HAHAAAA - did you honestly think I could just let this story fade to black? Psh, have we met?

THIS IS EXTREMELY SEXUALLY EXPLICIT! You've been forewarned. For those who can do without the sexytime, you're not missing any story, so feel free to go with God and let the previous chapter be the last in your heart.

For the rest of y'all pervs: consider this a love letter from me to you :P

J.F

Dimitri wants to take it slow.

He has every intention of doing so, but Anya is on him the second the door closes, a seductive tangle of arms and legs. She ensnares him as securely as a Venus fly trap, renders him helpless as an insect.

His eyes must have closed; a sudden soft darkness has erased the image of her posed like a deity before the bed. Dimitri can now only feel: the soft yet feverish press of her lips against his, her vaguely floral aroma muddling his thoughts as the heat of her body blooms around him and threatens to burn him to ash. Anya scorches him sweetly, clinging to his torso with enough strength to stay aloft without assistance - a ripe and formerly forbidden fruit, begging to be plucked and tasted.

He loses his grip on the champagne bottle and it thuds against the wooden floor, rolling into the deeper shadows and out of sight, forgotten.

Dimitri's lips engage but he's afraid to move his hands, finding an Anya in the buff the essence of paradise and the fires of hell. Her body says she knows what she's doing, she's been here before, she is acutely aware of how much her every sigh and whimper pushes him toward the point of no return, but Dimitri knows better. He knows if he touches her as freely as craves, he'll forget no other man has ever seen or felt her this way, that the privilege is his alone. That he has to be gentle. And he refuses to let his own thoughtless eagerness - or hers, for that matter - stop them from reveling in every second of this night.

But God help him...Anya traces a major artery up to his ear with the tip of her tongue, and now Dimitri can detect a sticky dampness through his shirt where her exposed flesh presses flush against the cotton.

He forces his hands to move upward into her silky hair instead of seeking out the source of all that lovely wetness and walks them blindly to the bed.

Dimitri stands at its foot and has to peel her off like a stuck starfish. Anya whines and giggles and pouts prettily, merely replacing every limb he pulls away. Her need is a magnetic force that rivals the intensity of his own. He can feel it calling to him. It wants him buried inside her right now. Most of Dimitri wants to vigorously oblige, but he knows...he knows.

It will be so much better to draw this out.

"Anya." It takes mental effort to speak her name. She has hollowed out his vocabulary for the moment, impaired his ability to think of her as a person and not the very blood pumping through his veins and keeping him alive.

"Mm." Her fingers find his sternum and stroke before wiggling under a shirt button and popping it free. The other hand joins and the whole lot is whipped off and tossed aside, those busy digits already tugging at the hem of his undershirt.

A hiss fills Dimitri's throat when their softness meets the naked skin of his stomach and everything just...stops.

Holy God.

Then an abrupt awareness of the manic quality of his wife's movements sobers him. She's shaking, and not just with desire.

Every motion is quick, birdlike. Touching but not feeling, kissing but not tasting. Anya is anxious if not downright afraid and is lying about her fear through her touch.

Dimitri will have none of that.

"Anya," he says again, stern enough to make her look up at last. "Do you have somewhere else you need to get to?"

A brief frown cools the heat of her expression. "What? What do you mean?"

"What's the rush?"

For an instant her mouth tightens, a bow tightly drawn and ready to let fly a saucy retort, but her brave mask slips and Dimitri sees her - vulnerable and terrified, dazed with the same agonizing lust that is killing him.

She sits back, folding herself atop her bent knees. "I don't know," she says on a humble sigh and shrugs.

Heart twisting, Dimitri takes her hands and places a tender kiss on each knuckle before wetting his lips and staring into her eyes. "Let me make this good for you, kroshka." He needs to. He needs to tell her with lips and hands everything his words cannot. "Please."

Anya is silent for a beat. When she doesn't smile, Dimitri worries until her hand caresses his face and she leans forward again to land a peck that could be called chaste. "Okay," she says, lying back and stretching her legs straight, her feet dangling off the bed between his knees.

Language does not exist for how glorious she looks nestled against the white pillows, her hair fanned out around her, eyes sharp and attentive as she watches him and waits.

