She frowned. “Dimmi, do you realize it has been three months since you hate-fucked me?”
He blinked. Larisa Vostov’s colorful expression for the rough sex she loved had always seemed shocking to him. A good Saturday night for her would involve him throwing her around the room, slapping her, choking her almost to the point of her losing consciousness, and finishing off with a simulated — but damned realistic — sexual assault. Afterward, she’d smile blissfully at him through her new bruises. She had always worn heavy makeup, but he had worried that one day he’d break her jaw or cheekbone, and the world would think he was abusing his wife.
And that was the thing about marriage, he thought. A man marries the woman who suits him when they marry, but what if the man changes? When he’d met Larisa ten years ago, he was full of anger and bitterness about his divorce and hatred for his first wife. On the advice of friends, he’d taken up martial arts and had tried to exorcise his demons on a heavy bag or in the cage, but it hadn’t helped. Then Larisa came, and what she wanted in bed exactly suited what he’d needed then. With her, back then, he’d been a raging animal, breaking furniture, ripping curtains, ruining the bed. Once, as Larisa showered after a particularly violent sex session, he’d found her bleeding in the shower. Panicked, he’d looked her over, but there were no visible wounds. And what had Larisa said? She’d smiled at him adoringly, her soft hand on his cheek, and said, Don’t worry, Dimmi, it’s just blood from my anus, and you know what they say, if there’s no blood, the orgasm wasn’t strong enough. She’d pulled him into the shower and kissed him, the blood wetting the shower floor, seeming not to stop until the water got cold.
A decade ago, he was the man for her and she was the woman for him. But today? The pressures of his advancing career took up more and more of his energy and time. And Father Time did his part, the lessening of testosterone and the physical changes of age had made him much less of a sexual beast. The rapprochement with his first wife and reconciliation with his older children had contributed to ease the former rage within his heart. Life had changed him, he thought. He was a kinder version of his former self.
Perhaps too kind, he thought. His political opponents had begun to point out what they considered weakness in his leadership. Their first bullet point was his so-called failure to retaliate against the American president when the U.S. Navy, in broad daylight, had stolen the Iranian submarine testing the new Russian fast reactor, then gone on to sink three of his frontline attack submarines in their escape with the test vessel. But there were damned good reasons for what he’d done — risking an escalated war with the Americans and NATO made no sense, not over an old Iranian sub with a reactor that was certainly revolutionary but nowhere near disclosing the deep secrets of the Russian Republic. And the three Russian subs lost, hell, one of them blew itself up from a design flaw, the second crew escaped, and the third had been taken down by, of all things, a Russian-designed torpedo, but with limited loss of life. He should attack the Americans for that? Plus, President Carlucci had made secret concessions to Russia that none of his opposition knew about, including a transfer of thirty billion Euro for the cost of the Russian submarines lost. So, while the Americans sank them, they paid for them, including the one they hadn’t directly destroyed. It had ended up being a better deal for Russia than they’d started with before the whole Iranian fiasco. However, perception was reality. Which was one of the reasons for the upcoming deployment of the Status-6 weapons. Once they were in place, no one would accuse Dmitri Vostov of weakness before the Americans.
But even if that political problem got solved, his present personal problem was starting to become a more pressing crisis. He remembered the divorce, when his first wife, Evelina, had broadcast lies about him in order to gain advantage in the court system, and to ease her rage over his affair with Anastasia Inessa, his former aide. If Larisa decided to go down the road that Evelina had, it would not end well for him. Larisa would certainly out him for all that rough sex, omitting that she’d instigated it and loved it. He considered his options. He was at a rank and station now that with a few words and hand gestures, he could make Larisa disappear. He smirked — if only he’d had that power ten years ago. Evelina would lie in a forlorn, cold grave where no one would ever find her. But he couldn’t do that to Larisa — Larisa was the mother of his six-year-old daughter Anya, and he would do nothing that would hurt Anya, no matter what. Of course, thinking like that is what gave women so much power in the combat theater of divorce, but so be it.
“Dimmi, what is it? Do you not find me attractive anymore? Don’t you love me anymore?” She sounded pathetic for just a moment. She looked at him plaintively with her big brown eyes, tears forming in them. Vostov put down his towel and looked at her, opening his mouth to reassure her, but her mood changed instantly, from insecurity to accusing. “You’re fucking someone else, that’s what it is, isn’t it? All your sexual energy, which you used to reserve exclusively for me, now you’re giving it to someone else. Who is it? Is it that whore Tonya?”
Here we go, Vostov thought. Tonya Pasternak was his chief of staff, and had an impressive but cold beauty. For the last five years, Tonya had offered herself to him, and for five years he’d kept her at a distance. But saying that out loud would not help here. After all, what woman accusing her husband of infidelity would drop the matter on the mere basis of the husband’s denial?
“Larisa, calm the fuck down,” he said, his voice commanding. “I’m not fucking anyone else!” He made the denial despite his earlier thought. Perhaps it was a husband’s reflex.
“Oh, calm down, is that it? You want me to calm down? Why don’t you make me, you pussy?” And with that she slapped his cheek hard, shaving cream flying and hitting the mirror.
There was something about that slap that ignited a hot fury in Vostov. He dropped his towel and grabbed Larisa’s wrists. “Shut up!” he roared at her.
“Make me!” she screamed at him. It made him even angrier, and to his surprise, he realized he had grown an erection unlike what he’d had for half a decade. He grabbed Larisa by the throat so hard he lifted her off her feet, threw her against the wall by the shower, the slightest awareness entering his mind of the small blood stain that appeared where Larisa’s head had been, but it seemed to feed his fury anew. He picked her up under his arm, carried her into the bedroom, tossed her on the bed, slapped her face hard, and ripped off her nightgown. Without conscious thought, he climbed on top of her and entered her as hard as he could, and she was soaking wet. He drilled into her hard, his thrusts violent and fast, his hand still on her throat, choking her hard, only releasing his grip when he saw her eyes roll up, then continued for what had to be a quarter hour. When he saw tears start to stream out of her eyes and fall down her temples onto the bedsheets, he finally finished hard inside her, his orgasm seeming to roll through his entire body for more than a minute.
He rolled off, covered in sweat, breathing like he’d just sprinted two miles. He could feel his wet body soaking the sheets. He chanced a look over at Larisa, and she was giving him a languid happy look, the smile spreading slowly over her face.
“Oh my God,” she gasped, “that was great. My big angry bear, you took me like the champion you are.” Slowly she shut her eyes, and within a minute, she was fast asleep, snoring softly, a half-smile of contentment on her face.