“It’s becoming a marriage problem.”
Her lips curved against my shirt. “You’re going to be very difficult.”
“Yes.”
“Good thing I have teeth.”
I looked down at her.
The softness in her face nearly ruined me.
“You do,” I said. “Use them on me when we get home.”
Color rushed up her throat. “You can’t say that in your father’s room.”
“I can. I shouldn’t.”
She laughed then.
A real laugh. Small, exhausted, disbelieving, but real.
I carried that sound out of the room like something holy and stolen.
Warm light waited for us in the penthouse.
Irina had left lamps on in the bedroom, tea on the table, and food beneath silver covers because she understood the body better than most soldiers understood weapons. The city pressed dark against the windows. Rain had finally come, drawing silver lines down the glass and turning Manhattan’s lights soft at the edges.
I set Nadia on the bed.
She pulled me down by my tie before I could step away.
The kiss she gave me wasn’t gratitude.
It had hunger in it. Claim. The last bright edge of fear burning itself out under wanting.
I braced one hand beside her hip and let her take what she needed from my mouth. Her fingers opened my tie, then the top button of my shirt. She touched my throat, my chest, the place where my pulse had not fully slowed since Gennady’s knife hit the floor.
“You’re shaking,” she whispered.
I looked at my hand beside her.
She was right.
A fine tremor ran through my fingers, visible only because the room had gone still.
Nadia covered my hand with hers.
The tremor stopped beneath her palm.
“You scared me today,” she said.
“I know.”
“Not because I thought you’d hurt me.”
I waited.
“Because I realized I could stop you,” she said. “And you’d let me.”
