Chapter 25

Twenty-Five

R uby

"I would rather stay here with Simba. I just started a book before we left that I was enjoying. You can go—" I wave my hand at the door. "Play on your sled. I'll just stay here."

"You're not staying." He pulls a snowsuit from the closet. It's black, but small, so I know it's meant for me. Or maybe he's brought other women here, and he has a particular fascination with petite women. Maybe that's why he's determined to keep me for himself.

I huff, letting my foot fall to the floor with just a hint of a thud. "I don't want to go."

"I have something I would like to show you." He pulls another suit from the closet, this one far bigger. "Then we'll drive into town and have dinner. Give you a night off cooking."

My attention snaps to him. "You're going to take me to town?"

His lips hitch in a knowing grin. "Don't get any ideas, wife."

I feign indifference. "I don't know what you're talking about."

He drops the boots he'd lugged from the closet not a moment before, and prowls predatorily closer to me. "This town is small, and every living soul in it knows who I am. They know who the Volkov family is, and there is respect in that knowledge. You could scream that I've kidnapped you at the top of your lungs, and not one of them would hear. You could run, and they would all hunt you, returning you to me." His hand touches my face, and I don't even bother flinching as he dips his head to claim my mouth. His kiss is deep and claiming, and my body responds, warming even though my mind rages. "It matters not where we are in this world, wife. There is nowhere you could run that I would not find you. And there is no one who would survive standing between us." His tongue licks at mine. Sparks detonate inside my core. "Do you understand me, Ruby?"

He waits with his lips a hairsbreadth from mine. I nod.

"Good." He stands back. "Get dressed."

He tears through the untouched powder under a dimming blue sky, over a snow-covered path through thick trees, to come to an abrupt stop where the earth simply drops. My heart is in my throat, a wild, restless thing. Red nips at my cheeks from the cold, but my body is warm under the suit I wear. Although I noted it smelled new—not like another woman's perfume—when I'd put it on. I still can't help but wonder if he's had another woman wear it. If he's taken another woman out here, like he's taken me. If he's made love to her in the same bed where he tore through my hymen with his thick fingers.

I want to ask. Why do I want to ask?

I shouldn't care.

And, unlike me, my husband isn't twenty-three. Not by a long shot.

But how old is he?

How much older is he?

He cuts the engine of the snow mobile, and I slide off the back into deep snow. Then, I catch my breath because this view .

"Oh my God." The words hardly sound on a breath. "This is—Kirill, this is—there are no words."

The cascade of turquoise ice glows iridescent under the setting sun. Like crystals erupting raw from the earth to spear a river that isn't quite frozen, below.

"Do you see it?" Kirill asks close beside me. "The way the ice dances?"

Fixing my gaze on the ice, I gasp when I do, in fact, see it. "How?"

"The river still flows. Much of the fall has turned to ice, but below the ice, there is a layer of running water. It dances all winter long just like this." His voice is quiet and uncharacteristically soft. "I used to come here as a boy."

"You did?" I tear my eyes from the mystical view, to the hard man who, I'm coming to suspect, has some parts that are soft.

"The cabins are family owned, but I'm the only one to visit in the last five years."

"Do you come often?"

"As often as I can. I like to get away." He tips a rueful smile at me. "This may surprise you, considering I am a highly public man, but I don't enjoy people."

"Then why spend so much time with them?" It's an honest question. I sincerely want to know what would drive a person to spend their life doing something they find so taxing.

It's such a waste.

"I may not enjoy people, but I am good at them."

I frown, and his dark eyes drop to it. "How is one good at people?"

"I am very good at reading people. It's easier for someone like me to be the face of the Volkov family, than a man like my brother, Ilya."

"And what is he like?"

Kirill laughs, a quick, abrupt sound that ends the same way. "He's different."

"Do you not get along?" Why am I asking? Why do I care?

I hate that I care.

"We get along fine. He's a good, but dangerous man."

He kidnapped me , I want to say, but don't. Instead, I ask, "What is he like?"

He peers down at me for a long moment. Then, his deep voice cuts through the cold like a blade. "I saw my first murder at eight. It was a clean kill, simple even, considering the kills that would follow in the years after. A bullet to the head, and the man dropped." He chuffs a laugh. "But I was shaken."

"Of course, you were, Kirill." I am horrified .

"No." He wipes his thumb over his bottom lip as he lowers himself to the seat of the snowmobile. "I was a wreck, Ruby. Sweat clung to my skin, and my teeth chattered. I was hot and cold. My vision blurred, and I thought I'd be sick."

I can't help myself, dropping to my knees in front of him, I place my gloved hands on his thighs, willing his faraway eyes to mine. "You were a boy. Any boy would have reacted just the same as you."

