Chapter 2: Panties and Permission
Sleep wouldn’t come. The wine that had felt like a warm blanket in the kitchen had turned into a buzzing, restless current in her veins. Viktoria lay in the center of her king-sized bed, the sheets cool and unfamiliar. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw the flicker of laughter in Nathaniel’s eyes, felt the solid weight of his shoulder against her temple, heard the ragged edge of his confession. The house, which had felt merely occupied before, now felt electrically charged, as if the very air molecules had been rearranged by their shared tears.
She threw back the duvet. The hardwood floor was cold under her bare feet. She pulled on her silk robe, belting it loosely, and moved on instinct, drawn down the dark hallway by a force she didn’t care to name. She didn’t know what she wanted. A glass of water. To check the locks. To stand outside the room where another living soul breathed, just to prove he was real.
The guest room door was slightly ajar, a blade of weak, grayish light cutting across the hall floorboards. From within, a low, rhythmic sound. A soft, wet slap. A strained, guttural breath.
Her body froze, but her head turned, her gaze drawn through the narrow gap.
Nathaniel lay on his back on the bed, the covers shoved down to his ankles. The pre-dawn light from the window washed over the brutal topography of his body—the dense pectorals, the ridged abdomen, the powerful V of his hips leading down to his fist, which was moving in a relentless, brutal pace over his cock.
It was huge. Thick and long and ruddy with blood, veins standing in stark relief under the skin. His other hand was fisted in the sheets, his biceps corded with the tension of holding back. His head was thrown back, tendons standing out in his neck, and his lips were moving.
“Fuck… Vik… god…”
Her name. He was grunting her name through clenched teeth.
A bolt of pure, undiluted lust, hot and shameful, struck her between the legs. Her breath vanished. Her knees liquefied. She should turn. She should run. This was a desecration. This was her dead husband’s brother, in her home, using her image for his own animal release.
A floorboard creaked under her shifting weight.
His movement didn’t stop. It slowed. His head rolled to the side, and his eyes, dark and feral in the half-light, locked directly onto hers through the crack in the door. He didn’t look surprised. He looked like a predator who had been waiting.
He didn’t cover himself. He didn’t stop. His strokes became more deliberate, theatrical, his fist gliding up and down the formidable length of his shaft. A low growl rumbled in his chest.
“Close the door,” he said, his voice ragged and deep, “or walk away. But decide fast.”
She couldn’t move. She was pinned by his gaze, by the obscene, mesmerizing sight of him.
“I’m not fucking gentle tonight, Viktoria.” It wasn’t a warning. It was a promise.
Her hand, acting of its own volition, pushed the door open. It swung inward with a soft sigh. She stood on the threshold, her silk robe hanging open, revealing the sheer lace of her nightgown beneath.
A grim, predatory smile touched his lips. “Okay then.”
In one fluid, powerful motion, he swung his legs off the bed and stood. He was a monument of unleashed male intent, walking toward her completely naked, his erection jutting out, thick and intimidating. He didn’t give her time to rethink. His hands, big and calloused, cupped her face, tilting it up to his. His thumb brushed over her bottom lip, and his eyes searched hers for a second, seeing the conflict, the fear, the desperate want.
Then his mouth was on hers.
It wasn’t a kiss. It was a conquest. Hot, hungry, and deep, his tongue plunging past her lips, tasting of wine and dark, private need. She whimpered into him, her hands coming up to clutch at his bare shoulders, the muscles hard as stone under her fingers. He walked her backward into the room, his mouth never leaving hers, until her back hit the wall beside the door. He broke the kiss, his breathing harsh.
“Tell me to stop,” he demanded, his forehead against hers.
She shook her head, a frantic little motion. No.
A ragged sound escaped him. His hands went to the belt of her robe, yanking it loose. The silk whispered open. He pushed the thin straps of her nightgown off her shoulders, and the fabric pooled at her feet. He looked his fill, his gaze burning over her breasts, her waist, the junction of her thighs. The reverence in his look was gone, replaced by sheer, carnal hunger.
“Beautiful,” he growled. “Fucking perfect.”
He dropped to his knees.
