"What did he call me?" she whispers.
"Little sister."
She presses her face into my chest. One breath. Two. Then she pulls back and her eyes are dry and her chin is up and she is the bravest woman I have ever known.
"Take me to bed," she murmurs.
THE SUITE IS DARK EXCEPTfor the balcony doors, open, the light from Monaco harbour painting the room in pale gold.
She stands by the bed. I stand in front of her. Twelve inches between us.
My hands find the hem of her tunic. Button by button. Slowly, because there's no rush and because every button I open reveals another inch of her skin and I want to memorise the temperature of each one. The tunic falls. Her shoulders bare. The thin straps underneath, simple, white, practical, because she's Star and nothing about her is performance.
I trace her collarbone with my thumb. The same path my mouth traced in the spa. She shivers.
My mouth follows. Collarbone. Throat. The hollow where her pulse hammers. I rest my lips there and count the rhythm because I've wanted to memorise this since the first time I felt it through my shirt in the gallery, and now I'm allowed, and there are no more doors between us.
Her fingers find my hair. Hold me where I am.
I lower her to the bed. My hand cradling the back of her head the way I cradle everything that matters. Her dark hair fans across white sheets. The harbour light paints her gold.
She whispers my name. Not loud. A breath.Artem.The way she first whispered it outside her cabin, low and uneven and full of everything she'd been holding, and the sound does what it always does. It opens something in my chest that will never close again.
I give her everything. Not the operative. Not the Almazov who makes problems disappear. The man underneath. The one whose hands shook in a corridor. The one who sat on a gallery floor and told his brotherI'm going to marry herbefore he'd asked.
She whispers my name again, and her hands find my face and hold it the way I hold hers, palms on my jaw, fingers at my temples, and there are no more doors between us and there never will be again.
The ship hums. Sixty-two hertz.
Hers. Mine. Both.
AFTERWARDS. SHE CURLSagainst my chest with her hand on the scar over my ribs. Her fingers trace the ridge of it, the familiar path, the map she drew in a treatment room a lifetime ago. Her breathing slows. Evens.
My lips press the top of her head.
Her arm tightens around my waist.
The harbour light shifts on the ceiling. Monaco glitters through the open doors. The Mediterranean is black and vast and full of things that want to hurt us and I am lying in a bed with a girl who holds handkerchiefs like they're breathing and I am not afraid.
For the first time in five years, I sleep.
The End
