, of sensual discovery and tender wonder.
He kisses me like I’m the most precious, most desirable thing he’s ever known.
My head spins from the bone-melting pleasure, and it’s tempting to lose myself completely, to give in to the illusion of his caring. The way he holds me speaks of raw need, but also of something deeper, something that resonates with the most vulnerable corners of my heart.
Something that fills the well of loneliness left by the ruins of my marriage.
I don’t know how long Peter kisses me like this, but by the time he lifts his head, we’re both breathing raggedly, and the heat circling through my body is a full-blown conflagration.
Dazed, I open my eyes and meet his gaze as he bears me down to the bed. There’s no coldness in the gray metallic depths, no seething darkness, nothing but that hungry tenderness, and as he settles between my thighs, covering me with his powerful body, I know it could be easy.
I could stop fighting and buy into the fantasy, embrace this darker version of the fairy tale.
“Sara…” His strong palm curves around my face, framing it with aching gentleness, and the pain that spears through my chest is as potent as it is perverse. He’s looking at me like I’m his everything, like he wants to make my every dream come true. It’s what I’ve always wanted, always needed—but not with my husband’s killer.
Gathering the crumbling pieces of my sanity, I close my eyes, shutting out the silvery lure of that hypnotic gaze. No choice, I remind myself as his lips descend on mine with another searing kiss. No choice, I chant silently as I hear the ripping of a foil packet and feel his hair-roughened legs press against the tender insides of my thighs, opening them wider to let his cock nestle against my sex. No choice, I cry out in my mind as he thrusts inside me, stretching me, filling me… making me burn with scorching need.
It’s wrong, it’s sick, but it takes less than a minute before I come, his hard, driving rhythm hurling me over the edge with an intensity that wrenches a scream from my throat and brings tears to my eyes. My body shudders in dark ecstasy, clenching around his thick length, and I cry out his name, raking my nails down his back as he continues fucking me, taking me to the peak twice more before he comes himself.
In the aftermath, I lie draped over him, our limbs tangled together as he lazily strokes my back. With my head pillowed on his shoulder, I hear the steady thumping of his heart, and the glow of sexual satisfaction gives way to the familiar tangle of shame and desolation.
I hate him, and I hate myself.
I hate myself because something perverse inside me was glad for his ultimatum.
It felt good not to have a choice.
“You won’t be moving in a couple of weeks,” he murmurs, not pausing in his gentle stroking. “The lawyer couple no longer owns this house—I do. Or rather one of my shell corporations does.”
I should be surprised, but I’m not. I must’ve expected this on some level. My fingers tighten, crushing the corner of the pillow. “Did you threaten them? Kill them?”
He chuckles, his powerful chest moving underneath me. “I paid them double what the house is worth. Same goes for your would-be landlord. He’s well compensated for the lease you broke.”
I close my eyes, so relieved I could cry. I don’t know what I would’ve done if someone else had suffered because of me, how I could’ve lived with myself.
When I’m sure my voice won’t shake, I pull back and meet his shadowed gaze. “So that’s it? We’re just going to go on like this?”
“We are… for now.” His eyes gleam darkly. “Afterward, we’ll see.”
And tugging me back down to his shoulder, he drapes his arm around me, holding me as though that’s where I belong.
/> Part III
Part III
Chapter 41
Sara
As the days pass, we fall into a bizarre pattern of domesticity. Every evening, Peter makes a delicious dinner for us, and the food is already waiting on the table when I walk in. We eat together, and then he fucks me, often taking me twice or more before we fall asleep. If he’s there in the morning when I wake up—and he frequently is—he also feeds me breakfast.
It’s as if I acquired a house husband, only one who does black-ops-style assassinations in his spare time.
“What do you do all day?” I ask when I come home after a particularly grueling day in the hospital and discover a gourmet meal of lamb chops and beet-based Russian salad. “You don’t just stay here and cook, right?”