And waits.

A pointed admonishment nearly escapes Anya's mouth but Dimitri kicks off his shoes and crawls onto the bed just in time. Though he remains far less naked than she would prefer, she doesn't complain when he straddles her thighs and bends down to brush her neck with the barest pressure of his lips.

Oh.

A heavy warmth swells, rolling through her body in a comforting rush as her eyes flutter closed.

Anya rather enjoys the heightened anticipation induced by not knowing his mouth's next destination, so she doesn't peek and lets Dimitri have his way.

He takes his time, trailing breathy allusions to kisses along the shells of her ears, on her eyelids, across her cheeks, the bridge of her nose, on each corner of her panting mouth. They feel like tiny pulses of electricity, little soft shocks that make Anya's heart knock around wildly behind her ribs. Each one tingles with the promise of something more. Each one satisfies less and less.

It soon becomes a sweet and loving form of torture. Dimitri's moving so damned slowly and the pressure building between her legs is almost unbearable. Still, those lips are so soft and feel so divine she allows him to do what he wants and just...squirms.

For a while.

Eventually, though, Anya figures he needs some guidance. She nudges him with her shoulder and takes to pointing out the areas he should attend to next.

Like the curve of said shoulder, which he does with a nip that makes her squeal. And her collarbones, as she discovers she likes it immensely when his tongue laves over the rounded ridges, and not just because it makes her feel like a melting ice cream cone he's trying to devour in the hot sun. His hair feathers across her face when he does so and the scent of him - freshness and rain and that hint of vodka - is so violently masculine, it's all Anya can do to keep still beneath him.

So she doesn't. She draws a line with her pointing finger down the valley between her breasts and stares at Dimitri, daring him to deny her.

He smirks and traces her invisible arrow with his nose. It tickles, until he turns his head and captures a pebbled nipple in his mouth.

Sparks fire behind Anya's eyes; a groan rumbles in her chest.

Her lungs seize and her husband's name is a mere gasp from her lips. She unconsciously rubs her thighs together as he continues, reaching out to bring him closer, because she needs.

He doesn't let her touch him. His hands grab her wrists as he casually works his way across to her other breast and launches her into the stratosphere again.

Anya mewls like an angry kitten. She wants to scream - in frustration, at the delectable stabs of pleasure through her very center that hurt so good...

"No touching," Dimitri says, teasing and just commanding enough to sharpen her ache to the point of anguish. "You can point if you want, but keep your hands to yourself."

He releases his hold and Anya returns to her assigned task with renewed purpose, leading him where she desperately needs him to go.

Chuckling against her skin once he catches her drift, Dimitri inches his way down her trembling body, his wet mouth tracing a constellation between the small moles and freckles scattered across her flat abdomen.

Anya thinks she'll lose her mind. The widening ripples of ecstasy triggered by his ministrations drive her toward the edge of sanity. They overlap, feeding each other, and as soon as one fades into nothing his lips find her waiting flesh yet again. It feels like worship of the highest order, Dimitri nibbling and savoring her with absolute reverence, from the skin stretched taught across her hips to her toes, never going near the apex of her legs.

The damp spot on the coverlet beneath her grows. Her fingers clutch at nothing because Dimitri will only shoo her hands away if she reaches for him again. Anya is almost upset by how much he seems to enjoy seeing her in such a state, if the lewd wink he's just thrown her is any indication.

I've married the devil, she thinks.

Her trembling turns to tremors but Anya clamps her mouth shut.

Devil or not, she will not beg.

Dimitri's heartbeat has gone arrhythmic again and maintaining his roguish demeanor is no easy feat; sweat glazes his brow with the effort to keep his straining cock from popping right through his trousers. Choosing to stay clothed proved wise, even if the decision clearly ruffled his wife's feathers. It helps him stay focused on his mission to ensure every part of Anya feels equally loved, though he's saving the best for last.

She's impatient, however, and hauls him up by the torso for a kiss with surprising ferocity. Dimitri doesn't notice her hand sneak between them to clutch his wrist until she has thrust his hand down between her legs.

He doesn't see the sense in waiting any more, either. Withdrawing with a groan, he scoots backward to get a good look at her, the sight of Anya's triangle of glistening, downy hair making him lightheaded.

