Chapter 16 Nadya #2
His thrusts slow, his forehead pressing to mine.
For the first time since the blood in the snow, his expression softens, eyes burning silver beneath the steam.
His hand spreads across my back, holding me so close I can barely breathe.
“You have me, Ptichka,” he murmurs, voice husky with something more than lust.
“All of me. And I’ll never let you go.”
The reassurance breaks me open in a new way.
My hips roll to meet him, slower now, matching his gentler pace.
Our bodies move together, water streaming down us, every kiss speaking the words he struggles to say.
My fear dissolves into want, into love, into the fierce need to stay bound to him no matter the cost.
I clutch at his shoulders, tilting my head back as another swell of heat begins to rise inside me.
Each slow thrust strokes deep, coaxing me higher instead of overwhelming me.
My body responds with soft moans that grow louder, my chest pressed to his as the water slides between us.
He cups my face, eyes locked on mine as though he needs me to see the truth he cannot say aloud.
My walls flutter around him, pressure building in a way that feels like release and surrender all at once.
“I need you,” I gasp, nails scraping over his slick skin.
“I need you, Xander. Don’t stop.”
He kisses me hard, drinking in the plea, his pace still unhurried but relentless in its focus.
The pleasure crests again, flooding through me in rolling waves.
My cries echo against the glass, but this time they aren't broken—they're whole, born of love as much as lust.
I convulse around him, every nerve alight, clinging to him with all the desperate certainty of someone who finally understands she belongs exactly where she is.
Before I can recover, he turns me gently, bracing me against the slick tile.
His chest covers my back, cock sliding inside again with an unhurried push that makes me shiver.
The water cascades over us as he thrusts, his hand steady at my waist while his breath warms the side of my neck.
My moans fill the space, louder now, as his rhythm deepens.
He presses closer, kissing the line of my shoulder, murmuring my name between thrusts.
The connection tightens until I feel consumed by him, surrounded by his strength and his warmth, holding me, refusing to let me fall.
He groans low into my neck, pace breaking as he follows through to his own release, spilling inside me with a shudder while keeping me steady against the wall.
His heat pulses into me and I shudder, squeezing around him as he bites down on my shoulder.
His hands continue gripping my hips firmly as I take several deep breaths and rest my cheek against the cool tile.
The shaking has stopped.
The images of blood on snow seem farther away now, though I know they'll return.
"Will it get easier?" I ask.
His body retreats from mine briefly, but he returns, pressing his chest against my back.
"No."
"Will there be more?"
"Yes."
I close my eyes and absorb the truth of his answers.
There will be more death.
More blood.
More moments when I'll have to choose between my conscience and my heart's yearning.
"The children can never know," I whisper.
"They won't."
He pulls me out of the flow, turning off the water that is running colder now, then out of the shower entirely.
We dry off in silence, and he gives me one of his shirts to wear.
It hangs to my thighs, soft cotton that smells of his cologne.
In his bedroom, I sit on the edge of the bed, toweling my hair, and watch him dress in fresh clothes.
The routine appears so normal—choosing a shirt, pulling on pants, running a comb through damp hair.
As though we hadn't just washed blood from our hands.
As though he hadn't just killed a man while I watched.
"What happens now?" I ask.
He turns from the mirror where he's been adjusting his collar.
"Now you go home to your family. You help them with their tree. You pretend this didn't happen."
"And tomorrow?"
"Tomorrow we do what needs to be done."
The simplicity of his answer chills me.
This is what he does day in and day out, and he expects me to do it too.
There will be no more pretending I can return to my old life.
No more believing that I can keep one foot in his world and one in mine.
Now that I've confessed my love for him, there is no going back.
I am his, completely and thoroughly his.
And there is nothing that can change that.
He drives me home through empty Moscow streets.
Snow continues to fall, covering the city in fresh white that will hide the stains of what we did tonight.
I watch the flakes catch in the headlights and think about how beautiful they look, how pure.
Beauty and horror.
Innocence and corruption.
The two can exist side by side, I'm learning.
They can even exist within the same person.
When we reach my building, he doesn't kiss me goodbye.
Instead, he catches my hand as I reach for the door handle.
"Ptichka."
I turn back.
"You did well tonight."
The praise shouldn't matter, but it does.
It settles something inside me that I didn't realize needed settling.
I climb the stairs to my apartment, his words echoing in my mind.
Inside, the yolka waits in the corner, half-decorated and innocent.
Anya and Mikhail's handmade ornaments hang from the lower branches, crooked but earnest in their imperfection.
I touch one of the paper angels and remember being their age, believing in magic and miracles.
Believing that good and evil existed in separate worlds that never touched.
Now I know better.
Now I know that sometimes they live in the same heart, in the same bed, under the same skin.
I am no longer the woman who answered an advertisement for a cleaning position.
That woman died tonight in a shower stall, washed away by hot water and desperate hands.
What remains is someone new.
Someone who can watch a man die and still feel desire burning in her veins.
Someone who can love a killer and sleep peacefully afterward.
Someone who belongs to Xander Morin, body and soul.