I have to let her go. Give her up. Set her free.
No.
“No one is taking her from me,” I say, too sharp, too fast.
Yury’s eyes narrow. “That’s not what you agreed—”
“I don’t give a fuck what I agreed.”
The room goes silent.
Because they hear it. The truth I didn’t mean to say out loud:
I am obsessed. I am gone. I am hers.
And I need to get back to her before the walls close in and I start breaking bones just to breathe again.
Yury changes the subject because he’s smart enough not to push. We handle business fast, efficient, and the second I have the sliver of an excuse, I take it.
“I’m done. I’m going home.”
Avros mutters around the blood in his mouth. “Goddamn. Pussy-whipped.”
I don’t even turn around. “Keep speaking and I’ll make sure I knock your teeth out.”
He wisely shuts the fuck up.
The drive back is a blur. Headlights slice through dark, every kilometer a slow-burning torture.
By the time I reach the estate, I am shaking with the need to see her. My wife. My pregnant wife.
The guards open the gates without a word, probably because of the expression on my face. I race inside and take the stairs two at a time, my heartbeat a weapon ready to fire.
Our room is quiet. Dim. She’s curled beneath the blanket, hair a tumble across my pillow, hand resting protectively over her stomach.
Over my child.
My chest cracks open and a painful, dizzying affection floods every hollow space inside me. I approach the bed and brush her hair back with a hand I’m not sure I can keep steady. She sighs in her sleep, leaning into the touch like she knows it’s me.
“Charlotte,” I murmur, lowering myself over her.
Her lashes flutter. A soft moan escapes her lips, my name tangled inside it.
I kiss her. Soft first because I need to taste calm before I take everything else. But the moment her mouth parts under mine my control is gone.
I kiss her awake, claiming her breath, her pulse, her dreams, and when her arms wrap around my neck, pulling me down on top of her, every cell in my body lights up with one truth.
Home is here. With her. In her. And I need to make sure she knows that.
She tastes like sleep and mint tea and the only peace I’ve ever known.
I kiss her like a man who has been drowning for thirteen hours and has finally found the surface. My tongue slides against hers, slow and deliberate at first, then deeper, hungrier, until she’s arching beneath me, her soft little whimpers vibrating against my mouth.
I pull back just far enough to look at her.
Moonlight spills through the gap in the curtains, painting silver across her swollen belly, the heavy curve of her breasts, the flush climbing her throat. She’s six months ripe with my child and the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
“Vitali,” she breathes, eyes glassy, lips swollen from my kiss. “I missed you.”