Both hands slide up her long limbs and his fingers encounter her slickness barely halfway up her thighs.

"Goodness gracious," Dimitri says in a low murmur as his arousal reaches dangerous new heights, "is all this for me?" For emphasis, he delicately runs his thumbs up her slit, right through the thick of it, enjoying the sight of her hips bucking off the bed in response.

Her legs fall apart in welcome, her official answer.

Dimitri's heart races, head swimming as if he had consumed that entire bottle of vodka. He looks up at Anya, suddenly nervous. "I'll stop if you don't like it. Okay?"

After she nods like a horse, he bends and presses a soft, deliberate kiss to the lips there, testing the waters.

She groans so loud the bed actually vibrates.

He grins. So far, so good.

With one hand gripping her thigh, Dimitri uses the other to spread her open to him with the greatest care, revealing that pearl-like nub trying to hide from him. He flattens his tongue and licks her once, very slowly, shuddering with pleasure at the taste of her, like berries and cream.

She twists out of his arms with a howl, face contorted in rapturous despair. "Oh, my God..."

He pauses. "Too much?"

"No!" Anya had almost said yes, her pulse doing a strange, thrumming dance that has left her breathless. She struggles to stop hyperventilating and finds Dimitri's eyes focused on hers and nowhere else. It gives her the courage to say it: "Please, don't stop." Sliding closer, she parts her bent knees again and lets her head fall back against the pillows.

Dimitri takes her invitation with gusto and goes to town, whipping her into an erotic frenzy in a matter of minutes.

"Jesus," he says, briefly coming up for air, "you taste even better than I imagined."

Anya can barely speak for her one-woman chorus of gasps and moans. "You thought about me like this?"

He chuckles and returns to his business, punctuating each of his next words with a light flick of his tongue.

"Every...fucking...day."

Anya doesn't respond. She can't. She can no longer distinguish the individual components of Dimitri's mouth - and oh God, he's just thrown both hands into the mix - as they all work in perfect synergy, bowing her back off the bed, pulling taught every muscle in her body as the tension builds to a flash point and a burning flush spreads across her face and chest.

She's not sure what kind of noise she must have made to prompt the change, but Dimitri suddenly begins to glide his fingertips over her wet folds in an alternating motion, still sucking gently at her clit and -

"Oh, FUCK!

Anya crashes at full speed into the brick wall of her climax, the impact turning her inside out, its magnitude transforming her into a celestial explosion, a collapsing star. She fears she will not survive it, the shudders rolling through tissue and bone in wave after wave of excruciating euphoria. Her toes curl and her hands ball up in the covers and she thanks everything sacred she had enough sense to say yes to Dimitri's question in that train station restroom.

Her lungs begin to burn. She realizes she'd stopped breathing and sucks in a deep breath through pursed lips. Still shuddering and panting and stunned, Anya watches Dimitri lick his lips and suck his fingers clean before he stretches out beside her, his nose grazing her earlobe.

No one is more surprised than she when her gnawing desire roars back after a minute or two, as if that cataclysmic orgasm had never even happened.

She groans, running her tongue across Dimitri's lips and flushing when she discovers she can taste herself. He sighs with pleasure and Anya almost cannot endure how much she wants him. She cradles his face with both hands. "I love you," she says, her mouth threatening a smile. "And not just because of...you know."

Dimitri laughs. "I bet." Nose now against her jaw, he whispers against the smooth column of her throat. "You sure you don't love me just because I can make you come all over my face?"

Anya throbs all over at the raw sexuality of his words, arching against him with a sense of desperation.

"Let's see if I can do it again." The movement of Dimitri's hand then is swift and purposeful.

If Anya's eyes were still open, they would have rolled back into her head.

Dimitri's attention remains divided - half his mind consumed with the indulgence of Anya's kisses, the other focused on the deliciousness between her legs as his fingers find her again. She's still so tight is takes some doing to gently work a finger in past the first knuckle, Anya whining and writhing all the while. She is plenty wet now - literally dripping down his inner wrist - but Dimitri knows she isn't quite ready for all of him. Not yet.

