“If I’m stuck here,” I say, my voice unsteady but certain, “then you’re stuck with me too.”
A fire flashes across his face. Unguarded. Gone in an instant.
I set the pace, slower than he would, slower than I want, slow enough to tease. His jaw tightens. His hands flex at my waist.
The power of it goes to my head. I’ve never had this, not with anyone, not like this. And the idea that Rolan Belov is lying in the dark coming apart because of me is a climax all its own.
But I force myself to stay together.
“Is this strong enough for you?” I pant, my voice dropping huskily. “Is this what you wanted?” A beat. “Am I?”
He glares up at me. Those pale eyes, fully open, nothing managed in them. Just him, looking at me.
“You’re perfect,” he says. Rough. The word costs an empire to release. “That’s the fucking problem.”
His hands tighten at my waist.
The roll is effortless. One motion, and I’m on my stomach, his hand at my hip pulling me up.
His chest against my back. His mouth at my ear.
“Hold on tight, princess,” he growls.
I do.
He takes me apart. Thoroughly.
I stop thinking about anger or plans or basements or anything that exists outside this room, and his hands, and the thunderous sounds he makes against my shoulder as I make him come undone with me.
When I unravel, it’s complete. The kind of pleasure that starts deep, radiates outward, and doesn’t stop until the last pulsing waves have long retreated.
Then, he follows me. I feel it — the tightening, the exhale against my neck, his hands holding me through it, the newwetness covering me. For a moment, neither of us is managing anything at all.
Afterward, we stay in the dark for a while. His arm around me, my face against his chest, the warmth of him and the sound of his heartbeat.
Then he shifts. He lifts me and carries me through the door and down the corridor and into his room, where he places me gently down into his bed, then gets in beside me.
“This is where you belong,” he says. “Understand?”
My head finds his chest. But I hesitate to respond.
Deep within the airiness he’s pounded into me is a growing understanding of just how fucked up this is — of just how fucked up I am for giving myself over to it, to him.
His hand finds my hair.
There is no version of this that makes sense alongside everything else I know. The blood on his hands and the bodies on his floor — none of it is compatible with how safe I feel right now.
30
ROLAN
She accepted me back into bed.
I turn this over on the drive back from the perimeter meeting, somewhere between the city and the estate, while Alexei talks about supply chain adjustments, and I hear approximately forty percent of what he’s saying.
She had every reason not to. She came to my office upset, and I gave her nothing useful in return, but she still let me in.
That means more than I’d like it to.