"Not Ilya." I stiffen at his words, appalled. "He was six, even younger than me. And he stood beside me, unfazed by the end of that man's life. No—" He laughs again. "He wasn't unfazed. He was bored. Unaffected. He may as well have watched the man fall asleep, for how much it affected him. I had nightmares for months afterward, but not Ilya. No, he was learning the art of butchering a human—self-taught—while I was masking my weakness with jokes and grins." His eyes hold mine, and he grows painfully serious. "I was the older brother. It was my birthright, and my burden, to bear the weight Ilya carries today. For that, I will forever be less of a man."

I'm so confused. "What do you mean?"

"I am my father's firstborn son, and I am his greatest disappointment. It should have been me who bore the weight of the Bratva. Instead, I am the one who charms the corrupt into investing their blood money into my family's bank, making us more money. I am a tool in Ilya's pocket. A man too soft to rule the kingdom he was born to rule." His bottom lip quivers, his emotion so extreme. My heart aches. "I am a failure."

I can't take this. I don't have the expertise to unravel all the fucked-up-ness that my husband has revealed to me just now, but I do know that he's hurting. Somewhere within the hard man I've come to know, is a sore, scared, scarred little boy, who had a soft and beautiful center that was poisoned by evil and darkness.

Pushing up into his lap, I spread my legs around his hips, catching his face between my hands. His dark eyes land on mine, searching, and pleading for things I don't know if he will ever find, but I suddenly hope he will find them all within me. This man stole me from my life. He made me a prisoner. And yet—I think I've fallen in love with him somewhere along this bumpy, tragic journey.

Because now, all I want to do is take away his pain. I want to pull every bit of it inside of me so that he may know just a moment of reprieve.

I whisper, "You are a man." I watch as he swallows hard. "You are my man."

His eyes shutter closed, as though he's savouring the words I never thought I would ever say. I don't know where the bravery comes from, but I drop my head to his. My lips touch his, cool from winter's kiss. They don't stay that way long. And the kiss doesn't remain in my control for long, either.

With a dark rumble deep in his throat, Kirill takes over. His lips are firm as they devour mine, and before I know it, he's standing to flip me onto my back on the seat of the snowmobile. My shoulder blades connect with the handlebars, my back cradled by the small dash as the man feasts on my mouth, my jaw, the tender skin below my ear. Through the ringing in my ears, I hear the fall of my zipper. Cold hands spear into my suit, palming my breasts.

Everything about this moment, from the dimming sky ablaze with the heavenly fires of a setting sun, to the crisp cold, to the hot man above me, feels surreal and feral. My instincts are basic in this moment as I seek the warmth of his kiss, the fire of his touch, the consuming cocoon of his weight.

"Fucking hell, you're beautiful," he growls into my neck, nipping tender flesh.

I cry out into the silent forest as I rock my hips for a friction I desperately need, and don't have. With a dark chuckle, he drives a knee gently into my core, giving me that pressure I ache for. I don't know how the man does it. How he bends and twists me into a knot of need with such ease. And I don't have the headspace for it right now as my mind drifts again and again, back to that unfortunate boy who has grown into the man above me. Who has crafted the hard shell he wears over his soft center, as a means to protect himself. To become the thing that he isn't in order to survive.

My heart weeps for the man he could have been, even as it breaks for the man that he is.

"Christ," he bites out between hot kisses. "You need to come."

"Yes." I'm shameless. But, God—I do need to come.

I also want him to come.

Gosh, where did that thought come from?

I feel like a harlot.

He shoves the suit from my arms, before biting my nipple over my shirt. Again, my cry rings into the forest as I sink my fingers into his hair. He curses again, another feral, on-edge sound. I want to feel him against my skin. His skin, his teeth, the bite of rough fingertips—everything.

"Too many clothes," I murmur, lust-drunk.

He laughs. The sound is like a hammer to my core. I suck in sharp air and fumble with the buttons of my flannel shirt. I don't even care that it's freezing out. I care only about being with this man. Shattering around him. For him.

I want to show him that he is worthy…

Tears prick my eyes as I recall his words. I feel angry, and achy, and… "Kirill."

"Let me." He bumps my hands out of the way, working the buttons through the holes much faster. And then his rough fingers are tugging on the cups of my bra, freeing my breasts to the cold. I gasp when his hot mouth covers one, and then the other. The cold air against the wet left behind sends a bolt to my core, and I whimper.

"Oh, God." I moan when he slides teeth over one, palming the other. I'm riding his thigh now like the harlot I never thought I'd be. I don't think as I find the zipper of his jacket, yanking it down and shoving cold hands up under his shirt. The hot heat of his skin warms my frozen fingertips as I explore, loving the hiss of sharp breath that escapes between his teeth, before he's devouring my breasts again.

There is so much sensation everywhere—and yet it's not enough. I feel so achingly, painfully, tragically empty, for this beautifully heartrending man.

