The phone hit the hardwood with a crack that didn't matter.
Roman moved before the sound died—one hand fisting in her hair, yanking her head back, the other slamming flat against the wall beside her cheek. The plaster was cold through the thin cotton of her dress. His body pressed her into it, every hard inch of him, and his cock was already thick against her stomach, insistent through the fabric of his slacks.
"You answered his call." His voice scraped low, Russian thickening each word until they dropped like stones. "You told him no."
She couldn't breathe. Didn't want to. His hand tightened in her hair, tilting her throat toward his mouth, and she watched his pale eyes go dark—not with the shattered vulnerability from before, but something rawer. Hunger and fury twisted together, and all of it aimed at her.
"You're mine now, Elena." His teeth grazed her collarbone, not quite a bite, and she felt the sting bloom into heat that spread down her chest. "Not theirs. Not ever."
He lifted her. One hand still gripping her thigh, the other releasing her hair to brace against the wall as he pressed her higher, her legs wrapping around his waist by instinct. Her dress bunched at her hips. His slacks were still undone from before, and she felt the head of his cock pressing against her cunt—wet from their earlier fucking, still slick with his cum and hers.
"Say it," he growled.
"Yours." The word tore out of her before she could think, before she could armor up. "I'm yours."
He pushed inside. No hesitation, no slow stretch—just the full, thick length of him filling her in one brutal thrust that drove her spine up the plaster. She cried out, her nails digging into his shoulders, and he didn't stop. Each stroke lifted her higher, her shoulder blades scraping, the wall cold against her skin while he burned hot inside her.
His rhythm wasn't desperate. It was deliberate. The measured grind of a man staking a claim, each thrust saying what his voice couldn't—mine, mine, mine. His mouth found her throat, her jaw, the corner of her lips, never quite kissing, always taking. Her begging dissolved into moans she didn't recognize as her own.
She came on his command. He growled "Now," against her ear, and her body obeyed—cunt clenching around his cock, vision whiting out, a sob tearing from her chest that sounded like his name. He followed three thrusts later, shuddering hard, his forehead dropping to hers as he emptied inside her.
"Elena." Her name scraped out of him like a vow, like a wound, like the only word he had left.
He pulled out slowly—a long, wet slide that left her empty and aching. The absence was almost worse than the fullness. Her legs were still wrapped around his waist, her dress still bunched at her hips, and she felt the slick evidence of him trailing down her inner thigh.
His hand left the wall. She watched it move—those thick fingers, the knuckles that had broken men—and didn't flinch when they wrapped around her throat. Not squeezing. Just resting there. Possessive. The pad of his thumb found her pulse and pressed.
Her heartbeat hammered against his palm. Fast. Too fast to hide.
Roman's forehead stayed pressed to hers. His breath came hard, uneven, each exhale stirring the damp hair at her temple. His pale eyes were open, fixed on hers, and something moved behind them—not the fury from before, not the shattered vulnerability. Something still forming.
He didn't speak. The question hung between them, heavier than his hand on her throat, heavier than the wall at her back.
She could taste it—copper and salt, like a word almost spoken. His jaw worked. The scar through his eyebrow pulled tight. His thumb traced the tendon in her neck, slow, reverent, as if memorizing the place where her life beat closest to the surface.
"Roman." Her voice came out scraped raw.
His grip tightened—just a fraction, just enough to make her swallow against his palm. Then loosened. His eyes flickered, searching her face, and she saw it: he didn't know how to ask. Didn't have the words for whatever was clawing its way up his throat.
She covered his hand with hers. Her fingers slipped between his knuckles, not pulling him away, not pressing him closer. Just holding.
His breath shuddered out. His body was still caging hers, still hard and hot and everywhere, but something in his shoulders gave—a minute sag, the kind of surrender that came not from weakness but from exhaustion. The exhaustion of holding himself together for thirty-four years.
The question still hung. Neither of them spoke it. But her thumb stroked the scarred ridge of his knuckle, and his forehead pressed harder to hers, and the silence between them became the answer neither could say aloud.