After Sofia fell asleep, I lay beside her, exhausted but tense. I needed to sleep. I needed to run. I needed to figure out what the fuck I was going to do.
Return to New York and challenge Kirill for pakhan? It wasn’t an enticing prospect. Support had already been split between us, and with the way things went down, I was fairly sure that my older brother would have won over any undecided bratva men.
Make peace with my only remaining family in the world and work together? I wasn’t sure we could manage it. Most of all, I felt no excitement about returning to New York or the bratva. Once again, I was a man without a place in this world, something that had dogged me since childhood.
For nearly a decade, killing Viktor had been my mission. My life’s work. Now that it was done, I felt adrift. Nothing tethered me to the world anymore. Without my revenge, I wasn’t sure who I was.
I reached for a cigarette. The light flared orange in the dying light from the shuttered window. I inhaled the nicotine and felt it hit my bloodstream with comforting predictability. My life had gone to fuck, and here I was, having an existential crisis at twenty-four years old.
Sofia moved, and I wondered for a second if the cigarette smoke had woken her before catching myself. Fucking hell. We weren’t a loving couple on vacation. She was my captive, and I’d drugged her water to get some peace from her constant attempts to run away.
You should let her go if it’s so annoying.
I pushed the voice of reason into a little corner of my mind. I should do a lot of things, and figuring out what the fuck I was going to do with my life was the first one.
Sofia moved again, and a groan left her. I stubbed out my cigarette and turned on my side, making sure the tie between us wasn’t waking her.
She was ungodly beautiful in the dim light. The kind of beauty that goddesses envied and wreaked havoc on the world to wipe out. All that fire and intelligence and rebellion, wrapped up in a devastating package, locked away from the world by her uncaring father.
What a waste.
She murmured a soft protest in her sleep and snuggled closer to me. I froze. She was having a nightmare. I was all too familiar with those.
She shook her head against the pillow, her graceful brow contorting as she protested against some figure in her nightmare. I wondered if it was me.
The covers had slipped down, her body exposed. She was only in her underwear. I couldn’t stop my gaze from running over every exposed inch. Jerking off in the shower had only taken the edge off my desire, and now I was hard again. Hard and aching. Desperate to sink inside Sofia, asleep or not, and fill her up with my cum, making her smell like me. Marking her, so everyone would know she was mine. So she would know, with every single leaking step, that I’d finally come to claim her.
She shivered, and I moved the cover over her, letting my hand brush against her pebbled skin.
“It’s okay, prom queen. I’m here. I won’t let you get cold.”
Her hair was lying in stripes across the pillow, and I didn’t try to stop myself from trailing my fingers through it, arranging it around her head.
“Niko?”
“I can’t believe you’re awake after what I gave you.” It was impressive. I’d have imagined Sofia treated her body like a temple, or at least her father forced her to. It seemed she had more familiarity with pills than I’d imagined. “Do you take sleeping tablets at home, lastochka?”
“Hmmm. I can’t sleep without them.” Her words were slurred, but she was clearly conscious. Stuck in a languid, dreamlike, waking state.
I should have given her a higher dose.
Our tied hands were resting on my chest beside her cheek. I couldn’t resist stroking her velvety cheekbone while she was soft and warm and not fighting me for once.
To my surprise, she pushed her face into my open palm, nuzzling like a kitten. Heat stole through me, a wildfire ignited.
Her thigh crept over my leg, pressing close under the covers. Her skin was so smooth it was addictive to the touch. Last night and wrestling around on the floor of the cabin filled my head. I was hard as hell. I wrapped a hand around her thigh and guided it further over me so her knee was nudging my cock, straining up and leaking on my belly.
Sofia rubbed her leg back and forth over me. “You’re so warm,” she muttered, pushing herself closer still. “I’m always so cold. Cold house, cold heart. A cold, dead thing, encased in ice.”
“Was that what your nightmare was about?” I wondered, as I ran my free hand lightly up and down her bare arm.
She nodded against me and let out a breath. “Always, but you’re so warm.”
Suddenly, she pushed herself up on one arm. She seemed out of it and awake all at once. It was interesting to observe. Then she pushed her body over mine, straddling me, and I forgot how to think. She settled her weight on me, her hot pussy pressed against my bare cock. The lace of her bra scratched my chest as she snuggled her head into my shoulder.
“Warm me up, please,” Sofia muttered. “Make the nightmare go away.”
