He stared at me for a long moment—the cold assessment, the calculation, the quality of silence from a man deciding whether what he’s hearing is strategy or something he hadn’t anticipated.
“No,” he said finally.“I wouldn’t.”
The man had the emotional intelligence of a peanut—and that was being generous.
Perhaps I could adjust. Adjust enough to make the noose around my neck a little more palatable. Loosen it by degrees until breathing felt less like a concession.
My eyes found Runa.
I knew my answer. It wasn’t fair or just. But this was my life—the path my parents had placed me on, the contract that had somehow become a child asleep in a mahogany cot in the Pakhan’s bedroom.
Yet.
He hadn’t hesitated to place Runa in his room. Most Russians did this when their children were born—it was simply what was done—but I could see beyond the cultural habit to something underneath it. The tender way he held her. The patience he showed for her specifically, reserved entirely for her, entirely absent everywhere else.
He loved his daughter.
Whatever else he was—and he was many things, none of them simple—that was real.
“Then what choice do you leave me with?” I murmured.
The tension his body held relaxed beneath his T-shirt.
Fourteen months since Runa was conceived. Perhaps he had been counting too.
He planted one hand on the door beside my head. The other found the waistband of my pyjamas and tugged them down. Cool air hit my legs before he pressed his lips against my neck and inhaled—slow and deliberate, the way he did everything—and when his warm breath fanned across my neck and shoulder the shiver moved through my body before I could stop it.
His hands cupped my bare cheeks and he hoisted me up until I had no choice but to wrap my arms and legs around him. He grunted in satisfaction—the specific sound of a man who had been waiting and was done waiting—before turning and carrying me to the bed.
He glanced at Runa.
Then pulled the covers back and climbed on with me still clinging to him. He worked the tie at my waist and opened my top.
“I wanted to see these,” he said, tracing his fingers down my belly and sides.“The proof that this body carried my daughter.”
His hands parted my thighs. He glanced up with a smirk.
“I didn’t exactly have time to groom,” I mumbled, heat rising from my neck to my cheeks.“Runa keeps me rather busy.”
“I like it,” he said, and rose to pull his T-shirt off.
The white material fell somewhere and while he tugged his bottoms down I couldn’t help but admire the artwork of his tattoos and the hard muscle beneath them. I had forgotten how big he was beneath the suit. My eyes dropped lower.
His cock stood tall and proud, the tip already wet.
“You look as though you’ve missed it,” he mused, his voice low with amusement.
I averted my eyes. Too late. His low chuckle confirmed it.
“And these,” he said, and buried his face in my breasts.
His hands moved—pressing them together, finding every curve of them—and I felt his stubble and his lips and his warm breath all at once. Not hurried. Not transactional. There was a reverence in the way he touched me that I couldn’t explain and wasn’t going to try to. He had spent weeks lurking around us, staying for almost every feed, watching while sitting in his chair and his face giving nothing away.
His hot mouth clamped down on a nipple. He began to suck hard. Reminding me that before I became a mother, my body had needs.
Oh.
This was dangerous territory.