“No, of course not.” He gives me an amused look. “What we do takes a lot of logistical planning, so I work with my guys on that, and also take care of the business side of things.”
“The business side of things?”
“Client interactions, securing payments, investment and distribution of funds, acquisition of weapons and supplies, that sort of thing,” he replies, and I listen in fascination as he gives me a glimpse into a world where insane sums of money exchange hands and assassination is a method of business expansion.
“We do a lot of work for the cartels and other powerful organizations and individuals,” he tells me as we polish off the lamb. “The Mexico job, for instance, was a case of one cartel leader hiring us to eliminate his rival so he could move into his territory. Other clients of ours include Russian oligarchs, dictators of various flavors, Middle Eastern royals, and a few of the better-run mafia organizations. Sometimes, if we’re between jobs, we’ll take on some smaller gigs, dealing with local thugs and such, but those pay next to nothing so we consider them pro-bono work, a way for us to stay sharp in downtime.”
“Right, pro bono.” I don’t try to hide my sarcasm. “Like my work at the clinic.”
“Exactly like that,” Peter says, and grins. He knows he’s shocking me, and he’s doing it on purpose. It’s a game he plays sometimes, horrifying me and then seducing me into welcoming his touch despite the revulsion I feel—or should feel.
It’s part of the sickness of our relationship that almost nothing he says or does has any lasting effect on my desire for him. My inability to resist him is a bleeding ulcer in my chest, and I can’t heal it no matter what I do. Each time I eat the food he makes, each time I sleep in his arms and find pleasure in his touch, the wound reopens, leaving me sick with shame and crippled with self-loathing.
I’m living in domestic bliss with my husband’s murderer, and it’s not nearly as terrible as it should be.
Part of the issue is that after our first time, Peter hasn’t hurt me. Not physically, at least. I feel the violence within him, but when he touches me, he’s careful to control himself, to stop the darkness from spilling out. It helps that I can’t fight him outright; with his kidnapping threat hanging over my head, I have no choice but to comply with his demands—or so I tell myself.
It’s the only way I can justify what’s happening, how I’m beginning to need the man I hate.
If all he wanted from me was sex, it would be easy, but Peter seems determined to take care of me as well. From the romantic home-cooked meals to the nightly cuddling, I’m showered with attention, pampered and even groomed at times. We don’t go out on dates—I assume because he doesn’t want to show his face in public—but with the way he treats me, I could easily be his highly spoiled girlfriend.
“Why do you like doing this?” I ask when he’s brushing my hair after washing me in the shower. “Is this some kind of weird kink of yours?”
He shoots me an amused look in the mirror. “Maybe. With you, it seems to be, for sure.”
“No, but seriously, what do you get out of this? You know I’m not a child, right?”
Peter’s mouth tightens, and I realize I inadvertently hit a nerve. We don’t speak about his family much, but I know that his son was only a toddler when he was killed. Could it be that in some twisted way, I’m a substitute for his dead family? That he fixated on me because he needed to care for someone… anyone?
Could my Russian killer need love so much he’d settle for its perversion?
It’s a tantalizing thought, especially since by the end of the second week, I find myself growing addicted to the comfort and pleasure Peter provides. At the end of a long shift, I physically crave the neck and foot rubs he often gives me, and it’s a struggle not to salivate each time I pull into the garage and smell the delicious aromas from the kitchen.
I’m not only becoming used to my stalker’s presence in my life; I’m starting to enjoy it.
Or at least some parts of it. I’m still far from enthusiastic about the bodyguards who follow me wherever I go. I almost never see them, but I can sense them watching me, and it both unsettles and irritates me.
“I’m not going to run, you know,” I tell Peter when we lie in bed one night. “You can call off your watchdogs.”
“They’re there for your protection,” he says, and I know it’s something he has no intention of compromising on. For whatever reason, he’s convinced that I’m in some kind of danger, something that he, of all people, needs to protect me from.
