Page 62 of Beautiful Ruin

His gray eyes are dark, stormy with emotion as they search mine. “I do too… You changed everything, Sofia. You changed me in a way I never thought could be possible.”

Tears slip down my cheeks then, which he brushes away with his thumbs. He leans down to kiss me, his tongue sliding against mine in a languid dance, tasting and claiming me as I melt into him, my arms wrapping around his neck, fingers threading through his dark hair.

When we finally pull apart, he rests his forehead against mine, our breaths mingling in the cool air.

“Come with me to see my father,” I murmur softly.

He stares at me for a long time before exhaling softly.

“Okay.”

20

ROWAN

For the second time since Sofia entered my life, I have disobeyed my master.

My body still hums from the aftermath of sex, a deep, boneless calm washing over me in slow waves. It is a stark contrast to the anger and panic that had torn through me less than an hour ago after finding her trying to sneak off the property again.

One moment, I had been ready to drag her back inside, lock every door in the estate behind her, and put enough guards around her to make the Kremlin jealous. The next, she had been looking at me through the rain, telling me with those damn eyes that she was not afraid of the man standing in front of her.

The cab of the SUV smells of rain water and her. It should make me more alert, more aware of the boundaries we’ve not only crossed for a second time but have now stomped far past, but instead it sinks under my skin like a drug I have no intention of surviving.

She stays low to the floor, tucked out of sight with my jacket covering her as I slowly ease the car out of the garage. My hands remain steady on the wheel as I pull down the long stretch of drive toward the gate. The wipers drag water away from the windshield in slow, rhythmic sweeps. Beyond the glass, the world is black, the estate looming behind us in the rearview.

The windows are tinted dark enough that the guards outside can’t see inside, but they know better than to stop me and force me to roll my window down the entire way to explain where I’m going this late at night. That is the power of having this reputation. Tonight, every ounce of fear my name invokes works against Ivan.

The guard at the booth steps forward only for a brief moment, recognizing me behind the wheel when I crack the window just enough to reveal my eyes. He straightens immediately, head bowing quickly before stepping back into the booth to trigger the gate.

Iron groans against the rain-soaked night, parting slowly. As soon as we pull through, Sofia shifts back into the passenger seat and tosses my wet coat to the back. She looks flushed and wild in the dim dashboard glow, her hair damp and tangled around her face, lips still swollen from my mouth.

She shivers slightly then leans forward to crank the heat.

We didn’t bother heading back inside to change into drier, warmer clothes. Honestly, I wouldn’t allow myself to. I was too afraid I’d be able to talk myself out of following through with this plan. The moment we stepped back into that house, I knew I would have remembered every order, debt, and bruise still faint beneath my skin from the last time I crossed him.

Her hand slips into mine once the car eases onto the main drag heading into Moscow’s center city. I lace our fingers together, bringing our joined hands up and twisting them to press my lips to the back of her palm.

The gesture is the gentlest thing I’ve ever done, yet it also feels the most natural. I keep my mouth against her skin longer than necessary, savoring the scent of her. I have lived so long with blood on my hands that the softness of hers feels like absolution, and I am just selfish enough tonight to take what I have not earned without a fight.

Confessing my feelings for her had been the last thing I expected to come barreling out of my mouth.

I am still not sure how it happened.

One moment I was trying to push her away, to tell her why this could not continue, why I could not afford distraction because Ivan’s punishment might become something far worse if he saw how completely she had gotten under my skin. The next, I was standing in the rain telling her she made me want more than the life I was given.

That confession still sits in the air around me even now, weighing on my shoulders. I did not mean to give that truth a voice. I feel exposed now in a way no enemy has ever managed to make me feel. Guns have been put to my head and knives to my throat, I have been beaten, shot, hunted, and left for dead in rooms where no one came looking until morning.

None of that has frightened me the way Sofia’s tenderness does. She saw the bruised, broken man beneath all his discipline and wanted him anyway. It has stirred something deep in my chest I am terrified to name.

Desire is not what still simmers low beneath my skin. Desire is familiar enough to be dismissed. It can be starved, denied, turned into anger, work, violence. I know how to survive wanting a body.

This is the ache that came when she told me I was not just what Ivan made. Some starving, pathetic thing inside me almost believes her. She didn’t see me as Ivan’s best enforcer tucked away inside that service entrance. I wasn’t the creature Ivan pulled from the pit and taught to bite when commanded.

She saw me.

Rowan.

I don’t know what to do with being seen by someone who might leave lasting damage to places I thought had withered to nothing if she were to be taken from me.