As Nikolai would say, of course he did.
She looked at him with tears and wonder in her eyes. So afraid to believe after all she’d seen and been through that the man sitting next to her was really offering her a happy ending. But…
“You love me?” she asked. Her heart trembled, as did her hand when she reached out to cup his cheek like he’d cupped hers a few minutes ago. “You love me like I love you?”
He immediately covered her hand with his much larger one, and pressed his face further into her palm, as if her touch, and only her touch, could soothe the wild hurt inside him.
“Zhena, zhena…” he said, his voice cracking with emotion. “How you not know?”
She had no idea, and tears began to roll down her face because she was so ashamed. Ashamed of not guessing it sooner, of cutting their trip short.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry for not realizing.”
The apology was barely out of her mouth before she was in the air, being ferried across the cabin in Nikolai’s fireman carry and through the door to the neglected rear bedroom. His manner was urgent, but when they got to the bed, Nikolai set her down gently, once again unbuttoning her blouse, this time with great care, before he stripped out of his own clothes.
Sam watched him get naked with heavy anticipation, all the while her mind screaming like a teenage girl, “He loves me! He loves me! He really loves me!”
As if reading her mind, he said, “Da, I love you, zhena.” Then he crawled into the large bed and covered her body with his before bracing himself above her on one arm. “But I must get inside you now. Please, I beg you.”
To his credit, he waited for her answer, keeping his hard length still at the entrance of her once again very slick folds.
“I want you inside of me,” she answered. “I love you so much, Nikolai. Please—” She didn’t have to finish her own beg. He reached down between them, and then…
Sam threw her head back with a moan. He was inside her. So thick and heavy, she could actually feel the pulse of his member against her inner walls. He rolled into her, carefully at first, until he found a rhythm that kept the stem of his cock against her clit as he thrust into her.
It was good, so good. Even better than before, because she didn’t have to bite her tongue about the way he made her feel. “I love you so much, Nikolai. So much. I’m sorry I didn’t realize…”
“Muzehnek,” he said harshly into the back of her neck. “Call me muzehnek when you say you love me from now on.”
“I love you, muzehnek,” she repeated, though she still had no idea what that word actually meant. Her heart soared into the sky. It was if she’d had a rubber band around it for all her life, and now Nikolai Rustanov had finally set it free.
But the words didn’t have the effect she expected. Instead of going all out, Nikolai came to an abrupt stop, reaching out to cup a hand around her neck, anchoring it so she could look at nothing else but his grave face as he said, “I love you, too, zhena.” Harsh and low, like he’d never been more serious about anything in his life. “You believe me, da?”
She nodded, too choked up to answer with words.
But Nikolai wanted the words. Seemed to need them as he insisted, “You believe me and you will stay with me? Always?”
“Da,” she whispered.
A happy smile spread over Nikolai’s face like sunshine on a gloomy winter day. It felt like that one word from her had made him the happiest man on earth, and that in turn made her feel like the luckiest woman in the world.
He started moving again, filling her deep and tight, as he silently drove himself into her, his hand still cupped around her neck. No more words were exchanged after that, and eventually they fell over the edge together, in silent communion, as an ocean of complete and utter ecstasy washed over them both.
He kept their bodies connected for as long as possible, bracing himself above her, and gracing her lips and neck with tender kisses until he finally went soft inside of her. Even then, he didn’t seem to want to let her go. He lay down, still holding on to her, even as he positioned himself behind her. He settled a hand over the gentle swell of her stomach, as if he were sheltering both their child and her in his large arms.
And Sam had to blink back more tears. She was still having trouble processing all of this. That she had somehow stumbled into a loving relationship with a man who understood her on the deepest levels, a beautiful man who forced her to communicate with him through mind-blowing sex—
“I will never call you Samantha,” he said behind her. “Never again.”
“What…? What changed your mind on that subject,” she asked.
“Pavel told me reason. About your stepfather calling you by that name. I don’t care if it sounds like I love another man. I will only call you Sam in future. Sam or zhena.”
She was going to get Pavel something insanely nice for Christmas this year, Sam decided. Like his own pony. Or maybe a trip to Disneyworld.
“Thank you,” she whispered in the dark.
“Please do not thank me for this. Of course, I would do this for you.”
He asked nicely, so she didn’t thank him again. Instead she gave thanks to Pavel and whatever other spiritual force had decided to bless her with this man.
The sky had darkened outside the plane’s small window, leaving the little room dim, with only the barest hints of sunlight. Sleep began to drag at Sam’s eyes,
But there was still one thing she had to know before she let her inner dreams take over the one she and Nikolai had created in the real world.
“What does ‘zhena’ mean?” she asked. “Is it some really cutesy term of endearment? Like flower, or honey, or kitten?”
His unfamiliar laugh sounded then, a deep rumble against her back. “Do you remember what I said to you when you come to my door on our wedding night?”
You do not want me to call you Samantha, and I do not want to call you by boy’s name. I will have to simply call you ‘wife’… Come in, Wife.”
Now Sam laughed, realizing out loud, “Zhena is Russian for wife! And muzehnek is Russian for husband.”
