“And this one?” She traced higher, toward my shoulder.
“The coordinates of a place I can never go back to.”
Mila lifted her head to look at me, and even in the dim light, I could see the questions in her eyes. But she didn’t push. She just settled back against me with a soft sigh, and I was grateful for the mercy of her silence.
“I meant what I said earlier,” I told her quietly. “I don’t know how to do this. How to be… soft. But I’m trying.”
“I know,” she answered, pressing a kiss into my chest, right over my heart. “That’s enough.”
It shouldn’t be. A man like me should never be enough for a woman like her—someone good and gentle and untouched by blood.
But as I held her in the darkness, feeling the steady rhythm of her breathing, I allowed myself to believe what she said.
Just for tonight.
Tomorrow, I’d go back to being the monster the world needed me to be. I’d strategize and do whatever it took to keep Moretti away from what’s mine. I’d be ruthless, cold, and uncompromising, because that was what survival in this world demanded.
But here, now, with Mila warm and trusting in my arms, I would let myself be just a man.
In the silence that wrapped around us, a growing, dangerous truth revealed itself: I would never let her go.
Chapter Nine
Mila’s POV
I woke with soreness between my thighs and warmth against my spine.
For a moment, I didn’t move. I just lay there in the pre-dawn gray, feeling the weight of Alexei’s arm draped across my waist like a chain disguised as an embrace. His breath was steady against the back of my neck, deep and even in a way that told me he was still asleep.
It was strange, knowing that this man—this carefully controlled, dangerous man—was vulnerable like this. That he trusted me enough to let his guard down, even unconsciously.
I stared at the ornate crown molding on the ceiling, trying to reconcile the quiet, careful man who touched me last night with the cold crime boss who made me marry him.
The hands that explored every inch of my body with something close to reverence were the same hands that negotiated my future like a business transaction. The mouth that whispered my name against my skin was the same mouth that gave orders that ended lives. The eyes that softened when I came apart beneath him are the same eyes that watch people with the clinical detachment of a predator deciding whether they’re prey or not worth the effort.
Who is he, really?
And who am I becoming by wanting him anyway?
The soreness was a reminder of what we did. My body carried the evidence of him—the slight ache, the faint marks on my hips where his fingers gripped too hard in the moment, the tender feeling that comes with being thoroughly claimed. I should be horrified. I should’ve felt trapped, used, like I’d somehow betrayed myself by giving in to this. But I didn’t.
Instead, I felt… awake. Like I’d been sleepwalking through my life and suddenly crashed into something real, sharp, and impossible to ignore.
Alexei shifted behind me, his arm tightening reflexively around my waist, and I held my breath. But he didn’t wake. He just pulled me closer, his body curving around mine with a possessiveness that should make me want to run. But it didn’t.
God help me, it didn’t.
A moment later, I slipped out of bed as carefully as I could, extracting myself from his hold. I managed it, leaving him sprawled across the sheets, one arm reaching toward the warm spot where I’d been.
In the bathroom, I caught sight of myself in the mirror and barely recognized the woman looking back. My hair was a mess, tangled from his fingers. My lips were still swollen from kissing. There was a faint mark on my collarbone—not quite a bruise, but evidence all the same. I looked like someone who had been thoroughly made love to.
I looked like Alexei Lobanov’s wife. The thought sent a shiver through me that I couldn’t quite name.
I showered quickly, washing away the scent of him and the evidence of last night, trying to find some semblance of the person I was before all this. Before the engagement party, the gunfire, and the cold proposal that came with no room for refusal.
Who are you fooling, Mila?
I’d be lying if I said I really wanted to go back to who I was. Okay, this was nothing like the kind of marriage I’d dreamed of for myself, and there was still so much chaos between us to walk through. But at the same time, the warm, sweet thing between us was something I’d never experienced with anyone. The way he looked at me with that fiery yet tendergaze, as if I was an angel, was something that made my heart melt.
