"Hey." My voice cracks on that single sound.
“How long?" His voice is rough and deep, in that unhurried register that I have been aching to hear.
"Three days."
He processes this. Blinks. I can see him cataloguing—the hospital room, the IV, the bandages, the beeping monitor, me. His eyes settle on me and stay there.
I lean down and kiss him.
It's long and tender and I pour every sleepless hour of the last three days into it, every terror and every relief and everymoment of sitting in that godawful chair watching his chest rise and fall, waiting for him to come back to me.
When I pull back, there's a tiny smear of lipstick at the corner of his mouth, and I reach up to wipe it away.
"Do you always kiss me like that after I wake up from a shooting, Ms. Farnassi?"
The smile breaks across my face before I can stop it. He's been conscious for thirty seconds and he's already doingthis—the low voice, the formal address, the raised eyebrow, and the whole insufferable package.
"Only when you get involved in a shootout like that,” I tell him. “And create a full-blown PR nightmare that'll take me weeks to put down, Mr. Romanov."
He smiles. “Still trying to make me look like a respectable businessman."
"That's what you pay me for."
His mouth curves. That dangerous, slow half-smile that I used to find infuriating and now find irresistible for entirely different reasons. Then the smile softens into something quieter.
Something real.
"Thank you," he says.
"For what?"
He's silent for a moment. His gray eyes search mine, and I watch him assemble the words with the careful precision of a man who does not say things he doesn't mean.
"For letting me believe I can love again." His voice is low. "For letting me let go of the vengeance. For staying."
My throat tightens. The bruises on my neck—Don Leo's fingerprints—are still visible, still fresh, and yellowing at the edges but not yet gone.
"Where else would I go?" I whisper.
He takes my chin in his hand. Warm callouses hold me softly for a moment. Then, he pulls me close and kisses me.
It’s not his hungry kiss that drains the air from my lungs, but it leaves me breathless all the same.
When we part, he looks into my eyes, holding my gaze until the entire hospital room dissolves and there is nothing in the world except the space between us.
"I love you, Bella Farnassi."
"I love you too," I say.
I kiss him again. And again. And somewhere between the second and third kiss, my mouth finds his ear.
"Don't you want to know what's on the schedule for tonight?" I murmur against his skin. "When we go home?"
His hand tightens on my waist. "Tell me."
"I want you to put me on my hands and knees."
His breathing changes. I can feel it—the shift from steady to shallow, the chest under my palm expanding faster.
