Jane refused to look up when she heard footsteps approach her prison cell from the outside. She sat on her bed with her back against the headboard, her knees curled up to her chest and her arms wrapped around her legs. She wore a pair of purple gym shorts and a baggy grey T-shirt with paw prints scattered across the front.

She could tell from the confident, steady tread that it was her husband about to enter her cell. Not that she thought he would allow anyone else to see her in such a vulnerable setting. Though she supposed if he actually intended to keep her locked in for the next several months, he likely would have to have someone else besides himself help care for her, bring her meals and such. After all, he had a criminal empire to run.

So far, in the twenty-four hours she’d been locked up, he’d brought all of her meals. She had managed to thoroughly ignore him each time he entered her cell. As far as she was concerned they had nothing left to say until he was ready to grant her freedom. And the moment he relented, she would be off like a shot. There was no chance she was risking getting her ass locked up again. She would run as far and as fast as she could. Utilize ever sketchy connection she’d made in her time as a private investigator to get the hell out from under her husband’s thumb. She was so completely over being his subjugated plaything.

At the first sound of the door grating against the concrete she tipped her head sideways on her knees. She didn’t want him seeing her face. She wouldn’t give him anything, but the cold side of her shoulder.

He entered the cell, slamming the door shut behind him. She heard the lock engage and smiled a little. He’d definitely learned since their time in the dungeon last year when he’d underestimated her size and skill. Of course, she hadn’t won that fight, but she’d gotten a few good shots in and made it as far as the outer door. The tempting aroma of homemade pizza tantalized her, making her mouth water and reminding her that, even if she wanted to go on hunger strike, the baby had other ideas. Still, she wouldn’t move an inch until the man standing between her and the food left her in peace.

“Your sister is leaving the city.” Vlad’s smooth voice was like a slap, it was so unexpected. He’d been as angry with her as she was with him, so his meal drop offs were quick and efficient. He set the plates down, silently checked on his wife and then stalked away, slamming the door behind him.

Jane’s head snapped up to find him standing next to the bed staring down at her. His face was coldly impassive, his arms crossed in front of him. He studied her bent form as if looking for a flaw. She gaped up at him.

“What?” she gasped. “But why would she leave? Her Rumspringa doesn’t end for another six months. She can’t just go!”

He shook his head slightly, his eyes remaining hard. “I do not know, Jane. It is her choice to leave though and we must respect that.”

She pushed to the edge of the bed, her bare toes reaching for the ground. “I need to go to her, convince her to stay!” she said hurriedly, leaning over for a hooded sweatshirt she’d tossed over the end of the bed. “At the very least I have to say goodbye.”

She was trying to shove the sweatshirt over her head and jump to her feet at the same time when Vlad plucked the shirt out of her hands and pushed her onto the bed with a hand on the shoulder. She tumbled back with a gasp of surprise and caught herself on an elbow.

“Hey!” she glared up at him.

“Are you not forgetting something, wife?” he asked coldly.

“No!” she hissed. “How can I forget what a barbaric asshole I’m married to when you keep pulling shit like this? But this is different, Vlad. This is my sister. You have to let me go see her.”

“No,” he replied calmly, taking in her sprawled form, “I don’t.”

“You would deny me the right to say goodbye to my only sister?” she asked incredulously. “Knowing how the Amish community works? Knowing how infrequently I’ll see her? What if they get wind of who you are and what you do for a living? Or what I do for that matter. I could so easily become shunned, Vlad. And then I would never see my sister again. Please, you have to let me go!”

He bent over the bed, his long, lean frame climbing right over top of her as he got in her space. He looked her in the eye and told her what she needed to know without words. The cruel press of his lips, the twitch of his jagged scar and the emptiness in his eyes told her she was more his captive now than she’d ever been. He didn’t care if she never saw Lucy again. He didn’t care if she rotted away in that cell, consumed with unhappiness, so long as he knew where she was. Always.

Fury tore through her and before she could think to recall her actions she threw her fist into his face. Of course, knowing his wife the way he did, he saw the move coming and caught her small hand easily in his much larger one. His lips twisted in a cruel smile.

She wiped the smile quickly away when she punched him in the throat with her other fist. It wasn’t her dominant hand, so the shot didn’t have as much emphasis as she was hoping, but it made her point. He growled in annoyance, but the growl quickly turned to a roar when she made it very clear that she wasn’t interested in having any more future children with him by ramming her knee toward his crotch.

Vlad moved quick enough that her knee went into his thigh, but his grunt of pain told her she’d scored enough of a hit for now. He released her hands for just a moment to adjust his grip and she went for his face. In that moment, Vlad came closer than he’d come to hitting Jane in more than a year. His hand swung back and the look on his face told them both that he would strike her if she didn’t back down. Jane dropped her hands and he took both of her wrists in one hand and slammed them into the bedding over her head, then straddled her body until she was helpless to do anything but glare up at him.

“Enough!” he roared. “I have had enough of these games where you purposely seek to harm our child. Why do you take such risks to yourself and to our unborn child, Jane?”

“I’m not taking risks!” she spat up at him. “You’re the one treating me like garbage and forcing me to constantly fight for my freedom!”

“If we were back home, where I grew up, I would have had every right to beat you or worse by now, Jane,” he said almost wearily.

“Then why don’t you?” she asked defiantly.

His hard eyes drifted down her body and stopped on her stomach. “I would not harm our child.” Jane blinked tears back and turned her head to the side so he couldn’t see how much his words hurt her. He continued speaking. “As you cannot seem to control yourself when it comes to your own safety and I can’t trust you to care for this child, it would seem that I have no choice but to take it from you once it’s born. I will make sure that it is raised with every luxury and as much love as can be given without a mother. You, my wife,” he leaned over her to speak in her ear, “will remain forever under lock and key. Because I cannot seem to stop this love that tears my soul apart, though you fight us both and the child growing within you.”

