I think about the mandate. About the deadline. About Yury and Zakhar and my cousins.
And I think about the woman in my arms, who killed a man in self-defense and walked through a city alone and sat in my chair reading Edith Wharton with her feet tucked under her like she belonged there.
Because she does belong there.
With me.
Mia
I surface from sleep steadily. Thinking about how my dream feels so real. It’s warm and dark and slow, like being pulled up through deep water, and for a few seconds I don't know where I am.
Then I remember.
His bed. That's where I am. His sheets, his pillows, his room. The details arrive in fragments. The weight of a heavy duvet. A mattress that perfectly supports my weight like it was made especially for me. The faint smell of him on the pillow beneath my cheek.
I fell asleep. Properly, heavily, the kind of sleep where your body just stops negotiating and goes. He carried me up here from the library and I remember my face against his neck and his arms solid beneath me and then nothing. Just dark. Deep, blank, dreamless dark, which after the previous night feels like a miracle.
But something wakes me.
A touch. Low. The press of warm lips against my hip bone.
My brain takes a second to assemble it. The duvet has been moved down. The air is cool on my skin. And there's a mouth on me. On my hip, then lower, along the crease where my thigh meets my body, and the recognition hits me all at once.
Iosif.
My breath catches. My fingers curl into the sheet.
He knows I'm awake. He must know, because he pauses for just a beat. His thumb traces a slow line across my hip.
"Mia." His voice is low and rough with sleep. "If you want me to stop—"
"No." The word is out before I've fully thought it. My voice sounds like someone else's. Hoarse. Thick. "Don't stop."
His mouth returns to my skin. Sucking one swollen lip into his mouth, then the other. My stomach contracts. My legs part further without my deciding to, my body making choices before my brain has finished waking up.
He settles between my thighs. I feel the width of his shoulders press them apart. His hands slide beneath me, cupping my ass, tilting my hips up, and the possessiveness of the grip makes something hot twist in my belly.
Then his tongue is on me and I stop thinking in full sentences.
He's slower than before. In the library it was focused and deliberate. A man with a purpose. This is different. This is languid. Exploratory. Like he's half asleep himself and doing this because he wants to, not because he's working toward anything, just tasting me because I'm here and he can.
His tongue moves in a lazy, flat stroke and my hips jolt.
"Easy," he murmurs against me, and I feel the word vibrate through my whole body.
I make a sound. I don't know what to call it. Something between a moan and a whimper, and if I had any pride left, I'd be embarrassed, but I used up my entire supply of pride in the library when I rode a man I'd known for twenty-four hours in his reading chair.
He works me slowly. Patiently. His tongue tracing patterns I can't predict, long slow strokes that end with a flick that makesmy thighs shake, and every time I get close to something he backs off. Just slightly. Just enough that I feel the edge recede.
"Iosif—" My hand finds his hair. "Please."
He lifts his head. I can barely see him in the dark, just the shape of him between my legs, massive, the faint gleam of his eyes.
"How sore are you?"
The question cuts through the haze. Direct and practical. The same tone he uses for everything, are you hurt, what do you need, tell me the facts, except he's asking it from between my thighs at four in the morning.
I take stock. There's a tenderness. An ache. Not sharp. Not the sting from before. More like a bruise. The kind that reminds you something happened without quite hurting.
