Page 23
“Didn’t have one left.” He steps inside, closing the door behind him. “Ran out around Tuesday.”
“That’s honest of you.”
“I’m told it’s a novelty.” He crosses the room. “How was your day?”
“Frustrating. Marek dodged another question about the gate.”
“I heard.” He stops in front of me, close enough that I have to tip my head back slightly to hold his eyes. “I’m sorry.”
“No, you’re not.”
“No,” he agrees, “I’m not.” And there’s nothing apologetic left in his voice at all when he says it, just something low and certain that has my whole body reacting before he’s even touched me.
He reaches for me, and I let him, the space between wanting him and wanting to be free of this house collapsing down to nothing for the length of this one moment.
The kiss is nothing like the careful one from the first night. His mouth is harder, hungrier, and I answer the same way, already fisting the front of his shirt and pulling him in.
His hands find my waist and then my hips, dragging me against him so I feel every hard line of his body. A low sound leaves my throat when he bites lightly at my lower lip.
We don’t make it more than a few steps toward the bed before clothes start coming off. My shirt comes off with less care than last time. His follows. I reach for his belt; he works the waistband of my sleep pants down at the same time.
Fabric drops wherever it lands. When we finally hit the mattress, we’re both mostly bare, breathing harder than the short distance should account for.
He catches both of my wrists in one hand and pins them above my head against the pillow. The hold is firm, deliberate. I test it once and feel the quiet strength that keeps them there. Heat spikes low in my stomach.
“Stay,” he says, voice low.
His free hand wraps around the side of my throat, thumb under my jaw, the pressure heavier than it was the first time. Not cutting off air, just enough that I feel the control in it. I lean into the grip the same way I did before, and the sound that leaves me is open, needy. His eyes darken at the noise.
He kisses me again while his hand stays on my throat and his other keeps my wrists locked in place. When he finally lets my hands go, it is only so he can finish getting the last of our clothes off. The second I am bare beneath him, he settles between my thighs, the thick heat of him sliding against where I’m already wet.
I reach for him.
He catches my wrist again and presses it back down to the mattress beside my head. “I said stay.”
The order sends another sharp pulse between my legs. I leave my hand where he put it. He rewards the obedience by pushing into me in one slow, deep stroke that forces a broken moan out of me. He does not give me time to adjust the way he did the first night. He starts moving almost immediately, harder, fuller, the rhythm carrying none of the earlier careful searching.
His hand returns to my throat. The other slides into my hair and closes, using the grip to tilt my face exactly where he wants it, so I have to look at him. Every thrust lands deeper. I hear myself making sounds I would have tried to swallow weeks ago—short, raw moans that fill the quiet room.
For a fleeting second, my mind flashes to the locked room at the end of the east wing, the one with the bench and the mirror and the shelves I was never supposed to find. The thought is there and gone again, buried under the feel of him driving into me and the steady pressure of his hand on my throat.
“Harder,” I manage.
He gives it to me, the pace turning almost ruthless while still completely under his control. My free hand fists in the sheets. My wrists stay where he left the other one. The dual restraint—throat and hair, the memory of his hand pinning me—winds everything tighter. I come with a sharp cry I can’t hold back, body clenching hard around him. He works me through it without slowing, then follows with a low, rough sound against my neck, driving deep one last time and staying there.
His grip eases only after the last of the tremors leave both of us. He lets go of my hair and my throat, then carefully shifts his weight so he’s not crushing me. We stay tangled, breathing hard, skin damp, the urgency finally spent.
Later, tangled in sheets that have officially become more his than mine at this point, I lie there staring at the ceiling and let myself think.
I don’t hate it here anymore, not the way I did seven weeks ago.
15
ARTEM
It’s been one full week of fucking Harper every single night, getting lost in her touch and in her body, but it’s also been one week into re-vetting every member of staff who’s had access to this house since Harper arrived, and I still don’t have a name I can point to as the source of the leak. One week of interviews conducted quietly enough that nobody outside Yuri and Marek knows what they’re really about, with paperwork stacking up on my desk in neat, useless piles.
And that’s all I can think about right now.
