Chapter 5 #3
"If you tell me to stop one more time," she whispered, "I swear, Alexei—"
He kissed her.
Not like the first kiss, the collision against the kitchen island.
Not like the second, the slow devastation of a man giving up.
This was different. This was a man who had made a decision and was kissing her inside of it, his mouth sure and warm and unhurried, and his hands moved from her face into her hair and the sound she made against his mouth was embarrassing and she didn't care.
She grabbed his shirt. Both fists. Pulled him closer. Her back hit the counter and his body pressed against hers and the heat of him, the solid weight of him, turned her knees to water and her brain to static.
His hands slid down. Her waist. Her hips. The hem of the grey dress, and his fingers grazed her bare thigh, and the sound that came out of her was not a word.
He lifted her. One motion, his hands under her thighs, and she was on the counter, her legs around his waist, and his face was level with hers for the first time, and the eye contact at this distance, this close, was so intimate she couldn't breathe.
"Alexei—"
His mouth found her neck. The spot below her ear that he'd discovered in the kitchen, the one that still made her vision white out, and her head fell back and her hands flew to his shoulders and the sound she made was high and broken and completely involuntary.
"Again," she breathed.
His teeth grazed the same spot. Her hips bucked against him, and the contact, the friction of her body against his through the thin fabric of the dress, tore a groan from his chest that she felt in her spine.
His hands were on her thighs. Sliding higher. Under the dress, over her hips, and his fingers hooked the waistband of her underwear and her whole body went rigid with anticipation.
"Look at me." His voice was gravel.
She did. His eyes were black. The composure was gone, the walls were gone, and underneath was a man who wanted her so badly his hands were trembling against her skin.
No. Not trembling. His hands were still. Deliberate. Moving with a control that made the trembling from before irrelevant, because this wasn't the shaking of a man fighting himself. This was the sure grip of a man who had stopped fighting.
He drew her underwear down. Slow. She lifted her hips to help, and the intimacy of the cooperation, the two of them working together toward the thing they'd been circling for days, made her chest ache.
The fabric dropped to the floor. Biscuit sniffed it. She would have been mortified if she'd had any brain cells to spare, but she didn't, because Alexei's hands were on her bare thighs and his thumbs were tracing circles on the inside of her knees and his eyes hadn't left hers.
"You're sure." Not a question. A confirmation.
"I've been sure since—"
"I need to hear it."
"Yes." Her voice cracked. "Alexei, yes."
His hands slid up. Along the inside of her thighs, slow, torturous, and everywhere he touched, her skin erupted, and her hips were moving without her permission, pressing toward him, begging for something she'd never had and wanted so badly the wanting was a physical ache.
He stepped closer. His body between her thighs, and she could feel him, hard against her, and the knowledge of what was about to happen sent a bolt of heat through her so intense she couldn't see.
His forehead dropped to hers. His breathing was wrecked. His hands were on her hips, gripping hard enough to bruise, and she could feel the war in him, the last thread of something holding against the weight of everything pulling it down.
"Mia." Her name in his mouth was broken glass. "If we do this—"
"I know what this is." Her hands found his face. Both palms. The same way she'd held him last night, the reversal that had undone him. "I know what I'm giving you. I've known since I got on the plane."
A sound tore from his throat. Raw. Animal. His hands moved to his belt, and the clink of the buckle was the loudest thing she'd ever heard, and her pulse was so violent she could feel it in her wrists, her throat, the place between her thighs where the ache had become unbearable.
He pressed against her. Close. Closer. The heat of him against the most intimate part of her, separated by nothing, and the sensation was so foreign and so overwhelming that a cry escaped her and her nails dug into his shoulders and her whole body arched toward him.
One motion. That was all it would take. She could feel it, the edge of it, the threshold, and he was right there, and she wanted him there, wanted him so badly her body was shaking and her voice was making sounds that weren't words—
He stopped.
His whole body went rigid. His hands locked on her hips. His forehead was pressed against hers and his eyes were squeezed shut and the sound that came from his chest was the sound of a man fighting the strongest instinct he had.
"No—" She gripped his shoulders. "Don't stop, don't you dare—"
"Mia." His voice was destroyed. "Listen to me."
"I don't want to listen, I want you to—"
"Listen."
The word hit like a command. Not cold. Not the Alexei who gave orders to casino floors and security teams. This was the other voice, the one she'd heard when he whispered her name into her hair, the one that cost him everything to use.
She went still. His eyes opened. And the thing in them wasn't hesitation. Wasn't regret. Wasn't the retreating composure of a man who was about to call this a mistake.
It was something she'd never seen in him before.
Fear. And underneath the fear, something so vast and so unguarded that her breath caught.