He is so hard now it hurts but he ignores the discomfort and gradually pushes in a second digit, tilting his head to study Anya's response.

With a grunt, she wraps one hand around the back of his neck to pull him back to her mouth and presses the other against his knuckles to push his fingers deeper.

It is enough to make his cock weep. Dimitri maintains his tunnel vision and begins to thrust, the motion painstakingly slow to get her accustomed to the sensation of penetration. He keeps kissing her, stroking her face and neck and breasts with his free hand, her cries providing an unutterably beautiful soundscape.

When her voice drops a full octave, he takes the cue and introduces a third finger, his entire body thumping to his heartbeat at the feeling of her body swallowing him.

He increases his tempo, desire coiling low and thick in his belly. Anya pants in time to his thrusts, until the sting of her nails in his shoulders makes him slow his pace. She growls and he feels it in the back of his own throat before she breaks away, narrowed eyes blazing.

"I'm going to kill you, Dima."

The erotic threat is the sexiest thing Dimitri has ever heard in his life.

"If you mean with this" - he growls back, briefly curling his fingers deep and making her gasp - "I certainly hope so."

Anya ambushes him with another kiss, her body taut as violin strings in his arms. He answers with soft strokes of his tongue, his fingers pushing into her again and again. She feels like silk and Dimitri lets her know it by searching out the spongy pad of flesh he knows is tucked away along her upper walls and pressing it firmly.

He knows he's hit pay dirt when Anya's hips jerk hard and she squeaks.

Dimitri carefully grinds the heel of his hand against her to the increasing tempo of his tapping fingers until she yanks at his hair with shaking hands and comes so hard she practically shouts into his mouth, making his teeth vibrate.

She drops like a sack of potatoes against the bed with a bounce, gasping and convulsing with aftershocks.

Anya looks so astounded he bursts out laughing.

A loopy smile spreads across her face and she gives him two thumbs up. "You've got a knack for this, kid."

Dimitri chuckles again, but his humor dies a quick death when she rubs his angry erection through his trousers and his mouth goes dry as a summer creek bed at high noon. "I still can't figure out why you're not naked," she says.

He almost trips and falls in his scramble off the bed to rid himself of the confining garments. Anya wears her blatant anticipation on her face. Dimitri catches her near-inaudible intake of breath at the unbuckling of his belt and realizes he's never felt more like a man than he does right now.

Snatching it off and tossing it aside, his grin is wolfish. "There's more where that came from," he says, barking a laugh as he dodges the pillow Anya lobs at him.

"Be quiet," she says with an exaggerated eye roll. "And hurry up."

Dimitri does the opposite. Eyebrow raised, he eases out of his trousers and peels off his socks leg by leg like a second skin. He tosses his undershirt at her and she catches it in her teeth with a giggle.

His fingers toy with the band of his underwear and Anya's giddiness fades. She drops the undershirt and rises onto her knees with wide eyes. She's breathing too fast. "Take them off."

He steps out of them and hopes the lightless room can hide the quivering of his knees.

"Come here."

Dimitri approaches on command, completely under Anya's spell as she moves to sit on the foot of the bed. He can't help his sharply drawn breath when she raises tentative hands to touch him, his eyes settling closed as her fingertips skim over his knees and thighs and upward, lingering over the scars she encounters on his stomach and chest - old wounds from his past life, soon enough forgotten. She doesn't ask about them, just delicately presses her lips to each and every one like a gentle benediction and a wave of emotion closes his throat.

She takes her time as he had and Dimitri casts off on a sea of sensation - until she abruptly wraps her whole hand around his bare cock. He digs his nails into his palms to keep control when she brushes her lips over the head, unable to restrain the strangled noise he makes.

Mercifully, she lets him go and looks up at him through her long lashes. "You gonna give me what I want now or what?" She braces herself with her hands on the bed and spreads her legs as wide as they will go, the perfect globes of her breasts jutting forward, the junction of her thighs gleaming wet and ready.

Like an offering.

Dimitri can't breathe.

She is a goddess and he is but a supplicant at her altar.