“Da…” he answered.
And this time she said it with him, “Of course!”
Epilogue
“I think I should move back to the guest room.”
Nikolai lowered the Russian version of What to Expect the First Year, which he was almost done reading. He put it on his nightstand before turning in bed to face his wife who was sitting up in their bed.
“Zhena…” he growled, fully prepared to do battle.
“No, no, just hear me out. You’ve got a lot going on right now with the new hockey season starting this month, and I know I’ve been keeping you up. If I moved back to the guest room, then you wouldn’t have to put up with me tossing and turning because I can’t find a comfortable position. And also, you’d have more space in bed. I mean…. look at me. I’m basically a beached whale.”
He did look at her. Nearly full term with a thin sheen of sweat covering her forehead, despite the fact that it was fall and the air conditioner was set at a freezing sixty-five with the fan rotating on high overhead. Luckily he was Russian and could handle the lower temperature. He’d had to give Pavel one of the winter quilts, and had thrown an old blanket over Back Up.
So yes, his wife was huge, and a bit sweaty. But he’d still put her up against any rail thin super model as the most beautiful woman in the world.
“You are uncomfortable, zhena,” he said. “I will help you.”
“No, you don’t have to—”
Too late. He rolled over to her side of the bed, and his head was between her legs before she could finish her protest.
“You really don’t have to do this every time I complain about…” Sam moaned. “Oh God, why are you so good at that?” she asked. Her hands came to rest in his hair, and he could see her head falling back against the pillow rest she jokingly referred to as “her other muzehnek.”
It wasn’t a jok
e he was particularly fond of but it showed how much he’d grown that instead of throwing the thing out when his zhena wasn’t looking, he used his ire as an excuse to redouble his efforts to make her comfortable in ways that a standing pillow could not.
Tonight was no different and he was soon rewarded for his efforts with his favorite sight: his wife rubbing on her full breasts with her eyes closed, tweaking her distended nipples as he worked her over with his tongue. These days he knew when she was getting close, when she started moaning, muzehnek, over and over again.
And though this had started out as a way to make her more comfortable, by taking her mind off the heat only she could feel, he found he still had a distinct problem with wanting to fuck his wife. All the time.
“Zhena…”
He didn’t have to finish. She heaved herself up and flipped on to her hands and knees, throwing a few pillows under her full belly. The books had warned him he might want her less as she got bigger, but as he put himself inside her hot, slick womanhood, he knew it to be nothing less than his most erotic dreams coming true. He couldn’t imagine ever wanting this woman less. She’d wormed her way into his soul, and even when they were in the same room together, it felt like something was missing when he wasn’t inside of her.
He shoved the pretend muzehnek off the bed and started moving behind her with urgent thrusts, his hands tight on her hips. As always with her, it felt right. Like coming home to a warm fire after a lifetime of feeling left out in the cold.
“I love you, muzehnek,” she cried underneath him.
Love. He’d been so scared of it before, and now these were his favorite four words on the planet.
He leaned down over her, careful to support himself on one heavily muscled arm in order to keep as much of his weight off of her as possible. “I love you, too, zhena.”
Then they exploded together, twin suns forming in a perfect universe.
However, he didn’t let himself linger inside of her, no matter how much he wanted to. The baby was large, maybe too large for her small body he sometimes worried, and he didn’t want to cause her even a second of a discomfort by keeping her in this position too long. He allowed himself one appreciative glance at the view of her from behind, her ample ass in the air, the braids she’d gotten put in recently to see her through her maternity leave fanned out over her arched back. Then he set to rearranging the pillows like a nest around her, in just the way his wife liked, because he knew she’d soon be asleep.
Sex was the best way to help her “feel comfortable” on these hot fall nights. It was also the best way to help her fall asleep. In fact, there’d been a night earlier in the week when she’d been already softly snoring by the time he’d gotten the last pillow arranged.
But not tonight. Tonight she sat down inside the newly made pillow nest, grimacing with her hand on the side of her belly.
“He is upset with us again,” Nikolai guessed. Sometimes, the baby they’d already decided to name Alexei, staged protests when their lovemaking got a little too vigorous for his taste. Baby Alexei had no idea how little his demonstrations deterred his father, since Nikolai adored feeling his son move inside his wife’s belly. Loved the confirmation that he was alive and well.
But this time when Nikolai reached out to touch his wife’s belly, she shook her head, pushing away. “Don’t. I think… I think I’m having a contraction.”
His eyes widened.
“No actually,” Her face seized up in pain and she fell over on her side. “I know I’m having a contraction. Ow…!”
WHEN SHE’D FIRST MET Nikolai Rustanov, Sam had turned down his advances without a second thought, because she’d been so sure he would hurt her.
And she’d been right.
She’d been utterly and completely right, Sam thought as she breathed through another contraction. She hated Nikolai Rustanov, really hated him.
Except when she loved him. Like when he was holding her hand through contractions and promising her he’d get her something to eat, whatever she wanted as soon as she was all done. And when he kissed her forehead, saying he understood why she’d told another man—the male anesthesiologist—that she loved him, and that he wouldn’t hold it against her later.