His hands hooked behind her thighs, lifting her, pushing her back against the wall. Before she could process it, his mouth was on her. There was no preamble. His tongue lashed against her clit, flat and broad and demanding. She cried out, her head thumping back against the wall. He ate her like a man starving, his nose buried in her, his tongue delving inside her, then circling back to suck hard on the sensitive nub. He used his lips, his teeth, his stubble an exquisite abrasion against her tender skin.
“Nate… God….” She fisted her hands in his short hair, her hips bucking against his face. The orgasm built with terrifying speed, a coil tightening low in her belly, different from any she’d ever felt—rawer, deeper, less a peak and more a tectonic shift.
He felt it. He redoubled his efforts, humming against her, the vibration pushing her to the edge. She came with a shattered scream, her body convulsing against his mouth, waves of pleasure so intense they bordered on pain. He didn’t let up, lapping at her through the tremors, drawing every last shudder from her.
When she was limp, boneless against the wall, he stood. He was still brutally hard. He kissed her again, letting her taste herself on his lips. Then he turned her around, pressing her front against the cool wall. He leaned his heavy body against her, his cock nestling in the cleft of her ass. One hand braced beside her head, the other slid around her hip, his fingers finding her soaked, sensitive flesh.
“You’re dripping,” he murmured into her ear, his voice rough with praise. He pushed two thick fingers inside her, and she gasped at the stretch. “So fucking wet for me. For this.”
He worked his fingers in and out, scissoring them, preparing her. But when he removed them and she felt the blunt, massive head of his cock nudge against her entrance, panic flared.
“Wait.” Her voice was a thin strand. “Nate… you’re too big. It won’t fit. I can’t—”
He stilled. His lips brushed her ear. “Yes, you can. You will. I’ll make you take it. Every fucking inch.”
He pressed forward.
The burn was immediate, searing. She cried out, a sound of protest and overwhelming fullness. He was huge, stretching her to a point of breathtaking discomfort. He didn’t stop. He fed his cock into her with a slow, relentless pressure, an inexorable invasion that made her whimper and claw at the wall.
“Breathe, baby,” he gritted out, his own body trembling with the effort of his control. “Just breathe. Take it for me.”
He sank deeper, and deeper, until his hips were flush against her ass, until he was fully sheathed inside her. She felt impossibly full, stuffed, split open on him. She panted, tears of overwhelming sensation prickling her eyes.
He held there, letting her adjust, his body a furnace against her back. Then he drew back, almost out, and slammed home.
She saw stars.
On the next thrust, the pain began to morph. The unbearable stretch ignited a spark of pure, shocking pleasure. On the third, deeper stroke, the spark became a flame. He set a punishing rhythm, fucking her into the wall with deep, powerful drives of his hips. Each thrust punched a moan from her lungs. The slap of skin, the wet, filthy sound of their joining, his ragged grunts in her ear—it was primal, obscene, and utterly transformative.
The coil built again, but this was different. This wasn’t just in her clit; this was deep in her core, radiating from where he filled her, a profound, internal claiming. The pressure mounted, tightening with every brutal, perfect stroke.
“That’s it,” he snarled, his hand sliding around to rub her clit in rough, frantic circles. “Come on my cock. Come for me, Vik. Let go.”
The command broke her. The orgasm detonated, a silent, crashing wave that erased the world. It was not a peak but an abyss, a free-fall of sensation that ripped through her womb and radiated out to her fingertips. She screamed, her body clamping down on his in violent, rhythmic pulses, milking him.
Her climax triggered his. With a roar that was part triumph, part agony, he buried himself to the hilt and came. She felt the hot, sudden surge of his release filling her, the pulses of his cock deep inside as he shuddered against her, his big body going rigid before slumping, spent.
They stayed like that, pinned to the wall by his weight, breathing in ragged, broken harmony. The gray dawn had brightened to a pale gold, illuminating the room. Slowly, carefully, he pulled out of her. She winced at the sensitivity, the acute feeling of emptiness.
He turned her around, his hands gentle now, and looked into her face. Her tear-streaked, wrecked face. He didn’t speak. He just gathered her against his chest, where she could hear the frantic hammer of his heart slowing to a steady, heavy beat. He walked them the few steps to the bed and laid her down, then climbed in beside her, pulling the sheets over them both.
He held her, his arms a fortress, his breath stirring her hair. Outside, a bird began to sing. The house was utterly silent. She lay there, utterly unraveled, feeling a profound and terrifying sense of peace. The grief was still there. The guilt was still there. But for this moment, held in the arms of the man who shared both, she felt something else she hadn’t felt in five years.
