32. Matvey

32

MATVEY

"And then she said, ‘If the shoe fits, dear.' If the shoe fits! Can you believe it?"

April's voice rises in shrilly outrage. She slaps the water and it ripples throughout the pool, as if trying to get away from her fury. I can understand the sentiment. Right now, I wouldn't want to be in the way of April's fury, either.

"That nasty… Ugh!" April slumps back into me, deflated. "Faking my pregnancy. What a joke."

I can't help but agree. I'm doubly glad I asked Grisha for that additional background check: a woman like this isn't safe to have around my child.

Or my child's mother.

Anyone who's known April for more than five minutes could tell her problem isn't lying: it's honesty. Wearing her heart on her sleeve at all times, no matter who's on the other side of it. Getting it broken so often she's taught herself how to mend it back together. How to fix the unfixable.

Eleanor Hill is lucky that I don't know where she lives.

Yet.

"Sorry," April murmurs into the surface, making bubbles as she speaks. "I've been venting ever since you came home."

"To be fair, you've been doing other things to me, too."

"Hey!" April's face flushes a delicious shade of red. I could eat her up like this: naked, warm, skin peppered with droplets. If I had my way, I'd kiss them off until the pool was dry. "Cheater."

"Never." It's an automatic response, one I don't think about. In the seconds that follow, though, I pause. I shouldn't be making these kinds of promises. April hasn't lied to me so far. I don't want to be the one who starts.

But she doesn't seem to have caught my slip. She's still looking ahead, gaze lost far away, no doubt replaying the conversation with her mother in her mind.

I grip the edge of the pool, white-knuckled. It's going to take a lot of restraint not to storm right over to Staten Island and demand a pound of Eleanor's flesh in return for this. "Hey."

April snaps out of her reverie. "Yeah?"

"Look." I point at the other edge of the pool, where the water falls freely off. It's an illusion, of course—it cost me an arm and a leg just to get the permits for this—but that's what my hotels are for: illusions. A dream of infinity.

Here, one night should feel like forever.

I watch as April's gaze softens. Her pupils are wide now, reflecting the dancing lights of the pool. This terrace is the crown jewel of the Manhattan Jupiter Hotel. No other location has it.

"It's beautiful," April breathes.

I agree.

Only, my gaze isn't on the water.

"You could give birth here," I mention.

April looks at me like I've grown two heads. "No way."

"Yes, way."

"I couldn't," she gasps, scandalized. "It's the hotel pool!"

"It's my hotel's pool. I decide who gets to use it and how."

April peers up at me, trying to gauge if I'm being serious. Little does she know, I'm always serious. Twenty minutes ago, I had Grisha empty out the place with the excuse of emergency maintenance. Every single guest will be given a generous discount in apology for the inconvenience.

But April doesn't need to know that. "Births are messy, Matvey!" she shudders. "You could clean it a thousand times afterwards, and still no one would ever want to use it again."

"Then we'll just have to use it ourselves," I reply, drawing close.

I tilt up April's chin. Big, hazel eyes look up into mine, shining with a million specks of light. Her lips part, but for a while, no sound comes out. "We can't," April murmurs in the end.

"My pool," I repeat. "My child's mother." I lean in, brushing past her lips at the last second to speak into her ear. "I'll do exactly as I please with both."

A shiver. April's body reacts without a single touch. It's intoxicating—a kind of power unlike any other. Even being pakhan doesn't compare. "Is that so?"

"It is. Allow me to prove it."

The next few minutes are a blur of kisses. I rarely kiss my conquests—just enough to be a gentleman—but with April, I could spend the night doing just this: tasting, prying her lips apart, eating her whole, swallowing down moan after moan after moan.

I don't linger on what that means. That's the only thing I can't afford to do.

Instead, I flip us around. April's back hits the pool wall and her thighs wrap around me, ankles locked to trap me. It's a pointless effort—I'm not going anywhere.

My hands roam over her body until they find her belly. It feels even more swollen than yesterday. Our child's growing here , I remind myself, getting bigger every day. Getting ready for the cutthroat world that made their father sharp and their mother kind.

Will you be like me?

Like her?

Will you be like both, somehow?

"Matvey," April gasps. "Please."

She's still slick from before, open and wanting, and I waste no time: in one smooth push, I'm inside her again.

"Yes," April breathes, lost in the pleasure. "Yes, like that."

" Blyat' ," I bite out. "Wish I could show you off like this."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah," I growl, beginning to thrust. "Take you just like this, in front of everyone. My vory , my guests, your parents."

"Nghh—!"

"I'd dare them," I snarl, plunging into those tight walls, "to question you again. To question this. " I splay a palm over her belly. "Who would still doubt, if they could see you like this?"

"Ahh—"

"Naked, wanting," I rasp, feeling myself grow closer from the image alone. "Filled with my seed and still begging for more."

"Matvey—"

"I'd show everyone," I roar, even as the thought of sharing April in any way brings me to madness, "just how we made this." Both my hands are on her belly now, forcing April to squirm on my cock to get the friction she needs. "And then, if they still weren't convinced…"

"Then what…?"

I smirk. "Then I'd just have to put another one in you."

April screams.

She's so close I can feel it, her pussy fluttering around me like a swarm of butterflies; but I don't want her to come yet. Instead, I drive into her in slow, deep pushes, refusing to give her the frantic rhythm she craves, driving her wild with too much pleasure.

"Matvey, please…!"

"I'm not done putting babies in you, kalina. Who said I'd stop at two?"

"Ahh—!"

"I'd pump in another," I groan, punctuating my words with thrusts. "And another, and another?—"

"Matvey…"

"Until you're full to bursting. Until no one can doubt exactly who you belong to."

April gives a hard shudder. She tries to slip a hand between our bodies to touch herself, bring herself relief, but I don't let her. Instead, I catch it and pin it to the pool wall.

"We'd—make a mess…" April moans, squirming like crazy.

"Yeah?" I taunt, grinding the head of my cock into her sweet spot once, twice. "Then you'd better keep it all inside."

That does it. April's whole body jolts, hard, and she comes with a choked shout as I pump into her, fulfilling my promise.