“You are going to ask me for one of two things, Natasha,” he said evenly, ice dripping from every word. “And I will give you neither.”

“W-what are those?” she whispered as bravely as she could, stumbling a little over the words.

“You either want me to let you go,” he snarled, his voice rising ever so slightly, his body stiffening as he stepped slightly away from the counter toward her, looming closer.

She shook her head, trying to assure him, frightened at what she saw in his eyes. Death, always the death. His heart and mind were drifting beyond her reach once more. “No, David!” she said quickly. “I wasn’t going to ask that!”

He tilted his head slightly in a nod, his glacial gaze pinning her in place. She shivered in fear, wondering how this evening could have taken such a drastic turn. She had been determined to direct the conversation with an easy charm and grace, pulling him under her spell so he would have no choice but to acquiesce to her plea. Instead, she now felt as though she were being hunted, though there was only a tiny space separating them. He was in control of the direction of the conversation. It was the story of their marriage. He was her older husband, always the dominant one ready to swoop in and oppress his young wife when she became unruly. Tasha wanted to protest the injustice, but the look on his face denied any leeway.

Any warmth that had previously suffused their cozy cabin was now absent. He took another step toward her. Unable to help herself, Tasha took a hurried step back, her ass bumping against the table. She glanced over her shoulder. Their half-filled wineglasses and a few dishes were still scattered across the surface. She raised fearful eyes toward David, gripping the table tightly, her knuckles whitening, giving away her nerves.

“If you aren’t going to ask for your freedom, then you are going to ask me to quit working,” he said with quiet menace. He raised an eyebrow at her shock. “Da, am I not correct, Natasha? Is this not what has occupied your thoughts?”

She gasped and jerked against the table when he reached for her. His hand paused midair before proceeding to brush the hair off her forehead. He was being gentle with her. Too gentle. She could feel the barely leashed violence within. Tension vibrated in the space between them, drawn out by the long silences as she tried to gather the courage to speak. She reminded herself that she was no longer that young inexperienced virgin he had plucked out of the Bolshoi and forced into a whirlwind relationship. She was a wife. She could demand things of her husband.

The question was, could she demand things of an assassin?

She licked her lips and raised her chin. “Da, David. You are correct. I-I wanted to ask you to find another career. To stop h-hurting people. We’re building a life here and it is wonderful.” She raised her eyes, forcing herself to meet his hard gaze without flinching. “Please, you must see as well as I the differences in our lives, then from now. We aren’t running around the world, hiding in the shadows. We’re… happy.”

Her voice trailed off. She knew she was right. They had been happy this past month. Even when David was punishing her, they were still settling into some kind of domestic routine that was unlike anything they had previously known. If he continued to kill for a living, then everything in their current insulated little world would come crashing down. She had no doubt.

But the look on his face, the set to his shoulders, told her more eloquently than words that her speech was a failure.

“And what exactly am I supposed to do, little dancer?” he asked coldly, crossing his arms. “Chop wood all day?”

Annoyance sparked her temper, giving her a brief reprieve from her fear. “Don’t be like that,” she pleaded sharply. “There are many things you can do. So many jobs you can apply for. And even if you can’t or aren’t interested, I’m sure you have more than enough money to keep us in groceries and fire wood for years and years. We lived in the lap of luxury when we were travelling the world… before. You bought me jewels and clothes, things I don’t even really care about. You know you could just settle down here and live a quiet life off your… proceeds.”

The edge of his lip lifted in a cruel sneer. “Blood money, you mean. Don’t be coy, Natasha. Not when you are being so refreshingly honest with me.”

Her stomach twisted and she flinched a little, but she nodded all the same. He was right, she may as well be honest with him. They were living off his blood money. He’d bought the cabin and built her beautiful little studio with the money he took from killing other people. “Very well, yes,” she whispered, then lifted her eyes to meet his once more, begging him to take her up on her offer. “Why not, David?”

He stepped closer to her, not quite touching, but giving her the sense that she was caged nonetheless. He was not a massive man, but large enough that he outweighed his wife by a fair amount. He moved with a fluid grace that almost equaled hers. Many times in the past she thought he could have been a dancer of some talent if his life had followed a similar path to hers. She had no doubt he could easily come upon and eliminate his targets without their ever knowing he was near.