Anya's own shaking hands help her understand Dimitri's hesitation, but she wants him so badly she banishes all fear or shyness from her thoughts. She reaches out to squeeze his thickness and watches his Adam's apple bob as he swallows. He's so hard he barely feels organic, his skin smooth and hot and soft as silk velveteen. She pulls him toward her carefully, wrapping her legs around him when he lay on top of her on the bed.

His chest heaves against hers. Her hands stroke his shoulders and find the muscles bunched and tense.

"I'll go as slow as you need me to," he says, strained. "I don't wanna hurt you."

Her heart is beating so hard she thinks her sternum will crack but Anya nods, too high on the realization of naked skin on skin to do anything else.

Dimitri balances on an elbow and rubs himself against her with the other hand, teasing at her gates and making it impossible not to sound like a wanton whore. She watches his jaw flex as he edges forward and retreats, gradually pushing past her lips to venture a bit deeper each time, only intensifying her hunger.

Some timely advice Anya's late friend Irina had passed on from one of the older girls at the orphanage comes to mind. Irina had tried it with a boy she liked and reported it had led to a relatively pain-free experience.

Concentrating, Anya exhales slowly and bears down around Dimitri's considerable girth, her warm breath collecting in the soft hollow of his neck.

They gasp simultaneously at the charge of blinding pleasure when he slides in the rest of the way with no additional resistance.

"Fucking Christ," he breathes against her ear. He's buried to the hilt, Anya's pelvis nestled snugly against his. The full length of his body shivers, his skin against hers so hot it burns.

Anya's breathing becomes labored and she grimaces. Her insides feel stretched to their limit. She starts to shake as she waits for the aggressive sting of his entry to subside, but Dimitri sounds so broken, she's more concerned about him. "Dima, are you okay?"

"Yeah, I - goddamn..." His gulp is audible this time and Anya can see his sinewy shoulders quaking with the effort of hovering above her, trying to hold still to prevent causing her further pain. "You just...fuck, malysh, you feel so good I can't even breathe."

It has been over a year since Dimitri participated in any bedroom gymnastics, and he'd certainly never tried it with a woman who had owned him body and soul since childhood. If Anya so much as hums beneath him right now, this would be over before it truly began.

"Well, don't. Just kiss me."

He takes a steadying breath and lowers himself to meet her stomach to stomach, tucking her smaller upper body between his bent elbows.

She stares up at him with her whole heart in those deep blue eyes and Dimitri forgets how to speak. God, she is so precious to him...the backs of his fingers trace the fine, wispy hairs at her hairline and the smooth angle of her jaw. Anya closes her eyes with a wistful smile, leaning into his touch.

He retraces his steps with his mouth, ending his journey home, where her parted lips wait for him.

The first kiss of their union lands with a gentle heat, like a caress.

I'm sorry...

Anya responds instantly, feeling it down to her toes. Her back arches, her neck craning to get closer to him.

Dimitri feels more than hears her breathless sigh. When she instinctively opens her mouth to let him in and winds her arms tighter around his neck, he deepens the kiss, trying to convey his feelings without words.

Forgive me...

Anya can understand everything he's telling her and finds her attention torn between tears of joy, the mounting heat in her body and the tendrils of delirious pleasure curling around the base of her spine.

Dimitri breaks their unending kiss long enough to bite his lip and withdraw so slowly, Anya can feel the thick ridge of his head dragging along her walls. A burst of that heat overwhelms her senses and her head falls back against the bed, eyes so heavy she feels as if she's been drugged. "Mm, Dimoychka..."

He returns to her lips with a slow thrust that makes the pit of Anya's stomach feel molten and luscious, like caramels simmering on a hot stove.

I want you...

His strokes continue, picking up speed. Anya is sucked into a carnal whirlwind, a storm that draws strength from their mutual desire, strong enough to dismantle her to the bone. She kisses Dimitri like she wants to consume him and rolls her hips in time with his, moaning aloud every time the base of his cock grazes her clit.

Dimitri can feel Anya's inner muscles fluttering all along his length. The sensation is so fucking delicious it weakens his already frayed resolve to make tonight all about her, to stay the course until she is utterly spent. He loves her more than life itself. It would haunt him forever if he can't ensure her first time is anything less than spectacular.

To that end, he staggers his thrusts before stopping altogether, distracting her from his efforts with wet, lazy kisses down her neck and chest that leave her sniveling with need.

