The room is washed in that pale, uncertain hour before full morning, the sea beyond the windows still more shadow than color, the villa quiet in a way that feels almost sacred after the night we had.
For once, he’s the one fully out, one arm thrown heavy across the place I was a second ago, hair a mess against the pillow, mouth softened by sleep.
He looks younger asleep. Not boyish, exactly—he’s too carved by everything he’s survived for that now. But some of the brutality leaves him in sleep, enough that I can still see flashes of the version of him who used to sneak into my room at Vintermoor.
I lie there and stare at him longer than I mean to.
His chest rises slowly, tattoos disappearing beneath the sheet twisted low on his hips. There’s a bruise darkening near his shoulder from the fight the other night, and another on his ribs.
Even in sleep and peace, he looks dangerous. Heavy-limbed, broad through the shoulders, all that impossible Dragovich beauty sharpened by age and violence into something almost unfair.
My body answers the sight of him immediately, warm and aching and embarrassingly eager, and I close my eyes briefly because, Christ.
This is what I’ve been reduced to. Sneaking out of bed on a private island to go make myself presentable for a man I’ve already let see every ruined, desperate version of me there is.
The thought should embarrass me more than it does. Itdoesembarrass me. It just doesn’t stop me.
I ease out carefully from under the sheet, moving slowly so I don’t wake him. That alone feels like an absurd little victory.
Nikolaj almost always wakes first, and when he doesn’t, he usually wakes the second the mattress changes under him.
This morning, though, he only makes a low, displeased sound and rolls half onto his stomach, arm still reaching across the empty space where I was as if his body notices the absence before the rest of him does.
My chest tightens so stupidly at that, I nearly climb right back into bed.
Instead, I head for the bathroom.
The stone floor is cool under my bare feet. The bathroom is still faintly humid from last night, mirrors touched at the edges with old steam, the whole room brightening gradually with the dawn outside.
I shut the door most of the way but not fully. Habit. Or maybe hope. I’m not examining which.
Then I stand there for one second too long at the counter, looking at my own reflection and feeling ridiculous.
Absolutely ridiculous.
Thirty years old. King of the Five Families. Political husband. Professional liar when necessary. Survivor of enough blood and grief to qualify as my own cautionary tale. And here I am, before sunrise, opening a drawer for lube with all the nervous determination of a man about to meet a lover for the first time instead of one he’s spent years ruining himself over.
“This is pathetic,” I mutter to myself.
My reflection does not disagree.
Still, I do it.
Carefully. Quietly. Efficiently at first, until the awareness of what I’m doing catches up and heats my whole face with a kind of private humiliation that would be easier to bear if I didn’t also feel absurdly pleased by it.
There’s something almost unbearably intimate in preparing for him like this. Not because he needs the help—Nikolaj has never lacked patience where it matters, no matter how rough his mouth is or how filthy his tongue gets when he’s teasing me into losing my composure.
I want to… and because part of me likes the idea of going back to him already open, ready, and his in every private way I can manage before he even wakes.
That thought makes me feel sillier and hotter at the same time.
I hate how much I love him.
When I’m done, I brace both hands on the marble counter and let my head hang for a second, breathing slowly until the rush of heat leaves my face enough that I can look at myself again without wanting to laugh.
I do laugh anyway, quietly and at my own expense.
“Hopeless,” I whisper.
