When Gia died,Ludmilla whispers in my head.A part of Slava’s heart died with her.
“What really happened to her?” I ask softly. “How did she die?”
He blinks, and the heaviness doesn’t go away. Here, in this enclosed cabin hurtling its way across the dark open ocean, it feels like something is finally starting to crack between us.
Finally, he says, “Because she got too close to me.”
The words sink into my skin, bury themselves in my veins, and settle deep in my bones.
I thought him telling me that it won’t happen again when I settled into bed. I thought it was nothing but a cruel rejection designed to push me away and keep me at arm’s length so that I can’t see whatever he’s hiding.
But maybe it wasn’t a threat at all.
“Is that why you walked away from me?” I ask. “In the shower?”
“Yes.”
I blink hard as my eyes begin to burn with salt, and I try my damnedest to will the tears away. But they gather anyway because of how utterly unfair everything is.
If you’d told me last month that I’d be sitting here in Slava Romanov’s embrace on his private plane, crying about the reality that we can’t be together, I’d have said you were out of your mind.
And yet here I am.
“Maybe it would’ve been better,” I trail off and look away, not sure how to give name to the shapeless thing that’s been growing between us. “If we stayed as enemies.”
His fingers find my chin. Tilt my face back toward him.
“Do you really want that?” he asks.
I look into those gray eyes, and see the winter storm clouds swirling around tender feelings that’d been buried so deep in the snow.
“No,” I say. “But it would be awfully convenient.”
“I don’t want things to be convenient.” There’s a roughness in his voice. “Not with you.”
His thumb traces the curve of my lower lip. The touch sends electricity skittering across my skin, and burning me up from the depth of my soul.
My breath catches. “Do you want it to happen again?”
“Yes,” he admits.
Then he kisses me, cradling the back of my skull and tipping my head to a better angle so he can deepen the kiss. His tongue strokes against mine in a rhythm that makes my hips want to move.
I moan against his lips and turn in his arms without breaking the kiss until I’m facing him. His hand reaches up and tugs me by my hair. Then, the two of us are falling together into the bed.
“Oh…” I gasp when he breaks the kiss to drag his mouth down my throat. His teeth graze my pulse point, and I shudder. “Oh yes.”
He murmurs in Russian against my skin, and then his hand slides beneath the hem of my borrowed shirt until his palm is hot against my bare stomach and I forget the nightmare that landed me here in the first place.
I forget a lot of things, actually.
I forget that this man represents everything I was supposed to hate. I forget my own promises of vengeance. And as his hand finds my breast and gives it a long and insistent squeeze, sending a burst of heat spreading deep in my chest, I forget my own surging jealousy.
Right now, there’s only his hands and his mouth and the slow, excruciatingly beautiful way he’s taking me apart.
He pushes the shirt up over my head, and I sigh as the cool air of the cabin kisses my bare skin. His hand unclips my bra, and strips me down to just my underwear.
And even though darkness shrouds all around us, I feel seen.
