So this is what power feels like.

Did I really have it all this time without knowing?

Well, I’m going to wield it now, so look out. A lot of this empowerment is seeing the evidence of how much Sasha needs me. My Russian is a man of cold control, but right now, he’s the furthest thing from his usual self. The gray of his eyes is blocked out by the black of his dilated pupils, the veins in his neck seem to pulse. He’s whipping off his coat and shirt while staring me down like a lion over a lamb…and maybe I should be afraid. There is dangerous intention written all over him and it’s unfamiliar.

But I know he would never, ever hurt me. This man who would care for me through the rockiest periods of my life. This man who would build me a house because of my love for a book would die before harming me. He’s my man.

Yes, he’s mine. We have battle lines to draw, though. I’m drawing one right now, by letting him know he doesn’t dictate every single thing we do together. Next I’ll worry about college — oh, I’m going — but no way am I going to deprive us of finally coming together. Not when it has been so long in the making. And God, I’m shaking with the need to be possessed by Sasha.

It’s why I work my tank top over my head and unhook my bra clasp, lust closing in from all sides at the shudder of his huge chest, the Russian curses on his lips. “You have learned a valuable lesson this day, Anya. No? You and that little unfucked cunt are Uncle Sasha’s obsession. You aim to exploit me now by using it to get your way? Is that right?”

“M - maybe once in a while — ”

With a half laugh, half growl, he sheds his shirt, revealing a vicious wall of honed muscle and inked artwork and —

“Oh.” I suck in a breath and reach out to trace his marked skin. Skin I only glimpsed once through the foggy shower glass. “My name. It’s everywhere. All over you.”

“Da.” Reaching down between us, he unzips his pants and lets out his heavy erection with a groan. Taking the flesh in his right hand, he tilts his hips, letting me see the script low on his stomach. Right above the root of his manhood, my name is scripted in bold, black ink. “You own it all, angel. I’d rip out my heart and tattoo you there, if I could.”

“Sasha…” My own beating organ lodges in my throat, heat pushing behind my eyes. “But when we were in the library, you didn’t say you loved me back.”

He drops down above me on all fours. A panther prowling above his claim. “Ah, Anya. I’ve been telling you every day for years. With everything I do, I tell you I love you.” His mouth descends to feast on one breast, then the other, his lips and tongue made of magic. “Did you think I would take you to a Justin Bieber concert if I didn’t worship and love you with my very soul? Angel, my fucking ears were bleeding.”

I send a giggle up toward the sky. “I — ”

“Enough. Enough talk.” He rips my panties down my legs, licking his lips as my private flesh is bared. Bracing a forearm beside my head, he slides two fingers of the opposite hand inside me, arching my back off the grass. “I wanted to make this first time romantic, but it is proving even more difficult than I thought. I want to thrust into the tightness I’ve been dreaming about, Anya. I want to give it my cum.”

“I want that, too,” I whisper, throwing my arms up over my head. I’ve touched myself so many times with my own fingers and I could never make it feel this good — at least not this fast — but the pads of his fingers slide right over my clit, strumming it in a slow, rough fashion I didn’t know I needed. It’s possessive, knowing, right. His mouth finds mine, opening, our tongues stroking in long, breathless turns until I’m writhing on the ground. I’m so wet, so restless, I can’t stand it. “Condom. Quick. A - and then, can you just…”

“Nyet. No rubber.” His middle finger finds a sensitive place inside me that creates a ringing in my ears, pulsing heat beneath my belly button. “On this I will not negotiate.”

“Do you negotiate on anything?” I gasp.

Sasha’s mouth finds mine again as he positions himself between my legs. That incredibly huge part of him rests on my stomach, throbbing in time with my pulse and slowly, so slowly, he rolls his hips back, forward, dragging his steel length over my clit. “You were mine to breed the day we locked eyes. You knew this, did you not?” Sweat breaks out on his upper lip, his big, tattooed chest heaving, expanding. “Innocent or not, your body knew to tempt Uncle Sasha and no one else. You knew you’d make me a daddy one day in more ways than one.”

Did I know that deep down? Yes. I think so. There has never been a time when Sasha’s nearness didn’t cause a painful tug within my womb. Maybe it was the way he looked at me or protected me. Or maybe it was woman’s intuition. I don’t know. One thing is for certain, though, no matter what happens between us in this battle of wills, Sasha is my soul mate. I’ve loved him since I was thirteen. And I’ll love him until the end of time. He’s a hard, complicated man, but I’ll never find a better one. Or one who loves me more.

