His whole body tensed, every muscle going rigid beneath me.His hand held me steady as he pulsed against my tongue, hot spurts of his release flooding my mouth.I swallowed around him, taking everything he gave me, and felt a surge of fierce, feminine triumph.I had done this.I had broken his iron control.I had made him shake and groan and hold me like he’d die if I pulled away.
The taste was bitter, unfamiliar, but the power of it made me feel invincible.
When he finally released my hair, I pulled back slowly, letting him slip from my mouth.A drop of his release had escaped past the corners of my lips.I held his gaze as I caught it with my tongue, licking it clean, watching his eyes go dark with something like awe.
“Good girl.”His voice was wrecked, barely recognizable.“You’re learning who you belong to.”
He pulled me up his body and kissed me hard, tasting himself on my mouth, not seeming to care.
Afterward, we lay tangled together in the fading golden light, my head on his chest, his arm curled around me like he was afraid I might disappear.His heartbeat was slowing against my ear, settling into a steady rhythm that matched the peace spreading through my own body.The sheets were cool against my overheated skin.His scent surrounded me, mixed now with sweat and sex and satisfaction.
“Stay,” he said quietly, his lips moving against my hair.“Don’t go back to your room tonight.”
I should have hesitated.Should have preserved some distance, some self-protection, some barrier between us.But I was warm and sated and more relaxed than I’d been in weeks, maybe months, and the thought of leaving his arms to sleep alone in that cold guest room felt unbearable.The thought of not touching him, not breathing in his scent, not feeling his heartbeat under my cheek, seemed like the worst kind of punishment.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I said.
His arm tightened around me.His lips pressed against my hair, a kiss so tender my throat tightened.
I closed my eyes and let myself drift, finally allowing my exhausted body the rest it had been denied for days.His warmth seeped into me, his breathing deep and steady beneath my ear.I felt safe.I felt wanted.I felt like I belonged somewhere, for the first time since my father’s stroke had upended everything I thought I knew about my life.
But just before sleep took me, a thought surfaced through the haze of pleasure and contentment and bone-deep fatigue.A thought that I’d been running from for weeks, that I’d buried under resentment and fear and the absolute certainty that nothing good could come from this arrangement.
I was falling for him.
Not just attraction.Not just physical desire.Not just the complicated tangle of gratitude and resentment that had defined our arrangement from the start.This was something else.Something terrifying and inevitable, like a wave pulling me under, like gravity drawing me toward something I couldn’t escape.
I was falling for Raphael Antonov.The man who held my family’s debt.The man who had bought a year of my life.The man who had just touched me like I was precious and looked at me like I was the only thing in the world that mattered.
And I had no idea how to stop.
23
RAPHAEL
She was asleep when I finally let myself look at her.
The bedroom was dark, the heavy curtains blocking out the February cold and whatever moonlight might have filtered through.But I could see her perfectly.The pale curve of her shoulder above the sheet.The way her hair spilled across my pillow, golden strands against black silk.The soft rhythm of her breathing, slow and deep and trusting in a way that made my chest clench painfully.
Ours.My wolf’s voice was more purr than growl.Finally in our bed.Finally chose us.
I didn’t argue with him.For once, I didn’t have the energy.
She had chosen.That was the part I couldn’t stop replaying.Not the way she’d tasted, though that memory burned through me every time I closed my eyes.Not the sounds she’d made when I buried my face between her thighs, though those would fuel my fantasies for months.It was the moment she’d looked at me with those clear eyes and said the words I hadn’t realized I’d been waiting to hear.
I want you.
Not because the contract demanded it.Not because she had no choice.
Because she wanted to.
I reached out, then stopped myself before my fingers could brush her cheek.She needed sleep.The past weeks had worn her thin, carved shadows beneath her eyes and taken the easy smile I’d grown addicted to watching.Tonight she’d finally let go.Finally surrendered to something other than fear.I wouldn’t be the one to steal that peace from her.
Even though I wanted to.Even though every instinct screamed at me to wake her, to roll her beneath me, to bury myself inside her and feel her clench around me when she came.The wolf was relentless, pacing at the edges of my control, demanding more.More touch.More taste.More of her scent coating our skin until no one with a wolf’s senses could mistake what she was.
Claim her.The growl rumbled through my chest, too loud in the silence.Mark her.Bite her.Let them all know she belongs to us.
I shoved him down hard.That wasn’t an option.Not now, not ever.Claiming meant losing control, and losing control meant becoming my father.Blood on my hands.A broken body at my feet.Decades of nightmares that still woke me gasping in the dark, my mother’s screams echoing in ears that remembered too much.
