Page 43 of Broken Embers

“Are you still tired?” I tease, positioning myself at her opening.

“Ask me again after you’ve fucked me,” she whispers.

I thrust into her hard and deep, claiming her. Her walls clench around me as I drive even deeper, my body murmuring with the need to make her mine in every way. The slap of skin on skin echoes off the walls, drowning us as I push her legs wider and take her harder. Sabrina claws at my back, urging me on, her breath ragged and desperate.

“Yes, fuck, yes,” she moans, her nails digging in as she loses herself completely.

I grip her hips and pull her into every thrust, filling her with each relentless stroke until we’re both on the brink of falling apart. The guttural sounds coming from her throat make me almost feral. My vision blurs as my orgasm barrels toward me.

“Come for me now, printzess,” I growl, and she loses it.

Her body tightens and shudders beneath me, her pussy pulsing around my cock as I spill inside her. My name falls from her lips like a prayer, over and over again.

We collapse together, breathing ragged, chests heaving.

I roll onto my back, pulling Sabrina with me, and she immediately wraps her arm around me.

“Don’t leave me alone,” she whispers.

“Never,” I promise, kissing her temple.

She falls asleep with her face tucked against my chest.

I don’t move.

I hold her there, my Sabrina, who is carrying our child.

And I wonder if I’ll ever sleep again, knowing just how much I have to lose if anything ever happens to them.

14

SABRINA

I’m bundled up tighter than a damn burrito, dragging my boots through the mud-slick trail that snakes along the edge of the mountains. The cold bites through the layers I’ve thrown on—baggy jeans rolled up at the ankle, one of Oleksi’s black long sleeves knotted at my waist to keep it from swallowing me whole, and a fleece I borrowed from one of the six men shadowing us from Timofey Morozov’s crew.

Every now and then, I feel one of their eyes on me. Or Oleksi’s. Or both.

They don’t let me out of arm’s reach. If he’s not walking beside me, he’s behind me. If he’s not behind me, one of them is. Usually that would’ve pissed me off and made me lash out. Demand space. Freedom.

But today?

Today I don’t mind.

Because something in me broke back there. And I don’t know how to put it back together.

My boots crunch over wet pine needles, and I glance at the slope to my right, steep and treacherous, nothing but gray rock and frozen mist. This forest, this path—it all feels haunted. Not by ghosts. But by the shit I brought with me.

For five days, I kept my head high. I spat sass and sarcasm like venom in the RMSAD compound. I sat across from scientists, doctors, psych specialists, and fed them a carefully constructed version of me—average intelligence, limited vocabulary, fake gaps in logic. I didn’t let them see it. The fear. The truth.

Because it was all a front. All of it. A last-ditch shield to keep from falling apart.

But now that I’m out?

Every time I blink, I see his face.

Mikhail’s.

Blood leaking from the side of his mouth after Valeska stabbed him. That hideous sneer right before Nadia shot him in the head. The way he pinned me—his weight crushing, his hands violating. My chest tightens. My throat constricts.

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