Ivory Oath

31. Viviana

The candles have burnt down to useless nubs, trails of smoke curling into the air when Mikhail carries me through the cabin and straight up the stairs.

“Where are we going?”

“Our bed,” he growls, kicking open the bedroom door only to kick it shut behind him a second later.

He lowers me to my feet at the end of our bed and stands back. His eyes trace the line of my dress, lingering where the neckline dips low over my chest, where my hair curls against my shoulder.

I log the look on his face as one to remember. Something to pull out when I’m not feeling my best. If a man like him can look at me like this, things can’t be too bad.

“I’ve dreamt about this moment.” He reaches out to stroke my collarbone, leaving goosebumps in his wake.

“Having sex with me?” I laugh nervously. “You’ve done that before.”

His careful assessment is setting me on edge. I’m used to falling into heady lust with Mikhail and tearing each other’s clothes off. But this slow admiration is still new.

I feel like my skin doesn’t fit right over my bones.

His hand whispers over my shoulder, slow, thoughtful. He fingers my lace sleeve before gripping my elbow, like he somehow knows I’m seconds away from diving under the blankets to hide from how seen I feel.

“Having sex with my wife,” he clarifies.

“I’ve been your wife for months.”

He ignores me, wrapping his arms around my back until he finds the zipper along my spine. He draws it down carefully, the vibration tickling across my skin. “Do you have any idea how much I wanted you the day we got married?”

The oxygen in the room is gone. I should tell him I can’t breathe, but I’m too busy enjoying the slow suffocation. His body is feverish against mine.

“I remember you saying something about having some frustration to burn off.”

He laughs. “More than you can imagine. I was lying to myself and to you. I told everyone it was just a business deal, but I couldn’t fucking think when you were close to me, Viviana.”

I thought the way Mikhail touches me would be the death of me, but his heartfelt confessions are ruining me ten times faster. I’m frozen, trapped between attacking him with every ounce of the desire burning through me and standing perfectly still so that he keeps saying such lovely things.

His hands slide under the delicate fabric of my dress. They float around my ribcage and then tighten, enveloping me until I’m crushed against him. He works his fingertips down my back, kneading and stroking his way under the skirt of the dress, and dragging our hips together so I can feel how hard he is against my stomach.

We’re still clothed. He’s giving me a hug. That’s all this is—an intense, erotically-charged hug, but a hug nonetheless. It shouldn’t feel this good. It wouldn’t if he was anyone else.

But Mikhail isn’t anyone else.

He’s mine.

“I can’t think now,” I admit breathlessly. “You feel so good.”

His hands scrape lower, caressing the backs of my thighs like he’s trying to memorize my topography. Like there might be a test later. If there is, I volunteer to proctor that exam.

“It all got so much worse when you were gone.” His breath is hot on my neck.

All I can think about is how much I want his lips there instead. How much I want him to take a bite of me. But I’m also hanging on every word. We haven’t talked about what happened after he sent me away. Not really.

“I couldn’t sleep.” He kisses my thundering pulse. “I couldn’t eat. I spent every day beating a punching bag, trying to forget the way you feel, the way you smell…” The flat of his tongue follows the curve of my jawline. I curl my fingers through his hair as his stubble scrapes my cheek. “The way you taste. I was going crazy.”

I shouldn’t like the idea of Mikhail suffering over me, but send me straight to hell because I really, really do.

“I’m going crazy right now, Mikhail.” I press away from his chest and drag my dress down so it’s pooled around my waist. My nipples pebble from the cool air and his hot gaze. “I need you.”

He drops his forehead to mine, stroking his hands over my waist and higher to curl around my breasts. He flicks his thumb over the point, making me shiver.

“And I can’t fuck you again until you understand what this means to me. What you mean to me.”

Is it possible to orgasm from words? From soft touches?

“I know what this means. I do.”

He shakes his head. “You don’t. Because we were in the hospital and you thought I might send you away. You didn’t tell me you were pregnant because you couldn’t trust me.”

“I’m sorry. I should have?—”

He silences me with a kiss that has me stretching onto my toes for more. I circle my arms around his neck and I think we’ve said enough. When he kisses me like this, what else is there to say?

His lips press against the corner of my mouth, my cheek. “I should have told you right then what I knew the first moment I saw you. I should have told you last week, last month, and every single day of the six years we lost.”

My chest shudders and I have to grip his shoulders to steady myself. “Told me what?”

“That I want you, Viviana. All of you, in every way I can have you. In my bed, in my head, in my cold, busted-up heart.” He cups my face with hands that are strong enough to tear apart the world, but right now are the only thing holding mine together. “I almost lost you. Today, we almost lost Dante. And I—fuck, I can’t spend another second worrying that you don’t know exactly how much you’ve fucking destroyed me.”

He’s breathing hard like we’ve already had sex. Like tearing that confession out of his chest took everything he had.

