Another hard thrust steals my breath, and I’m clawing at his shirt, yanking it up his torso. He tears it off himself, crashing his mouth to mine while I shove his sweats lower and curl my fingers around his cock, hot and solid in my hand.
My leggings are gone in an instant, peeled off with a single drag of his hands. I barely step out of them before he hauls me up, my back hitting the wall, my legs wrapping around him on instinct.
“I love you,” he breathes, lining himself at my entrance, his cold piercings sliding over my clit and sending a shudder through me.
“I love you too.”
The truth leaves me bare and exposed, but I don’t care. I’ll never stop loving him.
“Ti vsegda budesh moya.” He growls, and the sound tears through me a split second before he drives into me in one brutal thrust.
The wall shakes. My breath breaks. My body clamps down around him so tight he groans against my neck.
His hands are rough as they tangle in my hair, his tongue driving into my mouth, sucking on mine before he nips at my bottom lip like he’s starving for every inch of me. I reach for him, cupping his cheek, my cry swallowed by his mouth as he grinds into me, rolling his hips just right and dragging another ragged sound from my throat.
For a moment, nothing exists outside of us. Just this pull between us, a wild rhythm of need and pain and hope tangling together. The world narrows to this. To us. To the way we break and rebuild each other in the same moment.
When he kisses me again, it sinks through every inch of my skin. A violent pull. A homecoming. A plea.
A promise.
It’s always been there between us. That unrelenting, beautiful force that drags us back to each other no matter how far we try to run.
He slams roughly, eyes on me, and the world stills. All the noise, all the doubt, all the bruised pieces of us fall away until only this remains: his body inside mine, my nails in his shoulders, our hearts pounding against everything that tried to tear us apart.
And even if I walk away tomorrow, even if we break again, this moment will stay.
A scar. A memory. Proof that for one moment in time, we burned so bright the world could’ve turned to ash around us and we still wouldn’t have let go.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
ALEKSEI
She’s lying beside me,staring into my eyes, and I should feel relief. Maybe even some sense of victory. But I don’t.
I know what will happen when I tell her what I came to say. She will walk away for the second time, and I do not know if I can take it.
“What’s wrong?” she asks, knowing me so well.
Two fingers press into my temple. “Fiona…” My hand moves gently across the curve of her bare back, fingers resting just beneath her shoulder blade. “There’s something I have to tell you.”
Her body stills as she lifts her head slightly, enough for our eyes to meet in the dim light of the room, and I see it. That flicker of dread. Like she already knows whatever I’m about to say will hurt.
“The reason I have always been one step ahead…” I begin, trying to convince myself that she will understand. “It’s because I put a GPS tracker in you.”
Her eyes grow, and she instantly pulls back as if I’ve struck her. “What?”
“I broke into your house after the trial and drugged your tea, just enough to make you sleep deeply, and I injected it in you.”
She recoils like she can’t stand the sight of me. “Where?”
My fingers brush the spot at the base of her neck.
Her hand flies to her mouth. “Oh my God…”
“It’s small. Buried under the skin. You never felt it.”
“Jesus Christ.” Her whisper slices through the room. “You…you put something inside me?”
