Page 55 of Kingmakers, Year Four

I never expected an heir from her. Dominik had a son to carry on the Petrov name. And I knew how Sloane valued her independence and her physical prowess.

Yet, I must admit . . . every time she showed me her cleverness, her ruthlessness, and that wild joy that bubbled up inside of her like an endless fountain, I thought to myself,What a child we could make, her and I. He’d rule the world.

She was possessed of a kind of madness that night. We fucked like demons, scattering the stolen money like leaves in a hurricane. I took her in every position, harder and harder as she urged me on.

She dug long scratches down my back, she bit my shoulder so hard that it bled, she rode me like a prize stallion in the final stretches of the Triple Crown.

As I erupted inside of her at last, she cupped my testicles in her hands, stroked her fingertips on the underside of my balls, milking every last drop out of me.

We were drenched in sweat, cash stuck to our backs, the hotel room destroyed.

A few weeks later, she told me she was pregnant.

“I thought you were on the pill?” I asked her.

“I must have forgotten to take it,” she replied, in her enigmatic way.

I was obsessed with the changes in her body. Every day I wanted to run my hands over every inch of her, marveling at the fulness of her breasts, the darkening of her nipples, the swelling of her belly.

My lust for her was so intense that I followed her around the monastery from room to room. Nothing ever required more self-restraint than keeping my hands off her when she was in the throes of nausea.

I was rewarded by a libido surge in the second trimester—then it was Sloane who attacked me at odd hours of the day, ripping my clothes off my body and mounting me without foreplay. Her pussy was wetter and warmer than it had ever been, her curves filling my hands in new and satisfying ways. She was a goddess of fertility: I only wanted more of her to worship.

My happiness was violent in the extreme. I felt a new level of protectiveness that probably annoyed her at times.

“Of course I’m going down to the gym!” she scoffed, lacing up her sneakers at eight months along. “Do you think women in olden days sat around eating bon bons?”

“The royals did,” I growled. “And you are my queen, after all . . .”

Sloane flatly refused the Russian traditions of the husband not accompanying the woman to the birthing room and the forbearance of buying any baby items until after the infant’s safe arrival.

“You know I’m always prepared,” she told me. “I’m not giving birth without a single damn onesie in the house.”

“Usually the husband buys the baby clothes while the wife is in hospital.”

“Not this husband,” she said. “You’ll be right beside me, rubbing my feet.”

In truth, I mostly held her hand, brought her ice water, and terrorized any nurses who dared chastise Sloane for cursing.

She birthed our son as she does all things: with single-minded intensity.

She pushed him out and demanded to hold him at once, before he had even been cleaned.

If I had any question whether my wife possessed maternal characteristics, it was answered when the doctor pricked our infant’s foot, making him squall.

“You take one single drop of blood from my son, and I’ll answer it with a gallon of yours,” she snarled in perfect Russian.

The doctor retreated, hands upraised, mumbling apologies and excuses about hospital policy.

I admired our son’s thick head of hair, his lusty screams, and his long frame.

“He’ll be tall,” I told Sloane.

“Of course he will,” she said. “Look at his parents.”

She surprised me by nursing him, and by carrying the baby in a sling everywhere she went.

I suppose I should have known that Sloane does nothing by halves. She would never have a baby only to neglect it.

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