I don’t have the right words to respond to him. I’m so desperate for him I can barely stand. So I press my hand over his thundering heart and stretch onto my toes, dragging every inch of our bodies together. “Mikhail Novikov, I love you.”

All at once, the tension in him eases. His arms soften around me and his lips find mine. The kiss is soft for a handful of seconds before he tips my head back and parts my jaw. Before his tongue is swirling over mine, licking over the roof of my mouth like flames.

I moan and he trails more fire down my neck and my chest. He drops lower, taking the rest of the dress with him until I’m shivering in front of him in nothing but a pair of white satin panties. He licks the soft material, sending sparks up my spine. Then he shoves them aside and presses his warm mouth to me.

“Mikhail!” I fist my hands in his hair and struggle to stand. He bands a strong arm behind my thighs, holding me against him while his tongue dips into me again and again.

I gasp for breath like I’m coming up from underwater, but the pressure in my chest ratchets up with every press of his mouth.

Then he slides two fingers into me, and I’m gone.

The moment they curl inside of me, stroking nerve endings that are already sizzling, I bow back and scream.

Mikhail’s free hand shoots up my spine to keep me from falling backward. His fingers spread wide across my back, holding me steady while he absolutely undoes me.

As the pleasure ebbs away, he flicks his tongue over my clit. I’m oversensitive and I pull on his hair, bringing him up to my mouth.

He’s smiling like he knows exactly what he’s doing. His mouth is shiny with me and I drag my tongue over his lower lip. He growls, chasing my lips, kissing me back onto the bed. It’s heat and desire and need, but when he sits back on his calves and looks down at me, the moment turns soft.

“I’m almost naked and you’re still in your clothes,” I complain.

He grabs the bottom of his sweater and pulls it over his head in one quick movement.

No human has ever been this beautiful. It’s impossible. How am I expected to do anything else when he looks like that?

I lunge forward and unbutton his pants. I shove them down his muscular thighs as he kicks them away, laughing and falling against me.

The laughter quiets as we find each other, touching and stroking until we’re breathless—and he still hasn’t even been inside of me yet.

“I’ve had sex, but I’ve never had this. I’ve never had…” He swallows hard. His thumb presses into my hip bone, shaping me until I’m open for him. “It’s never been like this with anyone.”

Something like guilt flashes in his eyes.

If we lived in an ideal world, Mikhail and I would have found each other years ago. There wouldn’t be anyone else before; no one after. He never would have been married. I wouldn’t have watched my first fiancé be killed in front of me.

We are both painfully aware we don’t live in that world. This one is complicated and messy. It’s been brutal and dark and bloody and awful more often than not.

But it’s none of those things right now.

I stroke his cheek, holding his face in my hand. “You deserve to feel happy, Mikhail. You don’t have to feel guilty for the life you had before me.”

He kisses the palm of my hand and my wrist. He works his way down my arm until he’s over me, his heat between my legs. “Sometimes, I feel like there wasn’t anything before you.”

I want to tell him that’s okay, but he presses his hips forward and the gentle slide of him inside of me steals my ability to speak. When our bodies are flush and he’s panting against my skin, I decide there’s nothing I could say that isn’t being said a thousand times better by the perfect way we fit together.

Mikhail lifts himself onto his elbows, his nose pressed to mine. He looks into my eyes as he slowly pumps into me. It’s like we both need the reminder that we’re here, together.

Despite everything, we found each other.

I lift my hips, meeting his thrust, and he bares his teeth. “I’ve never been so turned on in my fucking life.”

A wild laugh bursts out of me. “Me, neither.”

“Just the way it feels sliding into you makes me want to come.”

I scrape my nails over his hips, drawing him closer, deeper. “Do it. Please.”

He grits his teeth and pumps into me with obvious restraint. Each tender pull of him in and out is sending me into the stratosphere and all I want to do is come down. I claw my hands up his neck and into the sweaty hair curling at the base of his head. “We have all night, Mikhail. We can do this all night. Forever.”

The tight grip he’s kept on his self-control thus far snaps. His fingers sink into my hips and he lifts me off the bed as he drags me against him harder and harder.

He hits a new angle inside of me and I can’t hold back. He’s wringing the orgasm out of me and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.

I cry out, “I’m coming,” and my body clamps down and he stutters, driving deep inside of me before I feel him twitch. Warmth floods inside of me, swirling to my fingers and my toes. Making me dizzy, trembly, gone.

“Fuck, Viviana.” He collapses next to me, his arm slung over my heaving chest. He kisses my shoulder. “Have I told you I love you?”

I grin. “I think you just did.”

“You think? You think?!” He clicks his tongue and rolls over me, lifting me off the mattress and into his arms.

I squeal, clinging to him so he doesn’t drop me. “What are you doing?”

He bites my collarbone, a wicked gleam in his eyes. “Taking you downstairs to tell you again. And again. And again.”

Hours later, limp and breathless on the floor in front of the fireplace, I curl against Mikhail’s chest and fall asleep.

I’ve never felt more loved.