When he groans again, and starts to knead my ass, causing me to rub against the very large hard-on that’s impossible to ignore, it’s the wake-up call I need. Pulling back, I sigh, missing the feel of him as soon as our lips part.
“I’m sorry,” I say, unable to look him in the eyes while I add, “I can’t sleep with you. It’s too fast. I’m sorry.”
He hooks a finger under my chin, forcing my eyes back to his. “Don’t apologize. I never expected this date to end with sex.”
He sees the disbelieving look I’m giving him, but he doesn’t budge.
“I didn’t,” he insists. “I want to take things slow with you, prove to you that I can be the man you need me to be. I’m not going anywhere, Lily. You’ll eventually believe it.”
I can’t help but glance down the beach towards the huge lit-up house in the distance. “What about Vasily? I can’t do anything that will jeopardize my job. I want to help Bran. It would break my heart to leave him, but more importantly it would hurt him, and I can’t do that.” I shake my head at the mere thought of it. “I refuse to hurt him like that.”
He cups my face and kisses me again. “I would never ask that of you. No one’s going to hurt Bran, and you’re not going anywhere. Let me handle Vasily. You don’t need to worry about it.”
I nod my head, deciding to trust him, and then thread my fingers through his as he starts to lead me down the beach. We walk for what feels like hours. He tells me all about growing up in Moscow and working for the Medvedev brothers. He glosses over a lot of the details, but I can hear the love and respect in his voice when he talks about them. These men are his family, and he’s loyal to them to his core. My heart swells a bit at that. He may not have ever been in a relationship before, but Ilya’s proven year after year that he can be loyal and commit to something. He’s not a fickle man or a dishonorable one. He’s just never been in love and had the opportunity to extend that work dedication to his personal life.
By the time he’s leading me back to my cabin, I’m yawning and wishing I could just cuddle up with him and fall asleep. All thoughts of sleep fly out the window when he presses me against the door and brings his lips to mine again. I feel his hand grip my hip as his tongue lightly brushes mine. With a moan, I open wider, wanting more of him and wishing I’d kept my mouth shut earlier about not wanting to jump into sex, because sex sounds very, very good right now. His thumb slips under my shirt, brushing the skin of my stomach, and I’m so aroused by what he’s doing that I don’t even have a chance to worry about my not-even-close-to-being-rock-hard abs. The sound of his groan makes it abundantly clear he doesn’t give a fuck.
My fingers run through his hair and then down his ridiculously muscled arms, and when I let out a whimper of pure need and suck his tongue into my mouth, he lets out a growly sound that’s pure alpha male as both hands grip my hips hard enough to let me know he’s barely hanging on.
Before he can lift me up and carry me inside, he pulls back and rests his forehead against mine. Our breaths are fast, both of us completely consumed by what we’d just been doing. With his eyes shut and his hands still on me, he says, “I want you more than I’ve ever wanted anyone, but I was serious about taking it slow. I don’t want you thinking this is a one-time thing.”
When he opens his eyes, I’m stunned by the raw need I see in them.
“I want dates with you, lots of them, and text messages with those cute fucking emojis, and I want to sit in my house and look out my window and see yours. I want to enjoy every second of longing for you, because it’s temporary.”
“It is?” I ask, my heart dropping at that word.
“It is.” He brushes his fingers along my cheek. “Because very soon you’re going to be living with me, you’re going to be my wife, and you’re going to be the mother of my kids. This dating time is going to fly by in the large scheme of things, and I don’t want to miss a second of it.” He grins at the shocked expression I’m wearing and gives me a wink. “So let me look out my window and pine for you.”
I laugh and say, “I bet you never thought you’d say that.”
He grins, and my heart skips a beat. “No, I never thought I would. Turns out I was just waiting to say it to you.”
“Careful, Ilya. You’re turning into a romantic,” I tease.
“For you, yes.” He kisses me once more before forcing himself to take a step back. “I’m leaving before I make a liar of myself,” he says with a grin. “Sleep well, Lily.” He points down the path to where I can barely see the outline of his house through the darkness. “I’ll be over there pining for you.”
I grin and tell him goodnight and get my ass inside before I do something crazy like rip my shirt off and jump into his very strong arms.
I’m half expecting everything to go back to normal, but when I open my door the next morning, the first thing I see is a bouquet of wildflowers sitting on my welcome mat. They’re bunched together, and it’s obvious he’s picked them from the property, a detail that makes them even more beautiful to me. Grinning, I scoop them up and bury my face in them, breathing in a deep lungful of their sweet scent.
Over the next week, Ilya’s inner romantic not only fully awakens but thrives. I spend my days loving on the Medvedev kids while I teach them new signs and slowly help Bran come out of his shell. The other day I brought him a big picture book of Celtic myths, and I swear he’d lit up when I finger spelled his name and then pointed to the big black raven in the book. I know there’s no way he fully understood that I was trying to tell him Bran meansravenin Irish Gaelic, but one day he’ll understand. So far, it’s sparked his interest, and that’s something I can work with.
Talia had been just as absorbed in the story, and her bond with Bran continues to warm my heart every time I’m around them. Ever since the morning we couldn’t find him, she’s been sticking even closer to him. She even gave him her favorite stuffed bear. She’s too young to understand how much she’s helping him, but she is. Talia doesn’t even seem to notice that he’s deaf. She laughs and plays with him, treating him just like she treats Dmitri, and that’s exactly what Bran needs. To her, he’s not the brother who can’t hear, he’s just the brother that she needs to use a different language with.
I wish everyone shared her attitude. I’ve met some real assholes over the years, and surprisingly the family that’s heavily involved in the crime world doesn’t fall into that category. They continue to impress me, and so does the man I’m quickly falling for.
As if I’ve conjured him out of thin air, he steps out from the woods when I’m almost to my cabin. It’s been one week since our date, and my heart still does this flutter thing every time I see him. He returns my big smile with one of his own, and meets me at my door. I quickly open it, grab him by the shirt, and pull him in after me.
His laugh is cut off by my hungry mouth, and then it’s nothing but moans of pleasure and impatient whimpers from me. The truth is if he pulled me into the bedroom right now, I wouldn’t fight him, but he’s the one who’s insisting we take things slow, and if I wasn’t so sexually frustrated, I’d laugh.
When I slide a hand under his shirt and run my fingers over a set of impossibly hard abs, he groans my name and growls something in Russian.
I nip at his bottom lip and say, “It’s very sexy when you do that. What did you say?”
I feel his soft laugh before he says, “I said you are a temptation unlike anything I’ve ever known and you’re all I can think about.”
“I think I was wrong about taking things slow,” I say, letting my nails scrape along his skin. “I’ve changed my mind.”
