His Pretend Baby

by Theodora Taylor

  Sam quickly brought her eyes up from the dangerous bulge inside his briefs and forced herself to keep her eyes on his face as opposed to his magnificent body as she asked, “Where’s all my stuff?”

  “Hello, Samantha,” he said, giving her wedding dress a once over so sensual, she wondered if he could tell she hadn’t bothered to with a bra when she’d hastily put it back on before coming down the hallway to confront him.

  “Don’t call me that,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest.

  “You do not want me to call you Samantha, and I do not want to call you by boy’s name,” he said, his gaze becoming a lazy perusal. “I will have to simply call you ‘wife.’”

  He pulled the door open wider for her, revealing a bedroom dripping in gold

  baroque fixtures, dark red furniture, marble floors… and one incredibly large bed.

  “Come in, Wife.”

  “Where’s my stuff?” she demanded again, refusing to look at the bed.

  “In our room, where it belongs,” he answered. “Anna brought your things here during wedding.”

  “What?” Sam took a step back in shock.

  Nikolai’s hooded gaze suddenly froze over, as if her surprise offended him, and Sam wondered what he’d expected her reaction would be.

  “You share my room. That is our agreement, da?”

  Yes they had agreed to that, she thought, thinking back to their conversation in his office bathroom. But… “I thought you meant after the baby came.”

  “You thought wrong,” he said in cold reply. Then he stepped back and opened the door wider. “Come in.”

  26

  FORCING the issue of Samantha coming to his bed had seemed like a good idea. At first.

  Nikolai was perfectly aware she’d believed she wouldn’t have to come to his room until after the baby was born. But the thought of her sleeping down the hall, so grateful she could spend the next eight months away from him, stuck in his craw with a bitter after taste he could not abide.

  No, if she wanted to deny the attraction between them, to pretend what had happened the night their baby was conceived had been a case of him taking advantage of her scared state, then she would have to do so in his bed.

  And he’d felt vindicated by the flash of desire he’d seen in her eyes when he’d come to the door in his briefs. However, she’d only allowed him a short moment of restored pride before visibly recoiling when he announced Anna had already moved her things to his room.

  Apparently his new wife didn’t agree that he was “The Most Desirable Hockey Player on the Planet” as Bleacher Magazine had named him in the previous year’s “Hottest Players” issue. He opened the door wider anyway. Nikolai didn’t back down on the rare occasion a hockey player bigger than him came his way, and he refused to let his new wife’s reluctance to share his bed deter him.

  Sam came into the room, eyeing him like he was a tiger and this was his den.

  “Your clothes are in there,” he said, indicating the large antique wardrobe he’d cleared out for her things.

  With much huffing and puffing, she pulled out some clothes before disappearing into his bathroom.

  Nikolai turned off all the lights except for the lamp on his nightstand and got into bed, settling in for a long wait. Nikolai’s master bath was somewhat of an architectural marvel with its marbled walls, heated floors, and crystal chandelier that perfectly underlit a thirty-foot frescoed ceiling. In his experience, woman who went in to “freshen up” stayed a little longer than expected to gape.

  Sam, however, was in and out in under five minutes, reappearing in a pair of unflattering red sweats with Indiana University’s famous logo emblazoned across its bosom-obscuring front.

  “I’ll be sleeping on top of the blankets,” she informed him as she climbed into his bed. Then she immediately gave him her back.

  Nikolai gritted his teeth and turned off the lamp for another first: sleeping, and only sleeping, next to a woman.

  But she was here, he told himself as he yanked the covers up over his shoulder. By his side and in his bed, which was where a wife belonged. That was enough for now, he thought, lying awake in the dark long after she’d fallen asleep. It would have to be.

  * * *

  But it wasn’t enough.

  The next morning when Nikolai woke, he found himself in bed alone. His wife’s scent, a mixture of whatever she used in her hair and the perfume she’d spritzed on for the wedding, lingered, filling up his nose. But her side of the bed was now empty.

