"You're my wife."
The word shouldn't have affected me the way it did. Shouldn't have sent a shiver down my spine, shouldn't have made my breath catch. But it did. Because it was true. Whatever else we were, whatever confusion and chaos surrounded us, that one fact remained.
I was his wife. He was my husband. And we were standing so close I could feel his breath on my lips.
"Rodion—"
I don't know which of us moved first. Maybe him. Maybe me. Maybe we both broke at the same moment, pulled together by something stronger than sense.
His mouth found mine, and the world disappeared.
It wasn't gentle. Wasn't careful. It was heat and desperation and three weeks of tension finally snapping. His hands came up to cup my face, and I fisted mine in his shirt, pulling him closer even as part of my brain screamed that this was wrong, this was reckless, this was everything I'd sworn I wouldn't do.
He kissed like he argued—intense, relentless, refusing to back down. I kissed him back with equal ferocity, all my fear and anger and confusion pouring into the contact. His teeth grazed my lower lip, and I gasped, and he swallowed the sound, deepening the kiss until I couldn't think, couldn't breathe, couldn't do anything but feel.
His hands slid from my face to my waist, pulling me closer, and I arched into him without meaning to. The wall was solid against my back, his body solid against my front, and for one dizzying moment, I forgot everything—the Petrovics, the dead men, the chaos of the past forty-eight hours. There was only this. Only him. Only the heat building between us like a fire neither of us could control.
Then reality crashed back in.
I pushed against his chest, hard, and he released me immediately, stepping back with his hands raised. We stared at each other across the sudden distance, both of us breathing hard.
"That was—" I started.
"A mistake," he finished. "You said."
"I was going to say unexpected."
"Was it?"
I didn't have an answer. It shouldn't have been unexpected. The tension had been building since the first session, escalating with every secret shared, every wall breached. But knowing something intellectually and experiencing it physically were two different things.
"This complicates everything," I said.
"I know."
"We can't just—we're not in a position to—" I pressed my fingers to my lips, still feeling the ghost of his mouth. "I don't know what this means."
"Neither do I."
We stood there, the silence stretching between us. My heart was still racing, my skin still tingling where he'd touched me. I wanted to close the distance again. I wanted to run. I wanted to rewind the last five minutes and make a different choice.
But I couldn't. What was done was done.
He ran a hand through his hair, a gesture I recognized from our sessions—something he did when he was trying to regain control. "I shouldn't have done that."
"We shouldn't have done that," I corrected. "It wasn't just you."
"You're right. But I pushed. I knew you were upset, I knew the timing was—" He shook his head. "I'm sorry."
"Don't apologize." The words came out sharper than I intended. "That makes it worse somehow."
"How?"
"Because I wanted it too. That's the problem." I hugged my arms around myself, suddenly cold despite the warmth of the room. "I've spent years building walls. Years of learning to keep people out. And you just—" I gestured vaguely at the space between us. "You walked right through them. I don't know how to handle that."
"You don't have to handle it right now."
"Then when?"