“What are you afraid of?” I ask, tracing the hard ridges of his abs with my finger. “Do you think some madman might invade my home? Maybe waterboard me and kill my husband?”
I glance up to find him grinning, as though I said something funny.
“What?” I say, goaded. “You think this is a joke?”
His expression turns serious. “No, ptichka. I don’t think that at all. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry for hurting you that time. I should’ve found another way.”
“Right. Another way to kill George.”
Feeling sick, I push away from him and escape into the bathroom—the only place my tormentor lets me be alone. Sometimes, I almost forget how everything began, my mind conveniently skipping over the horrors of our early relationship.
It’s as if something inside me wants me to fall in line with Peter’s fantasy, to pretend that all of this is real.
* * *
“So you never told me what happened between you and George,” Peter says as we’re having a leisurely Sunday brunch some three weeks after his return. “Why weren’t you the perfect couple everyone thought you were? You didn’t know what he really did, so what went wrong?”
The piece of poached egg I’m chewing sticks in my throat, and I have to gulp down most of my coffee to wash it down. “What makes you think something went wrong?” My voice is too high, but Peter caught me totally off-guard. Usually, he tends to avoid the topic of my dead husband—probably to foster the illusion of a normal relationship.
“Because that’s what you told me,” he answers calmly. “While you were on the drug I gave you.”
I gape at him, unable to believe he went there again. Ever since our conversation about the bodyguards last week—and my subsequent crying in the bathroom—we’ve been tiptoeing around the topic of what he did to me, neither one willing to poke at that raw wound.
“That’s…” Suppressing my shock, I compose myself. “That’s none of your business.”
“Did he beat you?” Peter leans in, his metallic eyes darkening. “Hurt you in some way?”
“What? No!”
“Was he a pedophile? A necrophiliac?”
I take a calming breath. “No, of course not.”
“Did he cheat on you? Do drugs? Abuse animals?”
“He started drinking, okay?” I snap, goaded. “He started drinking, and he never stopped.”
“Ah.” Peter leans back in his chair. “An alcoholic then. Interesting.”
“Is it?” I ask bitterly. Picking up my plate, I walk over to dump the remnants of my breakfast in the trash and put the plate in the dishwasher. “You like hearing that the man I knew and loved since I was eighteen—the
man I married—transformed after our wedding without apparent cause? That in a matter of months, he became someone I could hardly recognize?”
“No, ptichka.” He comes up behind me, and my breath catches as he pulls me against him, brushing aside my hair to kiss my neck. His breath warms my skin as he murmurs, “I don’t like hearing that at all.”
“I just… I never understood it.” I turn around in his arms, the old hurt welling up as I meet Peter’s gaze. “Everything was going so well. I finished med school, we bought this house and got married… He was traveling a lot for work, so he didn’t mind my residency hours, and in return, I didn’t mind all the travel. And then—” I stop, realizing I’m confiding in George’s killer.
“And then what?” he prompts, his fingers curling around my palm. “What happened then, Sara?”
I bite my lip, but the temptation to tell him everything, to expose the full truth for once, is too strong to deny. I’m exhausted from pretending, from wearing the mask of perfection everyone expects to see.
Pulling my hand out of his grip, I walk over to sit down at the table. Peter joins me there, and after a moment, I begin talking.
“Everything changed several months after our marriage,” I say quietly. “In a span of a few weeks, my warm, fun-loving husband became a cold, distant stranger, one who kept pushing me away no matter what I did. He started having these strange moods, cut down on work travel, and”—I take a breath—“began drinking.”
Peter’s eyebrows lift. “He never drank before?”
“Not like that. He’d have a few drinks when we went out with friends, or a glass of wine with dinner. It wasn’t anything out of the ordinary—nothing I wasn’t in the habit of doing myself. This was different. We’re talking black-out drunk three, four nights a week.”
“That is a lot. Did you ever confront him about it?”
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