Page 187

“I—” His voice cracks. He swallows it. Tries again, furious. “I missed it. I missed you. I missed you being in me.”

“God, baby, you make me so fucking crazy.” I kiss the corner of his mouth and fuck him harder for it. He shatters and comes between us.

His hands slide from my neck to my face, holding me there.

“In me,” he gasps. “Do it—inside—”

I bury myself to the hilt and come with my mouth on his as I spill into him.

I could stay here forever.

I am still seated in him to the hilt, and every small breath he takes ripples through both of us.

My gaze falls to his lips, red, kiss-bitten. I want to take his mouth again, kiss it until the memory of me becomes indistinguishable from the shape of his lips. Mine. All of him is occupying so much of me that the word mine no longer feels enough. Mine. Mine. Mine.

“Are you going to pull out?”

I watch him, then I roll my hips. “I don’t want to.”

True. I want to stay buried. I want the evidence of me still in him when the sun comes up.

I kiss his head, because if I keep looking at his mouth I will start fucking him again, and he is already shaking.

Then I pull out anyway. His body tries to keep me and fails. I watch the flinch as his arm comes across his stomach, like he can fold the evidence away if he just gets there fast enough.

“You need to stop that.”

He clears his throat and looks past my shoulder. Anywhere but at me looking at him.

“It’s ugly.”

I hate that he can look at any part of himself and find something ugly when he is the most devastatingly beautiful thing I have ever had the fortune of laying eyes on. It feels blasphemous, hearing him condemn pieces of himself I could spend entire lifetimes worshipping.

I sigh and rise from the sheets, offering him my back. I know what he sees: the map Hideo carved into me these last few weeks, lashes intersecting in little constellations. I sit there and let his eyes wander over every line.

“Who did that to you?”

I’ve never heard that kind of anger inhabit his voice before. I look back and find him already sitting up. “Do you find me disgusting?”

His eyes widen. He looks at me with incandescent fury, enraged that the thought could have existed inside my head.

“No. Of course not. Now tell me who did it.”

I smile. I shouldn’t, considering how furious he looks, but I can’t help it. His anger is strangely beautiful when it belongs to me. There is something addictive about being protected by him; I should get hurt more often so I could pull that look out of him.

“Kenji has special trainings for me. At least once a year he has me undergo them. I’ll spare you the details. But I want you to know I wasn’t keeping my distance.”

I let my eyes move over him. He looks ready to get up exactly as he is and go find Kenji. “And I’m not disgusted with you either, Ilya. You never have to wonder about that. Ask me anything and I’ll answer honestly. Your scars don’t subtract anything from you. They don’t make you less beautiful. They’re simply part of the man I’m looking at, and I happen to think that man is beautiful.”

He swallows. I watch the argument unfold across his face in real time, the instinctive part of him already reaching for a contradiction.

“Why would he do that to you? You’re the heir.” He’s deflecting from what I said completely. I sigh. “I admit the timing was awful. I’ll give him a piece of my mind for that.”

Understatement. Kenji and I are going to have a conversation. He can train me however he wants, push me until I break and put me back together however his methods demand, but there is one privilege I never gave him: he does not get to choose the week I vanish from Ilya Solovyov without so much as a warning. That’s also part of why I showed up unmasked. He won’t appreciate it, but well, he pissed me off, so I’m going to piss him off in return.

“I’ll kill him.” And then, astonishingly, he actually starts getting up. His hand reaches toward the floor, presumably searching for pants before graduating to murder. I grab his waist and haul him back, depositing him squarely onto my lap.

“You’re adorable when you’re protective.”