Anya can sense Dimitri is holding back and she doesn't like it. It's as if he looks down at her and all he can see is the crown she left behind.

Perhaps an adult Anastasia who had spent her lifetime within the gilded walls of a palace would have been trained to be satisfied with what Dimitri is giving her. There may be traces of that sheltered girl in her today, but the woman she's become is all Anya - a woman whose life has been hard fought and hard won, who will not be dictated to nor controlled. She is not some perfect porcelain doll in danger of being broken. If Dimitri wants all of her, she wants the same from him. No one other than herself will decide how her first experience with making love will unfold.

Not even her well-intentioned husband.

Groaning in frustration, Anya undulates her hips in a slow wave, watching in fiendish delight as Dimitri's lashes flutter and she catches the whites of his eyes.

Very deliberately, she slides her hands down the small of his back, one curving over each of his cheeks and squeezing. She widens her legs and presses with the heels of her hands to encourage him.

Dimitri almost loses it then and there, but the devilish smirk on Anya's face rouses the beast in him. So his sweet little wife wants to play.

He had been known to have a woman bawling her eyes out in pleasure in his day. If Anya wants more, he has plenty to give her.

But she needs a little discipline first.

He pulls out completely, chuckling low in his throat when she groans and smacks his shoulder. Trailing kisses across her breasts and down her stomach, Dimitri crouches on his heels to taste her again. He can't help himself, losing count of how many times he leaves her lips to slurp at the honey of her center between thrusts, moaning like an injured man into her folds.

His prolonged efforts reduce Anya to a quivering, incoherent mess.

"Dima," she says, almost sobbing, her body glistening under a light sheen of sweat.

Dimitri mounts her again and answers with a deep, tortuously incremental thrust. "Yes, kroshka?"

"Need," Anya says mid-gasp, almost nonverbal altogether. "Need you..."

With a squeeze of her hips, Dimitri drives into her hard once and she cries out with a loud curse. "Maybe if you ask nicely, Your Grace..."

"Please! Please...please...please..." Her insistent hands tug him toward her again with more force as she wriggles underneath him to push him even deeper.

Nice try, Dimitri thinks.

He shifts his weight to his knees so he can reach behind his back for her hands, moving them to the pillows.

His eyes widen when Anya rebels. The labor-developed muscles in her arms flex as she resists, and he has to use a bit of strength to pin her arms down above her head. Her pupils grow so wide her eyes look like black voids. She must like his manhandling even more than his gentle caresses.

He captures her mouth and Anya yelps into his frantic kiss, giving herself over to his complete possession. She rolls her hips as much as the press of his body allows, desperate for more of him, of all he has to give, terrified that she loves him so much no amount could ever be enough.

Animated by lust and a visceral sort of love that frightens him, Dimitri spreads Anya's legs apart into a wide vee. His mouth grazes the skin of an inner thigh, a knee, a calf, ending at the delicate arch of her foot before holding her limbs in place on either side of his body by her ankles and setting his back in motion.

Dimitri stares down at the place where they are joined, trembling with the restraint it takes to keep moving slow and steady when he wants to fuck her into oblivion. Anya's body grips him upon every slow withdrawal like it doesn't want to let him go. The visual alone is about to push him over the brink.

Out of nowhere, Anya bucks and nearly sends Dimitri straight to heaven, making him drop her legs. She uses his distraction as an opportunity to plant her feet on the mattress and thrust herself up to meet him for the fast friction she needs so badly.

Dimitri growls and yanks her hips further down on the bed in response, throwing a leg over each of his shoulders before bending down to seize her kiss-swollen lips, essentially folding her in half and rendering her immobile.

Anya surrenders with a whimper, his full weight on top of her with her knees near her ears necessitating defeat.

Not that she minds in the least. She is drowning in an ocean of Dimitri now - his hot skin sliding against hers, his sweat, his back muscles rippling under her hands, his moans resonating in her throat, his taste of salt and liquor and sweetness - and she loves every second of it. Every stroke reaches down down down, past her residual anger and hurt and distrust, replacing them bit by bit with the relentless ache he seems to make grow in intensity instead of relieving.