  Dread icicled its way up his chest. He was a naturally early riser and Sam had never gotten up before him. Not once.

  He rushed out of the room, not stopping even long enough to throw on a robe. Alarm bells rang loud in his head as he bounded down the hallway and pushed open the door to his wife’s old room. She wasn’t there, and the icicles inside his chest turned sharp, spiking into his heart as he went across the way to Pavel’s room, throwing open his nephew’s door.

  Pavel’s room was empty, too.

  Nikolai bolted downstairs, needing them to be at breakfast. Hoping to the God he’d never bothered with that they were in the kitchen, eating bowls of cereal.

  He stopped short in the kitchen doorway, his heart freezing with horror inside his chest.

  Because the only one sitting at the island was his father, Sergei.

  His father smiled at him in that predatory way of his. “Nikolai, you finally woke up. I thought you would sleep all day.”

  “Where are they?” Nikolai demanded.

  “Where is who?” Sergei asked him in Russian. “Only I’m here. Come with me now. I have a job for you.”

  “Tell me where they are,” Nikolai growled, stepping forward, only to feel something slick underneath his feet.

  He looked down. Blood. A puddle of it, covering his bare feet. For a moment, Nikolai couldn’t speak for the fear clogging up his throat.

  But eventually he looked back up at his smirking father. “If you’ve hurt them…”

  “You will what?” Sergei asked with an arrogant laugh. “Kill me? You had your chance and now you are powerless to do that to me, boy.”

  It was hard to fully process Sergei’s words through his near blinding rage, but Nikolai managed to choke out. “Where are they? Tell me.”

  Sergei’s voice suddenly turned dark. “You know where they are, you sniveling boy,” he sneered. “A black grandchild and a black wife for my only son? You knew I wouldn’t allow that. They are exactly where they should be now. At the bottom of river with four shots in each of their bodies.”

  His father, who’d taken nearly every other family member who mattered to him had now taken his wife. His nephew. And his unborn child.

  “No!” Nikolai roared. Despair tore through his insides and his entire body went cold with the realization he’d never see Pavel or his wife again. Never hold the baby he and his wife had created in his arms.

  The next thing Nikolai knew, his hands were around his father’s thick neck “Bastard. Bastard!!”

  His father only laughed, as if Nikolai’s choking hands were but a necklace around his muscular throat. “No, there is only one bastard here.”

  “Nikolai…” Samantha’s voice said somewhere in the distance.

  Nikolai let go of his father’s neck, his head whipping from side to side. That was his wife’s voice. But how? She was dead!

  “Nikolai!” Her voice again, so close, but he couldn’t see her.

  Sergei laughed behind him, a mean, cackling sound. “It is her ghost, boy. I put two bullets into her chest and two more into her kneecaps. The Rustanov way. I was not sloppy this time. And then I did same to fake Rustanov you were trying to make your son.”

  “No!” Nikolai yelled, his chest exploding with grief and guilt that he’d let this sadistic demon anywhere near Samantha or Pavel. That he hadn’t able to protect them from Sergei, just like he hadn’t been able to protect his mother and brother.

  “Nikolai!” his wife�
�s ghost called to him again. She sounded frantic, worried.

  More derisive laughter from Sergei as if Nikolai in his despair was the funniest thing he’d ever seen. “You will never have what you want, boy. You will never have a family. You will never be rid of me,” he informed Nikolai.

  Then his father slapped him.

  But this action only served to confuse Nikolai. Not because it happened, but because the slap wasn’t that bad—almost on the dainty side. Also, Sergei didn’t slap. He backhanded.

  That one detail alone made Nikolai realize…

  He opened his eyes and found Samantha hovering above his prone body, her face pinched with worry.

  “Are you okay?” she asked. “I’m sorry about slapping you. I tried everything else to wake you up, but—”

  In one abrupt move, he sat up and hauled her into his arms. She was alive! The first light of morning had come through the bedroom’s arched bow windows, casting a yellow halo around her beautiful face. And she was here, in his bed with him. Still.