“Why not?” he repeated, his voice both musing and mocking.

Her rapidly beating heart began to sink. He never intended to give her hopes any credence. Still, she had to try. “Please, David.” She reached out daringly and took his hand in hers. “It can work!”

“it won’t work!” he snarled, jerking his hand from hers. “You are a fool, rebonok.”

She flinched when he called her child. This was no endearment, but an insult meant to cut. She cowered back against the table as he towered above her, clearly intent on finishing their conversation. She tried to bring a hand up to instinctively cover her ear, not wanting to hear any more of his painful insults, but he jerked her hand down and held it in a hard grip.

“Men of my profession do not just quit. We do not simply disappear into the wilderness,” he stated, his voice quiet but deadly. Each word was like a bullet to her heart. “We do this job for life. It is kill or be killed and that is the end of it. You were the one aberration I have allowed in my life. You have already brought enough danger to me. Now you will close your mouth and not spout such stupid, dangerous things.”

Tears burst forth without her permission. His cruelty was almost too much to bear. She tried to lurch past him, but he trapped her against the table, holding her hips in a bruising grip. He took her chin and forced her face up to his. Dark eyebrows swooped low over angry eyes. A sob escaped her lips as tears dripped steadily down her cheeks. She brought her palms up and pressed them against her eyes. He took both of her wrists and pulled them down. She gasped.

“Look at me,” he snapped and then demanded, “Tell me you understand what I am saying, woman. Because I will be dragging your ass on these jobs with me. I cannot trust you here alone. I need to know that you understand how things are going to be or you’ll find yourself handcuffed and gagged in a lot of hotel rooms in the future.”

Anger flooded through her, giving her some relief from the fear and misery. What an mu’dak! He was denying her the happy ever after she so badly wanted, forcing her to stand in front of him like a child while she was unable to control her stupid tears and now he wanted confirmation that she understood he was completely and utterly a heartless prick. She tilted her head back, narrowed her eyes at him, then twisted and jerked her wrists down the way Jordan had taught her, forcing David to break his hold.

“Otva ’li, mu’dak!” she hissed up into his face, using Russian to emphasize her fury. Get the fuck off, asshole. “I understand perfectly, David. I understand that I don’t want you touching me anymore. You don’t get to treat me like this and then touch me again. Sleep alone from now on.”

She rushed past him, storming toward their bedroom, intent on locking herself inside. She barely made it a hairsbreadth past David when his hand clamped down on her arm, whirling her back around to face him in a twisted facsimile of a dance. She gasped and brought her hand up to his chest to steady herself, her feet turned quickly, gracefully on the hardwood floor so her ankle wouldn’t twist. For a split second the ice in his face gave way to scalding rage.

“Brat!” he snarled down at her, his lips pulled back, his teeth clenched. “You don’t get your way so you think you can withhold your body until you do? Is that your childish plan?”

She glared up at him and tried to pull away, knowing it was hopeless, but trying anyway. His hand tightened on her arm until she cried out. “Nyet, David, that was not my plan! I just don’t want you anymore.”

“No?” he asked with such quiet menace that Tasha knew she had taken her defiance too far. She’d unleashed something new in her husband. Something she’d not previously seen before. “I don’t care what you want, Natasha. You do not tell me where and when I touch my wife.”

She stared at him, anger giving way to fear. Shivers racked her body as the threat grew between them until she thought she might collapse. Her breath came out in short bursts until she was almost dizzy from lack of oxygen. “David, please,” she whispered. “I’m sorry…”

He shook his head and ran a finger down her cheek before tapping it against her lips. “Perhaps, moya zhena. It doesn’t matter. I want what is mine.”

“Nyet, David, nyet! Not like this!” she pleaded, trying to reach him. “Please let’s just talk! I don’t want…”

She cried out as he wordlessly turned toward the table, swept the remaining dishes from the surface and then ruthlessly bent her face down over the surface. She tried shoving herself back up, but she was no match for his strength. He took her arms, pulled them back and pinned them against her waist in one hand. He pushed her skirt up with the other, pulled her panties down her thighs and forced her to step out of them. She heaved and rocked against the table while he forcibly subdued her.