She felt real.
The morning light grew bolder, etching the room in sharp relief. She could feel the sticky, damp evidence of their fucking seeping between her thighs, a shocking, carnal reality. Nathaniel’s breathing had evened into sleep, one heavy arm still draped possessively across her stomach.
She carefully slid out from under his weight. The air was cool on her skin. She looked back at him, sprawled in the wreckage of her guest bed, a stranger who was also the most familiar person left in her world. She walked on unsteady legs to the adjoining bathroom.
The fluorescent light buzzed to life. In the mirror, a wild-eyed woman stared back, her lips swollen, her hair a tangled mess. There was a faint, red abrasion on her shoulder from the wall. She turned on the shower, steam fogging the glass, and stepped under the hot spray. It stung between her legs, a visceral reminder. She could still feel the phantom stretch of him, the burning echo of his possession. As the water coursed over her, a thin, milky trickle dripped down her inner thigh. His come. She watched it swirl down the drain, her hand pressed flat against her lower belly.
A shadow filled the steamed doorway. He stood watching her, naked, already hard again. His eyes were dark, hungry pits.
“Didn’t give you permission to wash me off,” he said, his voice gravelly with sleep and something else—a rough edge of control.
“It’s my shower,” she said, but the defiance was weak, a whisper.
He stepped into the shower, crowding her under the spray. Water sluiced over the hard planes of his chest. He didn’t touch her at first, just looked. “It’s all mine now. Everything that comes out of you, everything that goes in you. That’s the deal.”
He pushed her back against the cool tile, his mouth finding hers in a wet, demanding kiss. His hand slid between her legs, fingers probing, pushing back inside her where she was still loose and sensitive from before. “Still full of me,” he muttered against her mouth, a note of dark satisfaction in his tone. “Good.”
He turned her around, bending her over, his hands gripping her hips. He entered her in one smooth, brutal stroke, no preamble, no resistance. She cried out, her palms flat on the tile. The water beat down on them as he set a relentless, driving pace, each thrust forcing a choked sound from her throat. He fucked her with a single-minded intensity, one hand fisted in her wet hair, holding her head back.
“This is what you needed, wasn’t it?” he grunted, his hips slapping against her ass. “To feel something besides that fucking grief. To be filled up. Owned.”
She couldn’t answer. Her world had narrowed to the slap of skin, the steam, the exquisite, punishing friction. She was crumbling, coming apart under his hands, and she needed it. She needed the obliteration.
“Tell me,” he demanded, his rhythm becoming erratic, harder. “Tell me you need it.”
“I need it,” she gasped, the admission torn from her. “God, Nate, I need it.”
With a growl, he buried himself deep, shuddering as he pumped his release into her a second time, hot pulses flooding her core. He held himself there, planted to the hilt, until his spasms subsided. He stayed inside her, his forehead against her slick back, both of them panting in the steam.
Later, wrapped in towels, the silence in the kitchen was different. The intimacy was a live wire between them. He made coffee, moving in her space as if he’d always been there. She sat at the table, the marble cool through the towel.
“I have to go to the office,” she said, not looking at him.
“Okay.”
“There’s a key on the hook by the garage. If you go out.” She was giving him access. She was letting him in.
He set a mug in front of her. “I’ll be here.”
The normalcy of it was the most obscene thing of all. She dressed for court, the severe lines of her suit feeling like a costume over her marked skin. She avoided looking at the guest room as she left.
The day was a blur of motions and affidavits, but her focus was porous. She’d be reviewing a deposition and suddenly feel the ghost of his teeth on her neck. She’d stand to address the judge and be acutely aware of the faint, lingering ache between her legs, the secret wetness she could still feel—his claim, left inside her. It was a distracting, thrilling violation of her ordered world.
She lost a procedural argument. It was minor, but the shock of it reverberated through her. She never lost. Walking to her car, the late afternoon sun oppressive, she felt untethered. She didn’t want to go home to an empty house. She realized, with a jolt, she didn’t think of it as empty anymore. She thought of it as where he was.
