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“Because I want to.” I put my palm flat on his chest, over his heart. It's pounding.

He doesn't move. He holds himself perfectly still under my hand, the way he did on the street the first time I kissed him, the way he did in the rain tonight when he touched my face. Waiting. Making absolutely certain.

So I make it certain.

I slide my hand up over his collarbone, around the back of his neck, and I pull him down to me.

This kiss isn't angry.

It's slow and deep and terrifyingly tender, and when his bandaged hand comes up to cradle my jaw, it's so careful that I feel it all the way down to the soles of my feet. His other arm wraps around my waist and lifts me onto my toes, flush against him. I can feel how badly he's shaking. This huge, quiet man who broke three fingers tonight without blinking, and he's trembling against me.

“Arina.” My name against my mouth is like a prayer. “You're sure.”

I pull back just far enough to look at him. His eyes are almost black. Six years, he said. Six years of standing in the corners of rooms.

“I'm sure,” I say. “Stop waiting.”

Something in his face breaks open.

He lifts me off the floor like I weigh nothing. My legs go around his waist without instruction. He carries me the three steps to the bed, and he lays me down on it like I'm something precious, something breakable, something he's been afraid to touch for a very long time.

He braces himself above me, his weight on his forearms, and looks down at me with an expression I've never seen on a man's face before.

Not hunger, though there's plenty of that.

Wonder.

I reach up and push his shirt off his shoulders.

Garick

I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t dreamt of this moment.

I was attracted to Arina the first time I saw her. When she winked across the room full of Bratva men at me, my body reacted before my brain had even registered the wink.

I’ve tried to always be respectful, but on long, lonely nights in the dark of my room, it’s been too easy to jerk myself off at the thought of her.

Now she is lying beneath me, wearing my clothes, smelling like my soap and the possessive urge to own every inch of her almost blinds me.

“Don’t be gentle Garick,” she pants as I drag my tongue over her throat. “For god’s sake, don’t be gentle.”

All the nights I’ve considered how I’d take her the first time, it was always with care and delicacy because I thought that was the right thing to do. I guess for anyone else, it would be, but this is Arina Maximova and she is made of steel and softness.

I thrust my hand up under her T-shirt and find her naked underneath it. Her nipple peaking beneath my palm as I squeeze her full, round tit. It feels even better than I could have imagined. Her skin is so soft and I can feel the individual bumps on her areola when I run my fingertips over her.

She forces me back just enough to strip the T-shirt from her body, my vision blurs at the sight of her gorgeous tits. Her nipples are dark and prominent, my mouth instantly finding the right one, then the left and sucking each one hard. My cock throbs against the front of my trousers, precum pulsing from me in intermittent waves.

Her hands find my belt and undo it, then fumble with the button and zip of my fly, opening it just enough to thrust her hand into the front of my boxers and grip my throbbing length.

I suck harder on her nipple, letting my teeth scrap over her flesh lightly causing her to moan as she squeezes me from base to tip.

I hook my hands in the rolled over waistband of my sweats and pull them down over her hips, my cock slipping from her hand as I move out of reach.

This time, I moan when I see she isn’t wearing panties. Her naked pussy is already glistening, the blonde curls already wet with her arousal.

My cock throbs again, and I seriously worry for a second that I’m going to blow my load too soon.

She tenses. “What is it? Why have you stopped?”