Slowly, like she was a horse prone to bolting, I wrapped my arms around her, holding her tightly to me. She let out a long hum and then moved against me. Fuck. She was dragging her pussy along me, sleepily searching out my rigid cock. I flexed my hips, sliding my stiff length against her panties. The lace was rough and damp. The edge of pain only made it better. It reminded me that this was real. Sofia gasped as she wriggled her gorgeous little ass against me, slipping and sliding her pussy from the root of my cock to the tip.
“You destroy me, lastochka,” I murmured into her hair. The smell of her was all around me, filling my head.
She slid sleepily down my body until her hips lined up perfectly with my dick. Her mound and clit felt hot, even through her panties. She rubbed herself against me, arching her back.
I couldn’t take being still one more second. My little prom queen was begging to be fucked, and I wanted nothing more than to oblige her.
I freed my hands from the hug I’d been holding so tightly and slid them down her lower back, landing on her hips. I arched my own, pressing my cock even more firmly between her legs. Sofia moaned throatily, free of the fear of judgment in that floating, perfect place. I wished I could join her there, but I couldn’t afford to let my guard down. I never overindulged in alcohol or drugs. Too many people wanted me dead and were just waiting for the right moment.
My hands dropped lower, sliding beneath the elastic of her panties and over the firm globes of her ass, gripping her firmly. Using my handfuls of her ass, I moved her, sliding her more purposefully up and down my dick. Fuck, it felt good. Sofia burrowed her face deeper into my chest, inhaling deeply like she couldn’t breathe enough of me in.
Pushing my hips in a rhythm against her, I worked my fingers deeper and deeper into the wet cleft between her legs. At the first brush of my fingers against her slit, she shuddered.
“That’s right, Sofia. You like it when I touch you there?” My voice was thick and strained.
She mumbled an agreement.
“I’m going to need you to speak up,” I chastised softly, pressing a long, thick finger farther inside her. “I’m not sure I can hear what you want.”
“I want you—” she panted, and moved her hips to try to force my finger deeper inside her.
“You want me to what?” I teased, finger-fucking her shallowly.
“I just… want you,” she confessed in a rush.
“Fuck, prom queen, you’ll be the end of me,” I muttered.
I picked up the pace with my hips, rubbing her across my dick until the wetness between her legs had soaked my cock. I needed more. I wanted to own every single part of this woman. I wanted to come deep inside her, day in, day out, until her belly was swollen with the evidence of my possession of her. My finger was still buried inside her pussy, and now, I explored the puckered hole above. Pure pleasure shot through me as she moaned greedily.
Sofia panted, working her hips in hot little circles. “I want to come. Make me come, Nikolai.”
“With pleasure,” I growled and finger-fucked her harder, bouncing her on my cock.
She came with my fingers in both her holes, gripping on to my shoulders like I was a rock in a tumultuous sea. Her pussy spasmed around my finger so hard, even her asshole got tighter. I made plans to fuck it one day.
She stiffened when she’d finished coming. It looked like that little sleeping tablet had completely worn off now. She was leaving the half-asleep place where she could make excuses. Coming to her senses to find my fingers still inside her had to be a rude wake-up call, even if she’d started it.
“An orgasm so good, it can burn away the chemicals. That’s quite the achievement, if I say so myself,” I said, gently pulling my fingers from her.
She slid to the side, throwing her bound hands over her eyes. “Don’t speak. This is just a dream.”
“Well, at least you didn’t call it a nightmare. I’ll take that as a win.”
She let out a long breath and then grimaced, squirming on the bed.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” she said immediately.
“Tell me, or I’ll check for myself.”
She sighed, and it sounded like it went down to her bones. “I’m uncomfortable.”
“Wet?”
She nodded, looking like she wanted the bed to swallow her, then she yawned. Maybe the sleeping tablet hadn’t completely worn off. She was still more open to me than usual, and it looked like she was about to fall back asleep.
“It’s cold,” she muttered, her hand plucking between her legs.
I brushed her fingers away and smoothed my fingers over the wet material.
“Yes, you are a little damp down there. What a mess you made, coming on my fingers… let’s clean that up for you.”
I worked my way down her body, my tongue running up her inner thigh. She blinked down at me, her fingers playing lazily in my hair. She was boneless, unresisting as I lapped at her wet panties for a moment.
“Let’s get you nice and clean,” I muttered against her skin, nosing against her wet shorts. Then I licked her tender flesh, cleaning up the evidence of how hard she’d come, while she slipped back to sleep.
