So stupidly, dangerously safe.
I close my eyes and listen to his breathing even out.
***
I wake on my stomach, cheek turned into the pillow, completely relaxed.
My skin still feels warm and oversensitive everywhere he touched me, especially my neck where his mouth dragged last and hardest, like he wanted something to linger after.
Behind me, Maksim shifts, the mattress dipping with his weight as he leans over to grab something from the nightstand.
The movement pulls me back just enough to make me aware of little things.
The cold air on my bare shoulders. The ache between my thighs. The smell of sex and his soap.
I crack one eye open.
Maksim is sitting at the edge of the bed in nothing but black briefs, broad back to me, one forearm braced over his thigh as he checks his phone. His hair is a mess, blue still bright through the top where it catches the morning light. My scratches stripe his shoulder blades, angry pink against tattooed skin, and a small, vicious pulse of satisfaction goes through me.
My voice comes out rough with sleep. “You’re leaving already?”
He glances back at me over his shoulder.
Those eyes drag over where I’m sprawled in his bed, naked and messy and still trying to wake up, and something in his expression shifts.
Possessive in that quiet way he gets when he’s looking at me like I’m a problem he enjoys having.
“I have things to do,” he says.
I make a face and bury half of it back in the pillow. “Rude.”
His mouth twitches.
I hear the phone hit the nightstand a second before he turns fully and reaches for me. His hand slides up my calf, over the back of my thigh, then higher until his palm spreads warm and heavy over my ass.
“Morning,” he says. “Is that better?”
“No, you’re an ass,” I mumble.
His hand comes down in a sharp smack.
I jolt, yelping, and twist to glare at him. “Maksim.”
“There. Be good.”
I narrow my eyes at him.
He looks completely unimpressed with my attitude. Hair a wreck. Mouth swollen from us and still somehow fully in control of the room.
I hate him.
Not really.
Unfortunately.
He leans down and kisses me before I can say something bratty, one hand sliding into my hair, the other gripping my hip. It starts slow, lazy almost, warm from sleep and sex and the kind of morning quiet that makes everything feel thicker somehow, heavier. Then his tongue drags against mine and I make a small sound before I can stop it.
His mouth curves against mine.