Then she hated him again when the drugs wore off a few hours in—apparently there wasn’t a one-hundred-percent guarantee that epidurals would completely take. And soon the contraction pains were back with a vengeance. Even worse this time because she’d been laboring through the night, and she was so tired.
Then she loved him again, when it turned out he’d read so many books on the birthing practice he was more than able to coach her through breathing through the worst of her contractions—like a really stern Russian doula who treated her like one of his hockey players. But hey, she had been so counting on the drugs coming through, that she hadn’t even bothered with Lamaze classes. Beggars couldn’t be choosers. She loved him so much.
Then hours passed and she hated him again, because why hadn’t he used a condom? And why did his big ass baby boy have to be taking his sweet time getting here? She hated him. Truly hated him.
Eventually the contractions became too much, and she started crying with snot and everything, babbling on about being so tired and couldn’t they just cut it out of her already? Nikolai climbed into bed behind her, hugging and rocking her back and forth through the pain.
He soothed her and calmed her down, and unlike a particularly unhelpful nurse from earlier, didn’t tell her stories about how women in Japan gave birth quietly and without a lot of drama. In fact, he’d had that nurse replaced with another labor and delivery nurse who tutted with sympathy and patted her hand, telling her what a good job she was doing with a totally straight face, even though they were fourteen hours in and she was a blubbering mess.
She loved Nikolai for that, loved him deeply… until the angel nurse put on a pair of devil horns and told her the baby was crowning and it was time to push.
She shook her head. “No, no, I can’t. I don’t have anything left in me.”
“You must, zhena,” he said behind her.
“No, I hate you.”
“You love me.”
“No, I hate you,” she cried, exhausted and nearing hysteria. “Why did you do this me?”
“Zhena, zhena, listen to me. Do you remember when we went to Greece?”
“The first or the second time?” she asked, thinking of the second trip just a few weeks after school had let out, when they’d taken Pavel, Back Up, and Dirk. They’d stayed for a whole week, tooling around Poros, while Pavel, as promised, had happily played in the pool with Dirk looking on all day.
“The first time,” he answered. “The meal we had. You said it was best one you ever ate. I told Isaac call restaurant as soon as they admitted us here, and he arranged for special delivery.”
“You’re kidding,” she said, shaking her head.
“No, zhena. Five minutes ago, Isaac texted me. He got your meal from airport. It is waiting for you outside this room as soon as you are done.”
“You’re lying,” she said with tears in her eyes. She was so hungry. They hadn’t let her eat anything but ice chips for the last fourteen hours. “You’re telling me whatever it takes to get me to push.”
“I would not lie to you,” he said, his voice quiet but fierce in her ear. “I love you, I love Pavel, I love our dog, Back Up. I am so happy to have you all as my family. It is more than I deserve. But please make me more happy, zhena. Please push and bring us this baby.”
Sam shook her head, wondering how she and Nikolai could be from two opposite countries, two opposite races, and two opposite backgrounds but be so much the same. She blubbered, “I love Pavel. I love Back Up. And I love you, muzehnek. So much.”
Then she bared down.
Less than thirty minutes later, Alexei Joseph Rustanov was placed in her arms, eyes squeezed shut and squalling.
However, he calmed down quickly and with one look, all was forgiven. Someth
ing in Sam’s heart fell loose the moment she took him in. Little nose. Ten little fingers and toes. Full lips like his mother and a long straight nose like his father. He was nothing less than…
“Perfect.”
She looked up to see Nikolai standing beside the bed, his eyes suspiciously shiny.
“Do you want to hold him?” she asked.
And for the first time in the last fifteen hours, he actually looked a little afraid.
“Go on,” she said, holding the baby out to him. “It’s all right. You read up on how to do this, right?”
He must have, because he took the baby from her like an expert, cupping his head and bringing him in close.
Then there was no doubt about what that shiny stuff was in his eyes, because the tears really came down then, as he babbled to the baby in Russian, seeming not to care that the OB and two nurses were all watching the tough former hockey player blubber all over his new baby boy.
Sam watched the scene with a smile, the last of her doubts about him, about her, about them, blowing away like dandelion seeds in the wind. Nikolai was truly going to be a great father, a loving father, who Pavel and their son would be proud to call papa. She was sure of it.
Just as she was sure that finally surrendering to the Russian hockey player was the best decision she’d ever made.
If you liked this story, check out the other books in the 50 Loving State series:
THE OWNER OF HIS HEART
HER RUSSIAN BILLIONAIRE
HER VIKING WOLF
THE WILD ONE
HER PERFECT GIFT
HIS ONE AND ONLY
WOLF AND PUNISHMENT (The Alaska Princesses Trilogy, Book 1)
WOLF AND PREJUDICE (The Alaska Princesses Trilogy, Book 2)
WOLF AND SOUL (The Alaska Princesses Trilogy, Book 3)
Theodora Taylor writes hot books with heart. When not reading, writing, or reviewing, she enjoys spending time with her amazing family, going on date nights with her wonderful husband, and attending parties thrown by others. Find out more about Theodora and her books at theodorataylor.com!
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