“Come here.”
Two words and my legs carry me across cold hardwood until I’m standing between his knees, smellinghimlike an addict. His hands find my hips through the terry cloth, and the weight of his grip is heavy, an anchor I can’t escape.
“You okay?”
“No.” The honesty scrapes out raw, and I don’t try to pretty it up. “Someone tried to kill you tonight. I came while a sniper was aiming at your head. It wasn’t okay, none of this is okay.”
“But you’re here.” His thumbs trace slow circles through the fabric, pressing into the soft flesh above my hip bones. “You could have locked the bathroom door.”
“I heard you on the phone.” I don’t know why I’m stalling when we both know how this ends. “You’re gathering intelligence. Planning something.”
“Da.” His eyes track over my face, hunting for cracks and lies. “Vadim doesn’t know I know it was him. Which gives me time to prepare.”
“When do you move?”
“Soon.” His hands tighten on my hips, fingers digging in hard. “Which means I need you ready for what comes next.”
“This is war preparation.”
“Everything is war preparation now.” His voice drops. “But that doesn’t make you less mine.”
The wordminelands in my chest and spreads through my bloodstream, liquid fire.
“I need something from you.”
“Tell me.”
“I need you to make me forget. Everything that happened tonight, everything that’s coming tomorrow—I need it gone. Just for a few hours.”
His pupils blow wide and dark, eating up the grey until his eyes are almost black.
“You want me to fuck you until you can’t think.”
“Yes.”
He stands in one fluid motion, and suddenly he’s towering over me, all that controlled violence made flesh, and his hand finds my jaw and tilts my face up.
“You want to forget?” His thumb traces my lower lip, pressing until my mouth parts. “No. You need to remember you chose this.”
“Then do it.”
Something dark and satisfied crosses his face, and he releases me and moves to his jacket draped over a chair. When he turns back, there’s a knife in his hand—a folding blade, matte black handle, small enough to hide in a palm.
My thighs press together involuntarily. Fear. Arousal. They twist together until I can’t tell where the terror ends and the wetness begins.
“You’re afraid.” He watches my face with those predator eyes.
“Yes.” There’s no point lying when he can probably see it on me. “But I’m also—”
“Soaked.” His mouth curves.
Heat floods my cheeks, and I want to deny it, but my body is already betraying me, nipples peaking hard against the towel, pulse pounding between my legs.
He flicks the blade open with his thumb—the sound is small, and it makes my cunt clench. He tests the edge against the pad of his thumb, and blood wells up dark and bright, and then he brings his thumb to his mouth. His tongue flicks out to taste himself while his eyes hold mine.
“Safeword?”
“Glas.”
