“I didn’t plan to keep it from you forever. But you'll understand that you’re in the middle of many things already. I held back, hoping I could let you know about it when the heat subsides,” he admitted.
“But you’re right, you asked for transparency. And I assured you of it,” he said, leaning against the edge of the desk. “I don’t believe in lying to a woman who is already standing in the line of fire. Shielding you would be an insult. You deserve to know the face of the man who is coming for you. But this woman is my wife, so I wasn’t eager to show you.”
“Thank you,” I whispered. I meant it. In a world built on lies and doctored evidence, his brutal honesty was the only thingthat felt real. It wasn’t an act of cruelty; it was the ultimate sign of respect. He wasn’t treating me like a victim to be protected; he was treating me like an ally who needed the full map of the battlefield.
I stood up, the white silk of my robe rustling in the quiet room. The grief was still there, but it was being rapidly replaced by something sharper. Something jagged and hot burned in the back of my throat.
“They think they can just erase me,” I said, moving toward him. “They think I’m a variable they can just cancel out.”
Damian reached out, his hand catching the back of my neck, his thumb stroking the skin just behind my ear. “They don’t know you, Elena. They know the girl they raised. They don’t know the woman who is going to dismantle them.”
The air between us was charged. I didn’t want softness. I wanted to feel the reality of being alive in the face of my own erasure.
I grabbed the front of his shirt, pulling him down to me. The kiss was a collision, a desperate, dark affirmation of life fueled by anger and defiance. I wanted to burn away the image of that PDF. I wanted to replace the cold language of the death order with the heat of the man who was standing between me and the grave.
The shadows of the safe house seemed to shrink as the air between us burned. In one minute, we were on the bed, ripping clothes off each other. Damian’s lips moved to my neck, my nipples, and down my stomach to my inner thighs.
Parting my legs with his eyes on mine, he told me, “I want to taste you. I want to fuck you with my tongue until I can’t hold back anymore.
I licked my lips instinctively, the rawness of his words suddenly making my throat dry.
He hooked my ankles around his shoulders, and the heat of his mouth covered my core immediately, making my hips buck off the bed. He held me down and started to flick his tongue over and around my clit.
“Damian,” I moaned, more like cried, when he sucked tightly on my bundle of nerves.
Then his tongue entered me and started moving with speed and precision that made every inch of my skin hot. I came in seconds. But he kept moving his tongue over my sensitive core, driving me to a second orgasm that made me see literal stars before my body vibrated weakly on the bed.
When he released my legs and brought his lips to mine, I kissed him like my life depended on it, the taste of what must be me making the kiss even more erotic.
Then he released his hard, bulging length from the length of his boxers and took me like a man taking a meal he’d been starved of. He pounded into me, the framework of the bed rattling with the force. I soon climaxed again, and he followed this time, his guttural sounds echoing through the room.
“Turn around and kneel for me,” he stated. “On all fours.”
And then he was entering me from behind, his hands around my waist, holding me to himself again. He went even deeper than he ever had, making a loud moan tear from my lips as he hit a different sweet spot.
“Come for me, baby. Let go,” he uttered, coaxing me and driving me mad with his fingers rubbing my clit.
I came hard, my whole body thrumming with satisfied desire. He held me up as he spurted hotly into me, groaning like a man at war.
As we collapsed onto the bed, our pants filled the new silence. In the heat of it, the cold text of theLikvidatsiyavanished, replaced by the heavy, binding reality of Damian’sbody and the shared, silent oath that we would see the dawn together.
In the afterglow, I didn’t fall into a peaceful sleep. I lay in the dark, my skin buzzing with a low-voltage clarity. Damian was a furnace beside me, his steady breathing the only sound in the fortified room.
“We move back to our house tomorrow,” he informed.
“Our house? Or your house? Speaking of, you know I really thought it was just another safe house until Danil told me it was your house.”
His hands went up and down my arms. “You're Elena Lobanov. So yes, that building isourprivate residence.”
A few silent moments passed before I spoke again.
“I’m not going to sit here and wait for the door to be kicked in,” I said, my voice cutting through the silence.
Damian shifted, his weight creaking the mattress as he propped himself up on an elbow. “I’ve already tripled the detail. Yuri is running sweeps on every Vasiliev property in the tri-state area.”
“No,” I said, sitting up and pulling the dark sheets around my chest. “Sergei thrives in the shadows, Damian. He issued that order because he thinks he can kill me quietly and blame it on the Lobanovs or a ‘tragic accident.’ He’s comfortable because he’s invisible.”
I turned to him, my eyes sharp with the strategy that had been knitting itself together in my mind. “We have to drag him into the light. If he’s forced to defend his interests publicly, he can’t kill me without confirming everything in my lawsuit.”