I don't think as I push my hands south to the button of his snow pants. The pop of the clip is loud, the fall of the zipper, louder.

"Wife," he grunts. "What are you doing?"

"I—I don't know."

He catches my wrist. He warns, "I can only be pushed so far before I'm not stopping, Ruby."

I hold his eyes with my own, and then I shake off his hold. I make fast work of his jeans before I push my hand into his pants to feel all of him. I've never touched a man like this, never seen a man fully naked before. I'm surprised to find he's silky smooth, like hot velvet coating a steel pipe. I curl my fingers around his girth, running my hand over the length once. He looses a sound—an animalistic growl of broken will and splintered control that seizes my core in a vicelike grip. My bra snaps back into place. I gasp as he tears my hand from his pants only to rear back to yank violently at my own. He removes my snowsuit completely before he tugs my leggings to my ankles, baring me to the bitter cold, and his fiery gaze. And then he slams back down to my body, his hand between us.

Ragged breaths spear from my lungs. His lips are brutal as they cover mine, dragging all sound—every breath I release—into his lungs. He's feasting on the very air I breathe. And then I feel it—him. His tip is thick and hot and smooth where it connects with my core, spreading me, promising pleasure and pain, and everything in between.

Tension coils my body tight, and he drags his mouth to my ear. "Relax for me, beautiful."

I can't. I haven't seen him. But I felt him in my hand—and that isn't going to fit inside me. I could hardly take two fingers last night.

Fear begins to bleed into the want. Hesitation into desire. My body trembles, but he pushes forward, pushes into me.

I cry out, but he covers my cry with his mouth, devouring it. Claiming it for himself, as he's claimed every other part of me. As he's claiming all of me now.

He pulls out, rubbing his tip over me from tip to base, and back again. I'm so wet, he glides over me easily again and again. I'm shivering, but I can't be sure if it's because of the cold or nerves.

He notches his tip a second time, and I suck in air. Then his thumb finds my clit as he sinks in a little deeper, holding himself in place there as he circles and works my clit, until I'm a whimpering mess beneath him.

Pulling back, he gazes down at me with a tender affection I've never seen in the eyes of a man in all my life. It's not just in his eyes, but in every line of his face. He almost looks torn, caught up in the sweet pain of it.

"I'm sorry," he whispers. Before I can ask why he would be sorry, he drops his mouth to mine and thrusts in deep, bottoming out inside me with a shredding kind of violence that has my limbs seizing, locking around his body as I grip him to me, begging him silently not to move as he kisses me through my breathless whimpers.

He's so big where he's rooted himself inside me. So hot, I feel like he might split me in two. It hurts so much. Tears spring to my eyes as he grips me to him, holding me tenderly in silent apology for his rough invasion.

He doesn't stop kissing me, his lips tender and soft in such astonishing opposition to the thickness that impales me. Slowly, the pinching pain lessens to give way for something warm and demanding to grow in my core. Suddenly, I need him to move. I need him to move like a drowning person needs air.

It takes only one shift of my hips for him to pull back slowly, and sink in deep again. I release a hot breath in a puff of white between us as he does it again, slow, and again. Sweat beads his brow, even in the chill. His body trembles. He's holding back, I realize.

And, God, I don't want him to.

I let my legs fall open, and watch a spark ignite in the dark of his eyes. And then he rears back, his big hands gripping my waist to pin me in place as he thrusts hungrily into me, filling me, and stretching me, with every rough thrust. Stars dance behind my eyes as moans of pleasure and pain tumble between us. The sounds of sex fill the forest. Slapping skin, slippery wet, his rough groans the bass to my symphony of moans.

I feel like I'm coming apart. I'm unstitched and untethered, a balloon floating in the wind—a kite dancing on the string he holds. My puppeteer.

Pressure builds within me. Hot, wild, impossible pressure like nothing I've ever felt before. I'm so full and yet—I want more. I need more.

"Harder," the word escapes on the wave of a tangled moan. My husband doesn't disappoint, and I watch, transfixed, as his face morphs into something wild, and sexy, and dangerously hard, as he pounds into me. Tearing into me. Claiming me.

He falls forward, his thrusts growing less rhythmic, more frantic. His mouth claims mine, his tongue slipping into my mouth, his teeth sinking into my lip. When he shoves his hand between us, the other still holding me in place at my hip, I gasp as his thumb connects with the bud of nerves. He presses into me like a button, and that pressure just—erupts. Wave, after violent wave, crash into me, rolling through me. He bucks into me wildly through every one until he roots himself to the hilt, his grunts becoming deeper and shorter, as he buries his face into my neck, his big body spasming over mine as hot release spills into my core.

It takes a moment for me to come down from my unexpected, unplanned high. The fall is hard. The crash is painful.

What have I done?

I just—I just had sex—with my husband.