  “It’s okay,” she said. “You had a nightmare. It was just a nightmare.”

  Her arms came up around his shoulders and to his great embarrassment, an involuntary shudder went through his entire body. Then another. And another.

  He’d thought she was dead. He’d thought his father had killed her. He was trembling now, he realized. Like the scared boy his father had accused him of being in the dream. The opposite of the man he wanted to be for his wife and Pavel.

  “It’s okay,” she whispered into his ear. “Just hold on to me until it stops. I’m here for you. I’m here.”

  As much as he wanted to end the hug, to pull away and show her he wasn’t some helpless boy, he couldn’t. Just couldn’t. In fact, he held on to her tighter, desperately grasping at every word she whispered into his ear until he stopped shaking. And even after that, he kept holding her as his heart rate slid back down and eventually he was able to breathe again, not suck in air like a cosmonaut with a broken helmet.

  “It’s okay. It was just a nightmare, just a nightmare,” she said again when he’d finally calmed down all the way.

  She leaned back from him and stroked the hair that was now damp with cold sweat away from his forehead. “Do you want to tell me about your nightmare? It might help to talk—”

  He captured her lips, his desperate mouth licking into hers with an urgent need that couldn’t wait for permission. One hand anchored at the back of her neck, keeping her lips fused to his as the other hand grabbed on to her hips, tugging her left leg over his waist so that… yes, her hot center was now exactly where it needed to be.

  A complete erection soon followed, so instantaneous, the pain of it sent him into auto-pilot. He flipped her over, putting her beneath him. She was alright. It had only been a nightmare. But he had to make sure. He needed to get inside her, to bury himself in her sweet warmth.

  “Let me in,” he heard himself begging. “I need you. I need you, zhena.”

  Her soft moan was all the permission he needed.

  One moment there was still a pair of sweat pants between them and the next, they were no longer a concern, pushed down and yanked off. He disposed of his own briefs and then he was back on top of her, guiding himself into her slick, clenching wetness and taking what he needed to erase the nightmare.

  Her hands gripped his side and her legs veed wide to let him in, accommodating him on top of her in a way he’d had no reason to hope for. Gratitude, piercing and unexpected, welled up inside him and he closed his eyes as he rolled into her tight sanctuary, reveling in her body.

  And what had started with him getting what he needed from her suddenly did a 180. Nikolai fell over her, claiming her lips again as he slowed down his thrusts. He wanted to pay her back for the gift of her soft comfort. He wanted to make her feel good, better than good.

  He was soon rewarded for his efforts when she groaned. “Oh, God, that’s so good. So good. Fuck me, fuck me. Please keep going. It’s so good…”

  And though he’d been wild to have her just a few minutes before, to drive himself into her until he reached completion, he found he didn’t mind the slower pace at all. He relished her helpless cries and the way the heels of her feet dug into his buttocks as he forced the top she was wearing up and over her breasts.

  She wasn’t wearing a bra underneath and Nikolai took a moment to admire the sight. One moment. Before devouring it. He inhaled one perfect globe into his mouth, biting down as he worked the hard bud with his tongue, all the while stroking into her, stroking into her until…

  She came apart with a sharp gasp, her fingernails digging into his sides as she went rigid underneath him with her climax.

  Maybe he would have been able to last longer if he hadn’t had the nightmare. If her cries of completion hadn’t been the proof he needed to fully believe she was truly there with him, alive and unharmed, maybe he could have gone on like that in her warmth just a little while longer.

  But as it was, he didn’t want to be away from her. Not even in this. His head lifted from her chest and he erupted, once again filling her with his seed, so much so that he could feel the hot, slick action on his own shaft as he emptied out inside of her.

  When he fell back on top of her, he was once again shuddering, but this time not because of any nightmare.

  This time it was because of a dream come true.

  “Zhena…” he said, kissing her neck. “Moya zhena…”

  27

  “JENNA,” Nikolai said against her neck. Sam stiffened, her eyes flying open. Who was Jenna? And why was he calling her by another woman’s name?

