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 joke 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.