Then he did the worst thing she could imagine. Instead of just taking her like she thought he would, he laid his broad chest against her back, pinning her down, reached between their bodies and began to play with her, bringing her body relentlessly, ruthlessly alive against her will. She sobbed into the table, begging him to stop, to release her and let her go. He used her body against her until she reached such a fevered pitch that she was no longer trying to pull away from him. She began begging for the opposite, pleading for his possession. Then he released her wrists, unbuckled his belt and unzipped his pants. He pulled her hips back and slammed his cock into her tight sheath, forcing a scream from her lips and more tears from her already swollen eyes.

He fucked her savagely against the edge of the table, shoving her pussy into the hard wood until she was thrashing to both escape the pain and come from the incredible pressure building up inside her. He wrapped one fist in the back of her dress and pushed her hard against the table, knowing she was very close to exploding.

“David!” she screamed as an explosion of black and white stars shot through her vision.

He wrapped an arm around her waist, lifted her off the table and kept pumping into her from behind, burying himself as deep as he could in his woman’s body. She thrashed against him as her orgasm swept her higher. He groaned into her neck, biting into the fabric of her dress and then deeper into her flesh until she screamed and came again, her pussy spasming around his cock. He wanted to come with her, but he wasn’t done teaching her not to fucking question him. Not to withhold her body from him. Ever.

He slammed her forward, back over the table, bending her until her ass was lifted as high as it would go with him still buried inside her. She cried out and clutched the edge of the table. He shoved her dress up, baring most of her back. He reached underneath her, gathered her slick wetness onto his fingers and moved his hand to her perfect little asshole.

He knew his wife had been raised in a strict Catholic household. She was shy about sex when he had first taken her, though she had opened up to his many demands quickly. He would not allow her to be any other way. He had allowed her time when it came to anal sex. He had always intended to eventually initiate her into the dark pleasures to be had therein. Unfortunately, she had run before he’d gotten the chance. Now she was out of time. And she would take her introduction to this exquisite torment as punishment.

He rubbed his finger over the tiny rosebud, taking sinister pleasure in her shocked gasp and the way she jumped in his arms, crying out in protest. “Nyet, David,” she yelled, “not that, please!” she reached back to shove his hand away.

He leaned forward to say silkily in her ear, just as he slid the tip of his finger into her ass, “Da, Natasha, this, and everything else I choose to give you.”

She screamed long and loud as he used the fluid he’d gathered from her pussy to force his finger all the way into her tight back passage. She panted and squirmed while he gripped her by the neck, pinning her down against the table. He held her until she finally stilled beneath him. When she was no longer protesting his invasion, he began moving his finger in and out of her. Her gasps of dismay quickly turned to moans of pleasure and soon she was rocking her ass backwards to meet the thrusts of his hand.

Unable to hold out any longer, David joined her, rocking his hips against hers, fucking her against the table once more. He filled her pussy with his cock while fucking her ass with his finger, taking his wife in a way he’d never taken her before. Filling her, forcing her to reach for new heights as her orgasm crashed down on her and her pussy squeezed his dick harder than ever. He threw his head back, gritted his teeth and slammed himself deep, gaining access to her cervix. She screamed again as he nudged her womb. He didn’t fucking care. She belonged to him. He emptied himself into her hotly spasming channel as she lay whimpering underneath him.

He stayed buried for another minute, watching the woman he’d just fucked into submission. She was curled on top of their table, her arms wrapped around her torso, her eyes closed. A single tear escaped her lashes and trailed down her cheek. He watched it dispassionately. She needed to learn. It was safer if she knew her place in his life. In their lives.

He pulled out of her body. A tiny sound escaped her and she shuddered. He gathered her in his arms and carried her through the cabin to their bedroom, laying her down on the bed. He climbed in with her, crawling over top of her, caging her. He tilted her chin up. Her eyes fluttered open and she looked at him with confusion and a little trepidation.

“You will never threaten me again, Natasha,” he said with deadly intensity. He sealed his promise with a bite to her lip, before settling his body against her back and tucking a blanket over both of them.