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Chapter Eighteen

Nikolai

She’d been pale and even quieter since the wedding. I noticed it before anyone else at the table. She’d barely touched her plate after returning from the bathroom, and twice I’d caught her hand pressed lightly against her stomach before she seemed to realize she was doing it and pulled it away. By the time we reached the penthouse, my concern had overridden whatever restraint I usually managed with ease.

“You’ve been distracted all evening,” I said, watching her set her bag down. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

She turned to face me, hands twisting together in front of her the way they had when she told me all about her brother.

She opened her mouth twice before any sound came out.

“I’m pregnant.”

I don’t know how long I stood there in silence. It was clearly long enough that she started bracing visibly for whatever reaction she’d apparently spent the last hour dreading.

I felt none of what I’d expected to feel. No calculation about complications, no immediate assessment of how a child would affect security or business or the careful order I’d built my entire adult life around. What moved through me instead was overwhelming joy, which was entirely foreign to me.

Camila belonged with me. I’d understood that with increasing certainty since the night she’d cried in her apartment and I’d found myself unable to walk away from her. Now, standing in my own house with the truth settling over both of us, I understood something else with equal certainty.

So did our child.

“Nikolai.” She said my name carefully, watching my continued silence with growing alarm. “Say something.”

I crossed the room and pulled her against me with the same instinct that had moved me the night she’d broken down in her apartment, except this time there was nothing complicated underneath it, no anger still waiting to surface once the shock wore off.

“I’m not upset, Camila,” I said, my voice rougher than I intended. “I need you to understand that clearly. I am not upset.”

She pulled back enough to search my face, disbelief still written across hers. “You’re not?” she asked like she needed to hear the confirmation twice before she could fully believe it.

“No.” I held her jaw gently. “I don’t fully understand what I’m feeling right now. I’ve spent my entire life keeping myself insulated from exactly this kind of vulnerability. But looking at you right now, knowing what you’re carrying, I feel none of the fear I expected to feel. I feel something closer to certainty.”

“Certainty about what?” she asked, still searching my face for the catch she seemed certain had to be hiding somewhere in it.

“That you belong here. That whatever this child becomes, it belongs here too.” I searched for the rest of the sentence, finding the words considerably harder to locate than any negotiation I’d ever conducted. “I care about you, Camila. More than I know how to say plainly. I’m not skilled at this kind of admission. I never have been. But I need you to hear it regardless of how poorly I manage to say it.”

Something shifted behind her eyes, her disbelief softening into something closer to wonder.

Coming from most men, the confession would have sounded small. Coming from me, after everything we’d survived to reach this exact moment, I watched her understand exactly how much weight it carried.

I watched her eyes flutter shut as she kissed me, with none of the desperate heat from the first night in my office or the reckless urgency of the penthouse. I matched her pace instead of overtaking it, careful now in a way I hadn’t been careful with anyone in longer than I could remember.

I undressed her slowly as I moved us toward the bed, memorizing each new inch of skin like it mattered considerably more than it had before, which it did. My hands moved with a tenderness that surprised even me. I was already protective in a way that had nothing to do with strategy or possession and everything to do with the fierce, unfamiliar need to handle her like something precious.

“Don’t make me beg,” she whispered when I slid my hard length along her wet core repeatedly instead of entering her at once.

I kissed the curve her frustrated frown made on her forehead playfully, holding her hips down. Then I entered her with a low groan.

“Delayed gratification, baby,” I whispered into her ear as I started to move inside her.

She arched into every touch with a softness that matched my own. There was no urgency between us now, only the intimacy of two people finally letting every remaining wall between them fall away. I kissed her slower than I’d kissed anyone in years—deliberate and reverent—and when we finally came together it felt like coming home.

Afterward, we lay tangled together while the city glittered beyond the windows. Her head rested against my chest while my hand traced slow circles against her back.

“We need to increase security significantly,” I said, already turning practical matters over in my mind, even with her still curled against me. “A private physician for the pregnancy, someone outside any system that can be traced. I’ll look into more properties outside the city as well, places we could relocate quickly if any threats against us escalate. Yuri can start vetting candidates by the end of the week.”

“You’re already planning,” she said with a small laugh.

I pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “I intend to keep both of you safe. That isn’t negotiable.”