“You saved me,” I whisper.
“Yes.”
“You killed for me.”
“Yes.”
“Without hesitation. Without remorse.”
“Without either,” he confirms, and there’s something dark in his eyes that should terrify me but doesn’t. “I’d do it again. I’d do worse than that if it meant keeping you safe.”
The proximity between us becomes impossible to ignore. He’s so close I can see the gold flecks in his pale blue eyes, can count his heartbeats in the pulse at his throat. My own heart is hammering against my ribs, but it’s not fear anymore. It’s something infinitely more dangerous.
I hate him. I hate what he’s done to my life, what he’s made me complicit in, the way he’s turned my entire world upside down and called it protection. But I also can’t stop thinking about the way he pulled me back from that edge, the desperate strength in his arms, the relief in his voice when he realized I was alive.
He was terrified. This man who kills without hesitation, who faces down armed attackers like they’re minor inconveniences—he was terrified of losing me.
The thought does something terrible to my resolve.
“I hate that somewhere in all of this manipulation and control and murder, I started to—” I stop myself, can’t finish thesentence because finishing it would make everything infinitely more complicated.
“Started to what?” His voice is softer now, almost gentle.
I look at him—really look at him—and see the man who’s been watching over me for weeks, who engineered a scandal to keep me safe, who married me to protect me, who just killed someone because they threatened me. Not a monster. Not exactly. Something more complicated than that.
“Started to want you,” I whisper.
The admission hangs between us like a bridge neither of us expected to build. His eyes darken, pupils dilating, and I can see his control fracture slightly around the edges.
I close the space between us before I can think better of it.
The kiss is desperate, angry, charged with everything we’ve been fighting about and everything we’ve been fighting against. I pour my fury into it, my fear, my gratitude, my confusion about what he’s become to me in the space of two weeks. He responds instantly but doesn’t try to take control, doesn’t push for more than I’m giving. He lets me lead, lets me decide how far this goes, even as I can feel the restraint costing him.
“Elara.” My name sounds like a prayer on his lips.
“Don’t talk,” I tell him, hands fisting in his shirt. “Don’t think, don’t plan, don’t make this into strategy or tactics or whatever the fuck you do in your head. Just—be here. With me. As yourself.”
“Which self?” he asks against my mouth.
“All of them. The protector, the killer, the man who pulls me back from edges. I don’t want pieces, Nikola. I want all of it.”
Something shifts in his expression—surprise, maybe, or relief. Like I’ve just given him permission to be exactly what heis instead of asking him to be less dangerous, less violent, less himself.
He lifts me easily, carries me toward the bedroom that’s been more symbol than reality for the past two weeks. When he sets me down beside the bed, his hands are gentle, reverent, waiting for confirmation that this is what I want.
“Are you sure?” he asks.
“No,” I answer honestly. “I’m choosing this anyway.”
When I reach for him, he lets me set the pace, lets me explore the scars that map his history across skin that’s surprisingly warm. There’s a bullet graze on his ribs, faded but still visible. Knife wounds on his forearms. Evidence of a life lived in violence that somehow led him to this moment, to me.
I trace the scar on his ribs, feeling the raised tissue under my fingertips. “Does it hurt?”
“Not anymore.” His voice is rough, strained. “Nothing hurts right now.”
I look up at him and find his eyes locked on mine with an intensity that steals my breath. This close, I can see the careful control he’s maintaining, the way he’s holding himself back even as every muscle in his body screams tension.
“You don’t have to be gentle with me,” I tell him. “I’m not fragile.”
