Chapter 11: Honeymoon in Chains

The jet levelled out somewhere above the Atlantic, and the seatbelt sign went dark.

Czar unbuckled, stood, and looked down at me like a king surveying new territory he’d already decided to ruin.

“Bedroom. Now.”

Two words. No please. No question. Just the same voice he used when he ordered men killed.

I should have argued. Should have reminded him I wasn’t cargo.

Instead my thighs pressed together under the silk robe he’d wrapped me in after the car, and I stood on shaky legs.

He didn’t wait. He took my wrist and pulled me down the narrow corridor to the rear cabin: a bedroom that belonged on a yacht, not thirty-eight thousand feet in the air. King bed, black sheets, dim gold lights, mirrors on three walls.

The door locked behind us with a soft, final click.

He turned the key twice, slipped it into his pocket.

“Safe word still works,” he said, repeating the lie he loved. “But the plane is on autopilot, the pilots are deaf, and we don’t land for six hours. So scream all you want, little saint. No one’s coming.”

My pulse thundered in my ears.

He stepped closer, slow, deliberate. Fingertips brushed the sash of my robe.

“Tell me you hate me,” he murmured.

“I hate you,” I whispered.

He smiled, dark and delighted. “Good. Hold on to that.”

The sash fell. The robe slid from my shoulders and pooled at my feet.

I was naked except for the black-diamond wedding ring and the faint red marks his mouth had left in the Maybach.

His gaze dragged over me like fire.

“Eight weeks pregnant and still the most beautiful thing I’ve ever broken.”

He lifted me, laid me on the bed like I was fragile and priceless, then stood back and started unbuttoning his shirt.

Every inch of skin he revealed was a reminder: scars, tattoos, muscle carved from violence.

The word “Aslanov” in Cyrillic across his chest.

My name, Eden, inked over his heart in my own handwriting, done the night he first said he loved me.

He saw me looking.

“Still there,” he said. “Still true.”

Then he crawled over me, knees forcing mine apart, hands pinning my wrists above my head with one of his.

With the other hand he traced my stomach, reverent, possessive.

“This part of you is mine now in a way nothing else ever was,” he said against my lips. “I put my child here. That changes the rules.”

“There were never any rules with you.”

“Wrong.” His teeth grazed my throat. “There was always one: you don’t leave. You just broke it. Now I rewrite the rest.”

He kissed lower, slow, deliberate, tasting every inch like he was memorising new territory.

When his mouth closed over my nipple I arched so hard the headboard rattled.

He laughed against my skin. “Sensitive already. Pregnancy looks good on you.”

I wanted to slap him. I wanted to beg him.

I did neither. I just moaned his name like a prayer I hated.

He worked me open with his fingers first, slow and cruel, watching my face in the mirror overhead like he was studying art.

“Look at yourself,” he ordered. “Look how easily you take me even when you swear you hate me.”

I looked.

Flushed, trembling, wedding ring glinting as I clawed at the sheets.

He slid inside me in one slow thrust that stole my breath and gave it back as fire.

No condom. Never again, he’d said.

He fucked me like a vow: deep, deliberate, punishing, worshipping.

Every stroke felt like ownership.

Every kiss tasted like apology.

When I came the first time, I screamed into his shoulder hard enough to leave teeth marks.

He didn’t stop.

He flipped me over, pulled my hips up, took me from behind while one hand splayed over my stomach like he was protecting what he’d planted.

“Say it,” he growled against my spine.

I knew what he wanted.

“I’m yours,” I gasped. “God help me, I’m yours.”

He rewarded me with his thumb on my clit and his teeth in my shoulder until I came again, sobbing his name.

Only then did he let himself go, spilling inside me with a broken sound that was almost human.

We collapsed sideways, still joined, his chest to my back, one arm locked around me like a chain.

His hand never left my stomach.

After a minute, his voice came soft against my damp skin.

“I know you’re scared of what kind of father I’ll be.”

I went very still.

“I am too,” he admitted, so quietly I almost missed it. “But I will kill, lie, and burn countries to the ground before I let this child feel one second of the emptiness I grew up in. You have my word on that, Eden.”

I turned in his arms, searched his face.

“And what about me?” I whispered. “Will you let me feel empty?”

He brushed my lips with his. “Never again.”

Then he reached to the nightstand, pulled out real velvet-lined cuffs, soft black leather with his initials embossed.

He fastened one around my left wrist, the other to the headboard.

Not tight. Just enough that I felt it.

“Honeymoon in chains,” he said, echoing the title I hadn’t known he’d chosen. “Because I’m never letting you far enough away to run again. But they’re velvet, baby. I’m learning.”

He kissed the inside of my cuffed wrist like it was sacred.

“Sleep,” he ordered. “You’re growing my legacy. You need rest.”

I wanted to fight.

I wanted to cry.

Instead I curled into him, listened to his heartbeat, and let the jet carry us toward whatever island he’d bought just to keep me.

The last thing I heard before I slipped under was his voice, raw and reverent:

“Thank you for coming back, little saint.

Thank you for giving me a family I don’t deserve.”

And for the first time in years, I fell asleep without fear.

Because even monsters keep their promises when the promise is a heartbeat under your ribs.

To be continued…