He was in the garage when she pulled in, shirtless, sweat sheening his torso as he pummeled the heavy bag she kept in the corner. Each strike was a concussive boom, his body a coiled spring of focused violence. He didn’t stop when she entered. He unleashed another furious combination, the bag swinging wildly.
She leaned against her car, watching the play of muscles in his back, the grim set of his jaw. This was the other side of the man who had held her. This was the marine, the survivor, haunted by a guilt she was only beginning to comprehend.
He finally stopped, chest heaving, and turned. His eyes tracked over her suit, her heels, a predatory appreciation in his gaze. “How was your day, counselor?”
“I lost a motion,” she said, the words strange in her mouth.
A slow smile spread across his face. It wasn’t kind. It was possessive. “Good.”
“Good?”
“Yeah. Means you’re thinking about something else. About me.” He walked toward her, closing the distance. He smelled of sweat and heat. His finger hooked under the lapel of her jacket. “Take this off.”
It was not a request. Her hands trembled slightly as she obeyed, shedding the jacket, letting it fall to the oil-stained concrete. He backed her against the car, his hands on her hips. He kissed her, deep and dirty, his tongue claiming her mouth. She could taste the salt on his skin.
“Right here,” he murmured, his hands pushing up her skirt, dragging her panties down. They snapped against her thighs before falling. The garage door was open. The suburban street was just beyond.
“Nate, someone could—”
“Let them see,” he breathed, unbuckling his jeans. His cock sprang free, heavy and ready. He lifted her, seating her on the cold hood of her sedan. He pushed her knees apart, his eyes locked on hers. “I want you to remember where you are when I’m inside you. I want you to feel me in your conference rooms, at your fancy desk.”
He thrust up into her, filling her in one brutal motion. She gasped, her head falling back against the windshield. It was raw, exposed, the air cool on her skin while he burned inside her. He fucked her with a desperate, driving rhythm, the car rocking slightly on its suspension.
“You’re mine,” he grunted, each word a punctuation to his thrusts. “Say it.”
“Yours,” she whimpered, the admission unlocking something feral in her. Her nails scraped down his sweaty back.
“My cunt.” He bit her shoulder, sucking a mark into her skin. “My come in my cunt. Always.”
He came with a ragged shout, his body slamming into hers, pumping his seed deep. He held her there, impaled, until she felt the hot trickle escape down her thigh. He kissed her, slow and deep now, a contrast to the violence of their joining. “Inside,” he said softly, helping her off the hood. “Let’s get cleaned up. I made dinner.”
She followed him, legs unsteady, her expensive skirt wrinkled, her body humming with a need that felt bottomless. He was making her addicted. And he was ensuring, every single time, that his possession took root. She needed these feelings, these raw, shocking reminders that she was alive. And he, watching her walk ahead of him, was already planning how to ensure she’d never want another man’s touch, his obsession a silent, growing vow in the gathering dusk.
And he, watching her walk ahead of him, was already planning how to ensure she’d never want another man’s touch, his obsession a silent, growing vow in the gathering dusk.
Weeks dissolved in a fever of him.
Her life became a split existence. Days were a familiar theater of crisp arguments and polished heels on marble floors. Nights were a surrender to sweat-slicked skin and Nathaniel’s demanding mouth. He was a constant, consuming presence. He didn’t ask to move from the guest room; one morning, she simply woke and his duffel was gone from its corner, his toothbrush standing beside hers in the holder. His things migrated—a worn leather jacket over a chair, combat boots by the door, the distinct, clean scent of him permeating her linens.
The fucking was a relentless education. It was never gentle. It was compensation, he’d grunt into her neck, for all the time lost, for all the death he’d held at bay. He took her in every room, at every hour. Against the refrigerator, her cheek cold against the stainless steel while he pounded into her from behind. Bent over the polished mahogany of her home office desk, legal briefs scattering to the floor. On the stairs, halfway to the bedroom, his hand clamped over her mouth to stifle her cries.
He was voracious, insatiable. He’d wake her at three a.m., his palm already between her legs, his cock hard against her thigh. “Need you,” he’d rasp, and it was never a request. She’d be slick and ready for him in seconds, a Pavlovian response to his touch. He’d roll her onto her stomach, push her face into the pillow, and drive into her with a steady, brutal rhythm that shook the headboard against the wall. He always finished inside her, a hot, claiming flood she’d feel leaking out of her long after. He’d hold her close afterward, his big hand splayed possessively over her lower belly, and she’d feel a dark, thrilling shiver wondering if his relentless seeding would take root.
