My lips find his, and he kisses me, long and slow and deep, his hand winding in my hair. The towel around me falls away as his hands slide over me, touching, claiming, so full of desire that I feel as if I’m burning up from the inside out. I arch into his touch, feeling the choker shift against my throat, a constant reminder of what I've chosen.
He rolls me onto my back, careful of my wrists, and I feel him part my legs gently. He moves down my body, kissing and licking, worshipping every inch of me as he runs his lips over my throat, my breasts, sucking my nipples into his mouth until I arch up and cry out. I thread my fingers through his hair, heedless of my damaged wrists, and he groans, sliding further down my body until his mouth is between my thighs.
He licks me slowly, carefully, as if he’s savoring the taste of me. His fingers slide into me, stroking with long, slow movements as he slides his tongue over my clit, groaning as he pushes me closer to the edge. He reaches down as his tongue circles the sensitive nerves, gripping himself with one hand as if it’s too much, jerking himself in harsh strokes as he sucks my clit between his lips.
I cry out, his name a high pitched moan as I come hard on his tongue, and he rises up, breathless as he pushes himself into me. I can feel him shudder, hear him moan as he sinks into me, and I cup his face in my hands, wrapping my heels around his calves.
I can see the man beneath the monster. The one who's capable of tenderness and love and sacrifice. The one who's willing to change for me, to try to be better than he is.
But I also see the darkness. The possessiveness, the obsession, the violence that's as much a part of him as his skin and blood and muscle. And I accept it. All of it. I can't separatethe light from the dark in someone like Ilya. They're woven together, inseparable, and loving him means loving all of it.
Iwantall of it. The violence and the gentleness.
"I love you," I whisper as he moves inside me, every muscle straining not to come too quickly as he throbs inside of me. "I love you, Ilya."
“I love you,” he breathes. “I’m not sure if I know what the word means, Mara, but I swear I’ll learn. If I love anything, it’s you. I’ll be what you need, or I’ll die trying.”
"Don't die." I pull him down to me, pressing my lips to his as I tighten around him, pulling him deeper. "I don't want to lose you. I want you alive, with me, the two of us finding a way to give each other what we need."
“Yes.” He gasps the word. “Anything, Mara. Anything for you.”
He thrusts again, harder this time, and I feel him let go, feel the shudder that ripples down his spine as he buries his face in my neck and comes in me, filling me until he’s wrung dry.
“This was always meant to be,” he murmurs against my throat, and I nod, turning my head to press my lips against his hair.
I can feel it too. We were inevitable. And now, we’re here.
We can build something beautiful out of this darkness. Something real, and ours.
Together.
I close my eyes, and I let myself drift off to sleep in the arms of the man I love. The man who's willing to change for me, to fight himself the way he’s fought the world all his life.
It won’t always be easy. But that doesn’t matter.
We've found each other.
And we're never letting go.
EPILOGUE: MARA
SIX MONTHS LATER
The morning light filters through the floor-to-ceiling windows of the penthouse, casting long shadows across the hardwood floors as I stand in front of my closet, considering what to wear to the gallery today. Six months ago, this closet didn't exist—or rather, it existed, but it was full of clothes I hadn’t chosen for myself. Six months ago, I was a captive in this penthouse, fighting against every boundary Ilya tried to impose, terrified of losing myself to his obsession. Now I wake up here every morning by choice.
I slip into a black silk blouse and tailored charcoal trousers, reaching up to touch the diamond choker at my throat. I’m two women at once now, always—Mara Winslow, respected art dealer, a woman who can discuss provenance and artistic merit with collectors who have no idea that half the transactions I facilitate serve to hide the money that my boyfriend needs to wash clean, and also Ilya Sorokov's woman, his most treasured possession, an obsession that he’ll never get over.
When I head to the kitchen, I find a still-warm coffee cup in the sink and a note on the counter in Ilya’s sharp handwriting.Boston today. Back tonight. Kazimir will be nearby if you need anything.There are no endearments, but I don’t need them.What means the most to me is that he tells me where he's going now, that he doesn't simply disappear and expect me to accept his absence without explanation.
I pour myself coffee from the pot he left warming and stand at the window, looking out over the city. From here, I can see my old apartment building across the street, the window of the bedroom where I used to sleep, unaware that I was being watched. The memory should disturb me more than it does. Sometimes I think about the woman I was then, the one who believed she understood herself, who thought she knew the limits of her own desires and the boundaries of acceptable behavior. That woman feels like a stranger now, someone I left behind in a gallery back room with a dead man's blood on her hands.
I've accepted what I am, what I've become. I've learned to navigate the criminal underworld with the same skill I once reserved only for navigating the art world, using my intelligence and knowledge to expand Ilya's empire while maintaining the legitimacy that my gallery provides. The money laundering operation I've built is sophisticated and nearly untraceable, moving millions through carefully orchestrated sales and acquisitions that would stand up to any audit. I've become invaluable to Ilya's organization, and the knowledge fills me with a pride that would have horrified my former self.
The otherpakhans who do business with Ilya have learned not to underestimate me. There was an incident two months ago, a meeting where one of Ilya's associates made the mistake of dismissing me as decorative, speaking over me as if I weren't there. Ilya simply looked at the man with cold eyes, drew his gun, and set it on the table before saying: "She speaks with the same voice that I do. Disrespect her again and you won’t leave this room alive." The man had apologized immediately, and word spread quickly through the organization. Now when Iwalk into a room, I'm treated with the same deference they show Ilya, and I'm careful with that. I’m well aware that being feared by powerful men is not the same as being respected, and that there’s always danger.
Everything isn’t perfect. Nothing about this life is perfect, and I'd be lying to myself if I pretended otherwise. Ilya still struggles with his controlling instincts, still has to fight the urge to lock me away where nothing can touch me. I catch him watching me sometimes with an intensity that borders on obsessive, and I know he's battling demons I can't fully understand, ghosts of a sister he couldn't save and a childhood that taught him love and loss are inseparable. We've had arguments about boundaries, about trust, about his possessiveness. But we've also learned to communicate, and find compromises that honor both our needs.
I finish my coffee and gather my things for the gallery, slipping my phone into my purse alongside the small handgun Ilya insists I carry. I've learned to shoot over the past six months, spending hours at a private range with him until I could hit a target with deadly accuracy. The weight of the weapon has become familiar, almost comforting, another symbol of how far I've come from the woman I used to be.