  But then he kissed her neck. And said, “Moya Jenna.”

  No, not a name, she realized. Russian, he was speaking to her in Russian.

  She opened her mouth to ask him what “jenna” meant, only to have it seized again. But this time his kiss wasn’t desperate or harsh, like the one that had shocked the hell out of her earlier. This one was a soft exploration, almost as if he were trying to get to know her better through her lips.

  The kiss made her feel like she was in high school again, tentatively leaning forward to surprise her AP Chemistry lab partner, Anthony Collison, with a kiss the bespectacled black nerd hadn’t been expecting. Nikolai’s kiss made her feel like she had back then, when she truly believed something beautiful might be waiting on the other of all the ugliness at home.

  Hopeful. That’s how Nikolai’s kiss made her feel.

  At least for a second or two. Then her stepfather’s slurred voice broke through her afterglow. “You think that boy’s in love with you? Check your damn head, girl. He using you for that ass,” he said when she announced she’d be moving in with Anthony. “He want to put that ass on tap!”

  Nikolai finished the kiss with a satisfied smile. There was no trace of the man who’d shaken in her arms, helpless shudders racking his entire body.

  “Thank you,” he said, his voice low. “For helping me with nightmare.”

  He sat up. “Pavel will be up soon, but after he goes to school…” He gave her knowing look. “We do this again, da?”

  “You’re just a piece of ass, far as any of these boys concerned, and that’s all you ever going to be to them,” her stepfather said inside her head. It had been the last thing he’d said to her before she moved out.

  Shame, ugly and hot, rolled her stomach.

  Nikolai frowned at her. “You have morning sickness again?”

  “No,” she answered, rubbing a hand over her aching chest. “I… it’s just…” With shaking hands, she pulled her college sweatshirt back down over her breasts and climbed out of bed.

  “You’re right,” she said, tugging on the sweatshirt and wishing it were a few inches longer so it could cover her naked bottom. “I- I should get up. G-get myself ready. M-make Pavel breakfast.”

  Nikolai regarded her from underneath his hooded stare. “You have much trouble speaking sometimes after we kiss. You are like woman from kind of film—you
know, kind of movie where woman falls in love with man and then trips and falls down many times. How do you say that kind of movie?”

  “Romantic comedies,” she mumbled, pulling on the sweatpants she found discarded next to the bed as fast as she could. “Rom coms.”

  “Yes, rom coms,” he said from the bed. “You have trouble with your words like those women. Why?”

  “Probably because I haven’t had my coffee yet,” she answered, keeping her eyes down as she headed toward the bathroom.

  “Or maybe it is because… zhena, turn around. Look at me.”

  There was that name again. But this time she heard the nuance. A zh sound, not a J. What did it mean? she wondered as she turned to look back at him.

  Which was a total mistake. All the breath left her body. There was sexy, and then there was Nikolai Rustanov sitting on top of that big bed of his. His hair tousled on top of his head, his chiseled chest on full display, his legs spread apart so you’d have to be blind as Beau not to notice the large erection in between his legs. Standing at attention, and still glistening from having been inside her.

  Despite the pounding it had already received that morning, her sex throbbed in response to the sight of him. She refocused on his overly handsome, but not nearly as discomfiting, face and waited for him to say whatever he wanted to say.

  But he didn’t speak for a few long seconds, just stared, his eyelids so heavy they verged on dangerous, even though he was technically smiling. Technically. The sides of his mouth were quirked up, so she guessed that counted.

  “I make you nervous,” he finally finished, scanning her body with smirking assessment.

  “Ya think?” she answered in her best Captain Obvious voice. “I mean, you’ve got the muscles, the looks, and the, you know…” she circled her hand around her face. “The whole dead-eyed stare thing going. I think you make a lot of people nervous. On purpose.”

  His gaze shifted to the side as if he was giving her words careful consideration. “Yes, I often make women nervous.” His eyes came back to her. “But I do not want to make you nervous, zhena. That is not what I want to do with you.”