One evening, she came home to an unusual silence. The kitchen was clean, no smells of cooking. He was sitting at the table, a bottle of beer before him, still in his jeans and a tight gray t-shirt. He looked up as she entered, his expression unreadable.
“Long day?” she asked, dropping her briefcase, kicking off her heels.
“Got something to tell you,” he said, his voice flat.
She poured herself a glass of wine, the click of the cabinet door loud in the quiet. “Okay.”
“Got a job offer. Took it.” He took a long pull from his bottle. “Consultant work. For the government.”
She turned, the wine glass halfway to her lips. “Consultant. Doing what?”
“Threat assessment. Security protocols.” He wouldn’t meet her eyes. “Places that are… unstable.”
The glass felt suddenly cold in her hand. “Unstable. You mean war zones.”
“Sometimes.”
The word hung in the air, sharp as a blade. She saw the desert in his eyes, the ghosts he carried. She saw Daniel’s coffin. A cold dread, fiercer than any she’d felt in a courtroom, seeped into her bones.
“You can’t,” she said, her voice low.
“I already did.”
“You just got home!” The words ripped out of her, shattering the careful calm she’d worn like armor. “You just got back, Nate. From one hell to jump into another? For what? Money? We don’t need money.”
He stood up, the chair scraping harshly. “It’s not about the money.”
“Then what? Guilt? You think getting yourself killed balances some cosmic scale for Daniel?” She was shouting now, the wine sloshing in her glass. “That’s not honor, that’s a fucking suicide note!”
His face hardened. “You don’t understand.”
“I understand perfectly! You’re a trained weapon and they want to point you at the next target. And you’ll let them. Because you don’t think you deserve a life here.” Her chest heaved. “With me.”
He flinched, but his gaze remained steely. “It’s a good job. Important work.”
“It’s a death sentence!” She threw the glass. It missed him, shattering against the wall in a burst of red wine and crystal. “After everything… you’d just leave? You’d make me go through that again?”
“Vik, calm down.” He took a step toward her, his voice softening.
“Don’t tell me to calm down!” She backed away, tears of rage and terror blinding her. “Get out.”
His eyes narrowed. “What?”
“Get out of this house. Tonight. Don’t come to my bed. Don’t come near me.” The words were poison, but she couldn’t stop them. The fear was too big, too old. “I can’t do this. I won’t wait for another flag-draped coffin.”
Something in him snapped. The calm façade evaporated, replaced by a raw, volcanic fury. In two strides he was on her, his hands closing around her upper arms. “You don’t get to say that.”
“Let go of me!”
He didn’t. He spun her around, bent her over the cool marble of the kitchen table. Her cheek pressed against the hard surface. She struggled, but his weight was immovable, one heavy hand pinning her between the shoulder blades.
“You think this is just a fuck?” His voice was a low, dangerous rumble in her ear as his other hand shoved her skirt up around her waist. His fingers hooked in the waistband of her panties and tore them down with a brutal snap. “You think this is me just passing through?”
She heard his belt buckle clink, the rasp of his zipper. He freed himself, the thick, hard length of him slapping against the back of her thigh. He was angry, and he was huge, and a part of her vibrated with a terrified thrill.
“You are mine,” he snarled, and he drove into her with one ruthless thrust. She cried out, the sudden, brutal fullness stealing her breath. There was no preparation, no gentleness. This was punishment and possession.
He fucked her over the table with short, savage strokes, his hips slamming into her ass. “This cunt,” he grunted, his breath hot against her neck, “is mine. It’s always open for me. You don’t get to shut me out. You don’t get to send me away.”
Tears of frustration and helpless pleasure streamed from her eyes, pooling on the marble. She hated him. She wanted him. She pushed back against him, meeting his thrusts, a sobbing gasp escaping her lips.
“You will sleep in my bed every night,” he vowed, his pace becoming brutal, deeper. “You will take my cock whenever I need it. You will have my children.”
The claim, so blunt, so final, shattered her last resistance. A guttural moan tore from her throat.
“And you know why?” he growled, his body beginning to shudder, his control fraying. He leaned down, his lips against her ear. “Because I wanted you from the first fucking time I saw you.