I hover, unsure what to do with myself, then sink onto the edge of the couch. My body feels heavy, but my mind won’t slow down. Every image keeps replaying. The plane. The body. Theway he shielded me. The way he carried my daughter like it was the most natural thing in the world.
I hate that my chest tightens again.
He ends the call and finally turns to me. “Everything okay?”
I nod automatically, then shake my head. “I don’t know. I think I’m just…overwhelmed.”
“That’s understandable,” he says. He keeps his distance, doesn’t sit next to me, doesn’t crowd me. I notice that too. Always controlled. Always watching.
Silence settles between us, thick but not uncomfortable. I can hear my daughter’s soft breathing through the open bedroom door. Safe. Asleep. Unaware.
Aleksander speaks again, quieter. “I meant what I said. We leave tomorrow. Early. Straight to New York.”
“And then?” I ask before I can stop myself.
He studies me, expression unreadable. “Then you decide what you want to do.”
I almost laugh. “You make it sound simple.”
“It won’t be,” he admits. “But it will be your choice.”
I search his face, trying to reconcile that promise with everything else I know about him. The power. The danger. The secrets layered so thick I can barely see the man underneath.
“I don’t want to be pulled into something I can’t get out of,” I say softly.
He holds my gaze. “Neither do I.”
That answer unsettles me more than any other.
I nod, turning back to my room, closing the door behind me, slipping under the covers. I stare at the ceiling, the city lights flickering through the curtains.
My heart won’t calm down.
Because no matter how much I tell myself this is temporary, that tomorrow will bring distance and clarity, my body knows the truth before my mind does.
Aleksander is already woven into my life again.
And the secret I’ve protected for years feels suddenly, terrifyingly fragile.
I turn onto my side, facing the door to my daughter’s room, and make myself a promise in the dark.
For a moment, the hotel room around me blurs, and I’m lost in another suite—four years ago, with Aleksander.
It was only meant to be a night. That’s what I told myself as I pressed him back onto those crisp white sheets, my dress already falling away, his hands hot and demanding on my skin. But night blurred into morning, morning bled into afternoon, and neither of us left the room.
I remember the weight of his body above me, his cock filling me slow and deep as sunlight spilled over us, his mouth finding my tits, sucking until I cried out and twisted beneath him. The sheets tangled around my legs, my heels pressing into his back as he fucked me harder, deeper, making me come again and again.
We’d barely catch our breath before he was turning me over, my face pressed to the pillow, his hands gripping my hips as he drove into me from behind, relentless, greedy, the sound of our bodies raw and wet and desperate. His voice in my ear, low and rough, telling me how good I felt, how much he wanted me, his cock never giving me a chance to recover before he made me come all over again.
Later, I’d ride him straddling his lap, his hands gripping my ass, guiding my hips up and down, my tits bouncing for him as he bit at my neck, groaning against my skin. He’d pin my wrists above my head, fuck me with my legs spread wide, his fingers rubbing my clit, making me come so hard I saw stars. At night, he’d pull me close and slide inside me slow, fucking me lazy and deep until I melted around him, the city lights flickering through the window.
There was laughter too—late-night grins, stolen kisses, me gasping as he pulled me into the shower, water streaming over our bodies as he pinned me against the glass and slid inside me again. Every touch was hungry, every kiss left me aching for more. There was no part of me he didn’t take, didn’t worship, didn’t ruin.
It was madness, those forty-eight hours—a reckless, beautiful storm I told myself I could outrun.
I’d lost track of time completely. The outside world faded, the phone buzzing somewhere in my purse, Maya’s name lighting up the screen over and over, but I let every call slide to voicemail. I couldn’t answer. I couldn’t explain. I didn’t know what was wrong with me—only that Aleksander was all I could think about, all I could feel.
He was intoxicating in every way. The heat of his hands, the press of his mouth, the rough scrape of his jaw against my thigh as he went down on me for the third time that morning. The hours vanished. It was as if the world outside the hotel room stopped existing altogether.
