He dipped again, kissing me softly. I didn’t know if he was teasing me or himself. “Lexi, no more kisses. No more teasing me like this. You have to stop, because I can’t.”
“Once again,youkissedme.”
“You tempted me into it.”
I rolled my eyes so hard at him that I nearly saw my own brain. “That’sridiculous!And it’s abdicating your own responsibility!”
“Abdicating is what kept my several-greats grandfather alive during the February Revolution.I’man expert atthat.”He started to rear up, his legs still straddling my hips.
I was losing him.
I grabbed his white dress shirt—dang, that cloth was stillcrisp after the whole night and yet soft in my fingers—and dragged him right the heck back down on top of me. “Teach me.”
One of his dark eyebrows lifted. “Teach you what?”
“You’ve got me fora year.Teach me what it’s like to be with a guy who’sgoodin bed. Teach mehowto be good in bed, like you.”
He winced and looked away from me. “You don’t actually know whether I am good in bed. You have nothing to compare to. I’m probably just bragging.”
I grabbed him around the neck and dragged him down to kiss me again.
His lips were soft on mine, but then his hand slid around the back of my neck, cradling my skull and holding me in place while he deepened the kiss until it was an absolute assault on my senses, until the room was spinning and I was clinging to him and panting.
I had no idea how both of my arms had gotten twined around his chest and back, but his body was tight against mine, mostly because I was clamped around him like a steel trap.
His body, his pelvis, undulated against my legs and stomach, one sinuous instinctive movement, and a tiny spark of that head-spinning bliss wafted up my spine, a taste of what he’d done to me in the car.
Oh,yeah.
More-more-more.
The smallest push against Nicolai’s shoulder made him rise away from me. His lips were swollen, pinker, and his eyelids were half-mast.
“It’s true, isn’t it?” I demanded. “Those girls weren’tjusttelling the truth. They weren’t even telling itall,were they?”
His eyelids creased in dismay again. “I don’t know what they said.”
“They said you have a magic dick.”
This time, Nicolai rolled his eyes. “I should put that in my social media bios.”
“Thatyouwere the guy everyone wanted to rebound with, that you werethat guyin the chat group everyone wanted a taste of.”
One of his eyebrows fell. “That seems outlandish.”
“And now you’re making me think that you’re trying to lower my expectations.”
“Your expectations seem to be fairy wings and magic shadows.”
“Myexpectationswere that I would marry somebody I loved and who loved me, butthatdidn’thappen.”My voice roughened in my throat. “Iexpectthatnothing matters,that everythinghurts,and I just want a little bit of this heart-crushing miseryto go awayfor a while.”
He’d already leaned down close while I was talking, bracing himself on his elbows around my face instead of his extended arms. He stroked my hair back from my temple and watched his fingers and my hair. “My angel, how could someone do that to you? You’re so sweet, so kind. I could make him disappear.”
“That sounds ominous,” I said.
He chuckled and kissed my forehead, my temple. “I should be careful about saying things like that, but I mean it.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “If I were tsar, I’d have my secret police kidnap him and send him to the frozen depths of Hell on the Russian taiga for what he did to your heart.”
Maybe it was wrong, sinful even, but Nicolai being angry at Jimmy soothed the cracks in my soul. “You sure you don’t harbor secret aspirations to conquer Russia again?”