I close my eyes and imagine my belly swelling with his child and suck in a breath at the elemental yearning inside me. My hands lift to cage his face. “Daddy.”

Gray eyes flare with possession. “Now you understand, little angel.” Teeth bared, Sasha reaches down to fist his erection, guiding it to my entrance. When he forces the large head inside me with a grunt, there’s an uncomfortable stretching sensation, but I keep my gaze glued on the man above me as he speaks. “Be brave. My cock wants nothing more than to worship you, Anya.” More inches enter me, and I whimper, trying to close my thighs, but Sasha’s hips block me. “You will be rewarded for your pain.”

In one vicious thrust, Sasha buries his thick shaft inside me, tearing a scream from my throat. Sharp pain blooms between my legs, and I move involuntarily, trying to shove Sasha’s powerful body off mine. “It hurts, Daddy. Stop.”

He pins my flailing wrists above my head. “Lie still.” A great shudder passes through his chest, and he rears back, driving me up the grass with a ferocious buck of his hips. “Fuck. How can I keep from moving when you’re this perfect?”

“Try harder.”

With a gritted Russian curse, he gathers my knees in his hands and falls down on top of me, lodging his face in my neck. “Forgive me, angel. I’ve waited so long, imagined you from every angle, and still — still — my imagination didn’t do you justice.”

Automatically, my hands begin sifting through his hair, stroking down his back. I am powerless to do anything but comfort the man I love. “You’re just so huge.”

“Da,” he rasps. “The size will please you once you’ve been broken in.”

Breathing through my nose, I take stock of the pain, relieved to feel it abating. But with the lessening of my own pain, I can no longer ignore Sasha’s. He’s breathing like a man who just swam ashore from a shipwreck in the middle of the ocean. His limbs are full of tension, his hoarse exhalations heating my neck, but still he doesn’t move out of deference to me. “It’s better now,” I whisper in his ear. “Break me in, Daddy.”

The rope around his control disappears, and the dangerous man I always knew lurked beneath Sasha’s surface comes out to play. His eyes are animalistic as he shoves my thighs open and begins to pound himself into me. Even in the midst of the lingering discomfort, I can’t help but marvel at how he moves, confident and desperate all at once. Controlled but somewhat frantic. Frantic to…breed me.

“This teasing little pussy has driven me out of my mind,” he grits out, his face tipping toward the sky to shout my name. “Sitting on my lap. Cuddling Daddy’s cock through thin panties while you did your homework. You will learn now what you’ve tempted.”

For the next few minutes, I’m nothing but a plaything for his driving manhood. Sweat falls from his forehead onto my body, my face, his pumping body sleek and commanding. Relentless. There’s no gentleness now, only the proving of ownership. But as my teeth clack together, my breasts bouncing up and down, I can’t deny I love this sensation of my body being used to slake Sasha’s lust. It’s turning me on even more, the way his entire universe seems centered on where our bodies join. Over and over and over.

I open my legs even wider and take my nipples between my fingers, playing with them. A hot zing of pleasure travels to the flesh at the juncture of my thighs, and I gasp. “Oh.”

Through a haze of need, I meet Sasha’s half - mast eyes before allowing my attention to travel down his flexed chest and abdomen muscles, the dozens of versions of my name. When I reach the spot where Sasha rams himself in and out of me, I watch his thumb settle on my clit, loving it with a series of jiggles and strokes. “Cover Daddy’s cock in your sweetness, little angel. You will be taking my cum soon and I want your body receptive.”

“Yes, yes…” My inner walls begin to spasm around the hard invasion of Sasha. “Yes.”

“Good girl.” He suctions his mouth to mine in a wet tongue kiss, and a loud rumble begins in his chest, eventually releasing from his lips. “You will take now.” Tensing, he throws his head back and moans. “Take.”

I’m still in the throes of my climax when I’m flooded between the legs. There’s no other way to describe it. Sasha overflows me with his hot, sticky essence and continues to pound, pound, pound, growling at the sky with eyes clenched shut. It goes on for so long, more and more liquid sliding down the insides of my thighs and pooling beneath my bottom, that I have another orgasm, my back arching off the ground as I scream.

When I’m pulled into Sasha’s arms some time later, a blessed, comfortable blackness is already creeping in to claim me. “I love you, Sasha,” I murmur, turning my face into his mighty chest. “I love you so much that I have to fight until we get our life exactly right.”

“I love you more than should be humanly possible, Anya.” He stands and lays a lingering kiss on my forehead. “But do not fight me, for we are already exactly right.”

Ignoring my sense of apprehension, I drift into a deep sleep as he carries me to the house. Our house.