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So, I lean in and catch her trembling mouth with mine, soft this time, nothing taken, only given. I kiss her slowly and let her breathe me in and hold onto something solid in the dark.
Her arms come up around my neck. Her tongue meets mine, hesitant, and everything in my chest that has been clenched shut for weeks finally lets go, because holding her like this feels like walking back through a door I never should have closed.
16
DELANEY
His promise sits on my heart like a hand pressing down. As long as I’m breathing, I will not let you die in here.
The words lodge like a stone stuck in my throat, too heavy to hold and too warm to set down.
The questions that fear was screaming a minute ago go quiet one by one, and my foggy head clears. The falling box, the frayed cable, Milo alone at home waiting for a dinner I might never come back to cook. All of it recedes until there is nothing left in the whole world but Lev.
His palm cradles the back of my head, and its heat bleeds, electric, through my hair and into my skull. My whole body decides, against every scrap of sense I own, to believe him. It is the stupidest thing I’ve ever done, and like an idiot I go and do it anyway. There’s a broken cable somewhere above us and a woman he loves looming somewhere above us, and none of it can compete with the simple animal fact of his hand holding my head, caressing it slowly, like I’m worth keeping.
His kiss presses further, burying itself deep inside me, and it pushes the nausea of the freefall back down my throat. He controls even the rhythm of my breathing, siphoning off my air and handing it back, pulling away only long enough for both of us to drag in a shuddering breath.
I know I should shove him off and stomp this thing into the ground before it starts. Someone could pry these doors open at any second. The car could drop again, and the whole scenario ends with us in a heap at the bottom of the shaft. There is a woman upstairs who belongs to some part of him I will never touch, across a rift I cannot cross. Instead of doing a single one of those sensible things, I slide my fingers up into his hair and instinctually pull him closer.
Safety is not supposed to come from a man like this, one who has built an empire out of blood and ash, who controls everything and tells me nothing. But one kiss lifts me clean out of my fear and leaves me unmoored, and I hate how badly I need it, and I cannot stand the thought of losing it.
If I have to die in a broken elevator tonight, I decide, dying pressed against Lev, the one place I truly lose myself, would not be the worst way to go.
My hand slides down over the hard muscle under his shirt, greedy for more intimacy than a kiss. “Take me right now,” I gasp against his mouth. “I need you to fuck me right here, before I lose my nerve.”
“Are you sure?” He watches me over one raised brow, and his voice comes out rough and low.
It should be funny, how calm he stays while I come apart in his hands. It’s not funny at all. It only has me more worked up and winds me tighter.
“You already had your hand up my skirt,” I breathe, incredulous, ready to call his bluff. “Why are you asking me for permission now?”
“I’m asking,” he explains, “because I want to hear you say it.”
“Yes,” I breathe. The calmer he holds himself, the harder my heart rattles against my ribs. His gaze goes completely dark, all bedroom eyes, and my body presses into his without asking my permission first.
My back meets the wall, and my heel clatters against the steel. He grips my thigh and hitches it up, bites my lower lip, and works his mouth down the side of my neck, his five o’clock shadow rasping my skin, until I groan and wriggle against him. I want him to keep doing exactly this, to keep dragging me out of the terror with his hands and his teeth, to claim me the way I want him to.
I stroke him through his slacks and feel him pulse against my palm, and the steady hum of his breath at the base of my neck breaks into a hot hiss.
He curses under his breath, something salty in Russian, and drags my underwear down to the middle of my thighs. My knees are shaking too hard to close, and my core clenches around nothing.
He pushes two fingers into me with no warning at all, and the wet sound of it is obscene in the small space. My face goes up in flames, and I find I don’t care in the slightest. This is insane. I’m terrified and soaked at the same time, sobbing on the inside and rocking my hips into his hand on the outside, and I’ve stopped trying to make the two halves of me agree, brave and scared and horrified all at once.
“Look how soaked you are. You’re making my dick throb,” he murmurs, his low voice buzzing against my lips. “Is this the fear, or is this for me? Did you touch yourself at your desk this morning, thinking about my hands?”
“Shut up,” I snap, and dig my nails into his shoulders hard enough that I hope they leave marks under his shirt for a week.
“Do you want me to stop?” he whispers, and twists his fingers slowly inside me.
“Don’t fucking dare stop now,” I choke the words out, and I hear how desperate it sounds and cannot make myself care.
He adds a third finger, and the stretch burns for a second before it melts into something better, and his thumb finds my clit and circles it in tight, relentless strokes. I bury my needy little sounds in the meat of his shoulder, the taste of his skin on my tongue.
“Let me feel you. Later I’ll kiss every inch of your skin,” he growls, his voice in my ear, and the words rumble straight through my chest.
His fingers pump faster, and the sloppy sounds of my desire fill the box with no shame at all. I throw my head back against the wall, and my whole body pulls tight like a string about to snap. I bite down on his shoulder through his shirt to keep from crying out.
He doesn’t slow for a second. He’s so rough with me, and I want every bit of it. He curls his fingers and grinds the heel of his thumb against me, and stars burst white and glistening behind my eyes.