"Tell me something," he whispered. His hands were shaking now. The stillness was gone. "The gap year. The clinic. Coming back."
"What about it?"
"Was any of it true? Or was it all for me?"
"Both." She put her hands on his chest. His heart was slamming against her palms. "I came back because of you. But I stayed because of the work. Because I like it. Because it's mine. I came back for you, Alexei. I told you that the first night. I haven't changed my mind."
His throat worked. His hands tightened on her hips. And the thing she saw in his face was a man standing at the edge of something and choosing not to jump but to build a bridge.
"I'll be yours."
Three words. Spoken against her mouth. His lips brushing hers with each syllable.
"I'll be yours," he repeated, and his voice splintered, "if you marry me."
The world stopped.
Her body was still humming. Still aching. Still pressing toward him with an urgency her brain couldn't override. And he was still there, still close, still hard against her, still one motion away from everything, and he had just said marry me.
"That's—" Her voice cracked. "That's not how proposals work."
"I'm not proposing. I'm telling you." His hands moved to her face. Both palms. Thumbs on her cheekbones. His eyes were so dark they were almost black. "I'll be yours. All of it. The name, the empire, the man underneath. But only if you marry me."
"You stopped." She was breathless and furious and aching and crying and she couldn't sort any of it into an order that made sense. "You were about to— and you stopped to—"
"Yes."
"You stopped making love to me to propose?"
"Yes."
"Who does that?"
"I do." His thumbs caught her tears. "Because if I'm going to have you, Mia, I'm going to have all of you. Not one night. Not the gap year. All of it. And I won't take this from you without giving you everything I have first."
The words hit her like a wave. Because underneath the claim, underneath the possessiveness, underneath the Alexei Almazov who moved the world to get what he wanted, was a man who had just stopped on the edge of the thing he desired most because he couldn't take without offering.
"Are you serious?"
"I've never been less serious about anything in my life."
She blinked at him. "You just said you've never been less—"
"More. I meant more." A flush crept across his cheekbones, and if her heart hadn't been trying to exit her chest through her throat, she would have committed this moment to memory as the first and possibly only time she'd ever seen Alexei Almazov fumble a sentence.
"You're blushing," she whispered.
"I'm not."
"Your cheekbones are pink."
"Irrelevant."
"Alexei Almazov is blushing and proposing while we're both—" She gestured between them, at the state of them, her dress rucked up around her waist and his belt undone and the counter wet with spilled coffee and her underwear on the floor next to his dog.
"This is the most ridiculous proposal in the history of proposals. "
Biscuit chose that moment to nose at the fallen garment. The humiliation was complete.
She was crying. She hadn't decided to cry. The tears were just there, rolling down her face and over his thumbs, and she was smiling so hard it hurt and crying so hard she couldn't see and his face was blurry and beautiful and closer than it had ever been.
"Is that a yes?" His voice was stripped.
"That's been a yes since I was sixteen, you impossible man."
He kissed her. Hard. His hands in her hair, her legs locked around his waist, her tears on both their faces, and the sound he made against her mouth was her name, just her name, the way he'd said it when she held him in the kitchen, like it was the only word left in a language he'd forgotten.
She pulled back. Just enough to see his face. "I'm going to be the worst wife. I burn risotto. I talk too much. I snuck a cat into your penthouse and I'm probably going to do it again."
"I know."
"And I'm going to make you say it."
His brow creased. "Say what?"
"You know what." She pressed her palm to his chest. His heart was hammering. "Not today. Not now. But someday. You're going to say it, and it's going to cost you everything, and I'm going to be there when it does."
His throat worked. He didn't speak. He pressed his forehead to hers and closed his eyes, and his arms came around her, pulling her against his chest, and she could feel the rise and fall of his breathing and the stillness of his hands, and the stillness was the answer she needed even if the words weren't ready yet.
They stayed like that. On the counter, in the kitchen, with cold coffee on the floor and a dog licking it up and the Monaco sun turning the marble gold.
Her face in his neck. His arms around her.
Two people who had found each other in the wreckage of closed doors and opened ones, and the wreckage was beautiful, and the silence was full, and somewhere underneath the warmth of his arms and the beat of his heart against her cheek, Alexei Almazov was holding the thing he hadn't told her.
The letter. The chain. The man who was coming.
The reason his proposal wasn't just love.
She didn't know. Her face was in his neck and her arms were around him and her yes was still warm in the air, and she didn't know that the man holding her had a four-month clock in his chest, and the clock was ticking, and he had just wrapped the Almazov name around her like a fortress and not told her why.
He held her tighter.
His eyes were open over her shoulder. Fixed on the window, on the Mediterranean, on the city where a blond man with blue eyes was sitting at a roulette table three miles away.
And Alexei made his decision.
He wasn't going to tell her.