She's heard stories, of course, but Anya never dreamed her first time could be like this, love and ecstatic desire forging an entirely new entity in its kiln. There is no more Anya and Dimitri. They feel like a single quivering being, one continuous burning surface, sinking deeper into the dip in the old mattress whilst climbing higher and higher toward some unnamed, delirious joy.

Anya is equal parts heroin and cocaine in Dimitri's bloodstream and he is about to overdose, his poor heart threatening to explode. He pounds into her again and again, hips churning, the metronomic banging of the headboard against the wall and the squeaking of the bed frame marking his rhythm, his iron control disintegrating when her fingers fist painfully in his hair, their subsequent sloppy, open-mouthed kisses turning into war as each tries to tip the other over the edge. Anya's shrill cries turn into slurred curses in both Russian and French before devolving altogether into guttural wails. Hearing them drives Dimitri to pump even faster, harder, his own unrecognizable voice one low, continuous, animalistic moan.

When Dimitri's cadence turns erratic and a seething warmth begins to spread from her center, Anya knows the fuse to her dynamite has been lit. She claws at his back, half afraid of what she instinctively knows is coming just as Dimitri's body goes into autopilot.

His arms wrap around her back as he buries himself in her, incapable of human speech save for five words:

"I fucking love you, Anya..."

"Unh, I..I love - "

When she comes this time, it is as if a bomb detonates deep inside her and she implodes with a ragged gasp, her entire body seizing, the sheer rhythmic power of her orgasm making Dimitri have to grab her hips and fight to stay clenched inside her slick heat. Her back arches, nails digging into his ass hard enough to draw blood.

She screams. Heedless of their neighbors or his now-ringing ears. Even after its savageness makes her throat raw and hot and coarsens her voice and tears escape the corners of her eyes despite her having squeezed them shut. To Dimitri it sounds like joy, and grief, and rage, like suffering and relief. Like love in its purest form.

Like forgiveness.

His own merciful release overtakes him a second later, so intense his vision goes white. Every nerve ending in his body fires at once and momentarily paralyzes him. He manages to pull out in the nick of time, muffling his primeval roar in the pillow near Anya's head with a final thrust, his pulsing cock landing with a soft thump on her stomach and drenching both her and the sheets. She giggles hysterically at the sudden hot slipperiness between them as he gradually relaxes on top of her with a long and bliss-filled groan. She hums in contentment, wriggling her soft body against him while she strokes his back and kiss-licks his neck and slowly brings him back from the far-flung stars.

"Holy fucking hell." Dimitri rolls to the side and they collapse more than consciously separate into two people again, both staring wide-eyed at the ceiling, completely laid to waste.

Between desperate pulls of oxygen, a decadent peace settles over Anya. Her body becomes heavy as a gunny sack of pebbles and she lets her limbs lay where Dimitri left them. A ghost of a smile tugs at her mouth as she tries to recall a time she ever felt this complete.

She can't.

Somehow, somewhere, the broken and jagged pieces of herself had fused into something new and imperfectly beautiful.

"You okay?" Dimitri's breathless question makes Anya roll her head to face him. "How do you feel?"

She has to force her voice above a whisper, as if the silence of the room has grown cushiony-soft and is muffling her words. "I think I might be happy."

Happy that her grandmother loves her enough to let her be who she has become. Happy that Dimitri didn't leave her, that he didn't give up. That he loves her as much as she loves him.

She doesn't have the strength or courage yet to say it out loud, but Anya hopes Dimitri can hear in her declaration all the words she hasn't spoken.

His sweet smile tells her he has, though exhaustion makes it impossible for him to even raise an arm and swipe the sweaty hair out of his eyes to see her face. "Good," he says.

His joy creates a warm, safe space for her to settle into. Smiling back, Anya strains to reach a hand out to him on the bed.

Dimitri responds weakly in kind, mostly missing the mark within the tangle of damp sheets. He settles on linking his pinky with hers.

Too depleted to curl up against each other, they find they don't need to. The sweet reciprocity of sharing this minuscule amount of skin keeps the warmth of their love flowing as they lay on their backs, breathing together into the dark.

With the bricks from the walls they've torn down between them, they built a bridge instead.

FIN