For a breathless moment she lay there unmoving, absorbing his terrible words. This was the man an entire city feared. The man that played with lives as though they meant little. He held her life in the palm of his hand and now his fingers were slowly closing, crushing her because she could never bring herself to heed the warnings.

“I’ll fight you,” she whispered, her head still to the side. Still refusing to look at him.

“I would expect nothing less,” he growled and leaned down to bite her jaw.

She gasped and tried to jerk away from him. He held her pinned underneath him and when she continued to try to squirm away he made an annoyed sound and began tugging her shorts down. “What the fuck are you doing?” she asked furiously.

“I’m going to fuck my wife,” he told her in a cold voice, yanking her shorts and panties completely off. “I have had enough of abstinence these past days.”

“Don’t you touch me!” she snapped, squirming underneath him.

He tore her T-shirt off without mercy and then pinned her to the bed with one large hand wrapped around her neck. She saw the Russian tattoos flashing around each of his fingers as his hand came for her throat. She yelped and grabbed onto his wrist with both hands. He was immoveable as he leaned over her completely naked body. She bit her lip to keep from whimpering at the sinister look in his eyes.

“You will not fight me, Jane, or I will chain you down and fuck you until you are docile. But you will find no pleasure in my methods,” he told her quietly, each syllable a cold statement so she would know exactly how serious he was. “Nod if you understand.”

She nodded immediately, terrified down to her core. She knew Vlad loved her, but she also knew he loved the child within her and that if she gave him no choice, he would do what he thought was best.

He reached between them to unbuckle his belt and unzip his pants. Jane pressed her palms flat against the soft covers of the bed and stared straight up at the concrete ceiling as Vlad pulled his long, hard cock from his trousers and lined himself up against her. She knew she wasn’t wet enough and, apparently, he guessed as much. He licked his fingers and ran them over her, thrusting them roughly into her. And then he was moving over top of her, one hand still on her throat, holding her down, the other guiding himself into her snug passage.

Jane moaned and arched into him to relieve the pressure. Vlad looked down at her as if expecting a fight. Jane shook her head and tried to look away, but he brought his hands up and held her head still, forcing her to look at him. Then he rocked his body into hers, slow and gentle at first, coaxing her into a response. She tried to fight him in the only way left to her, by remaining impassive. But his cock, sliding in and out, teasing a body that had been becoming progressively hornier as her pregnancy advanced made fighting him impossible.

Finally, Jane gave up all thoughts of laying impassive and lifted her arms from the bed, wrapping them around his broad shoulders, still clad in his shirt. She tilted her hips and joined his rhythm, driving him wild with every breathless moan and squeeze of her inner muscles. “Oh god,” she said breathless. “Going to come now!”

“No,” he commanded, gripping her jaw and forcing her to look up at him. “We come together, Jane. You got me?”

She frowned at him and shook her head, but his forceful words and his unreasonable demand made her pussy clamp down on his cock unbearably, forcing him toward the edge. “Blyad,” he snarled, dropping his head against her neck and biting down on the tender skin. “Little witch.”

She forced them both over the edge of orgasm with a shout. Vlad pumped himself into her hot, tight passage, now wet and silken with their combined fluids. He was careful not to collapse on top of her, but to move over to her side with a satisfied grunt.

After they calmed, Vlad pulled a blanket over Jane’s body. For one breathless moment she feared he would leave her like that. Have sex with her and then just leave her, used and alone in her bed in the dungeon. But he didn’t. He settled back against the headboard and lifted Jane so that she was laying between his legs with her head on his thigh. She made herself comfortable, glad that she wouldn’t be forced to look at him for the talk she knew they must have. His fingers sifted lightly through the soft strands of her black hair. It felt so good her eyes drifted shut with a contented sigh.

“What will it take to convince you to settle down, my love?” he asked, his voice gentler than before. “At least until after the birth.”

Her fingers clenched a little in his thigh where her hand rested under her chin. Tears started in her eyes. She opened her mouth to answer him and then choked on the words. She took several gulping breaths and tried again. “I-I don’t actually believe there will be a b-baby, Vlad,” she whispered, her voice breaking.

“Ah, I thought as much,” he murmured. He didn’t say anything for a few minutes, continuing his soothing strokes while she took in a few more shuddering breaths. “And this is why you continue to race around with such reckless disregard to your health?”

“I don’t know,” she answered honestly. “I hadn’t really thought it through. I guess, I can barely bring myself to believe I’m actually pregnant. I can’t seem to bring myself to believe… or… or to hope that I’ll carry this child to full term. I just know that I’ll die if anything happens to our baby, Vlad. I won’t survive it. So, I’d rather just carry on as if it doesn’t exist.”

Vlad nodded, and smoothed the hair back from her ear, tracing the shell with his fingertips. “This I can understand.”

She twisted her head around to look up at him in surprise. “You can?”

He chuckled. “Yes, my love. This need to pretend you don’t have a weakness growing within you is something I can relate to. It is very much the way I felt when my feelings for you were developing from obsession to love. If something were to happen to you then I know that I too would not survive.”

Her lips parted, and she searched his face. She reached up and traced his scar with her fingertip. “I feel that way about you too, Vladimir. You hold my heart. And I’m sorry I make things so difficult all the time.”

He gathered her into his arms and held her against his chest, burying his face in her hair. “Ah, my fucked up little love. I would not have you any other way. You are mine and I am keeping you, always.”