Chapter 3
DROGO
I can't stop seeing it. The photo on my phone. Alena outside the restaurant, leaning against the brick wall, cigarette in hand. The angle close—too fucking close. Whoever took it was standing right there.
They were that close to her.
My hands tighten on the steering wheel. Knuckles white.
She's mine.
The thought hits like a fist. Primal. Undeniable.
She's mine, and they were close enough to touch her. Close enough to hurt her.
Klaus knows where she is. What she looks like. How to find her.
And that terrifies me more than anything he could do to me.
"McDonald's and home," I say, forcing my voice steady. The car roars under us. Fuck. Maybe I am not as calm as I want to pretend to be.
Beautiful machine, this Aston Martin, but I know she doesn't care. She's a Mustang girl, wild and unapologetic.
Truth—I hate manual cars. I hate cars, period. I'm a biker. Give me a bike any day—open road, wind punching my face, the speed stripping everything else away. But I bought this car for her. Wanted to impress her in ways I'd never admit.
She knows. That woman could pull a donut under Big Ben with the police chasing her and she wouldn't get caught.
The drive is silent except for the engine and whatever storm still rages in her eyes from that prick.
I don't ask. She doesn't offer.
"Yours or mine?"
"Yours."
I shift gears, feeling her eyes on my hand and thigh. Too soon? Too slow? God, why do I care?
I remember the nights I came home bruised from the pits, blood on my knuckles, and she cleaned me up without asking. Never judged. Just held me. That's when I knew she was home.
"Movie?" she asks.
"Horror?"
"Yes."
Great. Another night pretending to be brave. She watches horror movies like they're commercials on the telly, but she curls up against me for War Horse. Oh, that woman cries about the weirdest things. Once she cried watching a puppy play in the park. What the fuck could I do about that?
There were times I wanted her to hide under my arms in ways that had nothing to do with fear or support, but I'd buried that a long time ago. Yeah, I'd buried that. At least that's what I tell myself.
We pull into the drive-thru. I order for her—the weirdest thing on the menu, as always. Limited-edition burger, extra mustard, large meal. Me? Didn't matter. Just give me the biggest burger and call it a day.
The smell of fries fills the car, mixing with her perfume.
She steals a fry from my bag, licks salt off her fingers, and I nearly crash.
When I see her lips move like that, her tongue…
Shit. Focus. Car. Drive. Look straight ahead.
She doesn’t want you like that. She likes you as a friend. Fuck, I am an idiot.
Back home, we step inside. She kicks off her shoes and shrugs. The dress slips down one shoulder, pooling at her feet like it was waiting all night to fall.
I step closer, hook my finger under the edge of her panties at her hip, and tug gently. Black lace.
"Lace?" I ask, meeting her eyes. "You were hoping for sex tonight."
She smiles—that dangerous little curve of her mouth that makes my chest tight.
Pale skin, black lace cutting into it like a promise I'm not allowed to keep. I let go and look away too late—cock already taking notice like the traitor it is.
Truth? All her underwear is black lace, but I needed to say something, anything, so I didn't have to think about the fact that she looks like sin incarnate in my living room.
"How was your sex tonight?" she asks, tugging one of my sweaters over her head.
"Medium."
"Mm... sorry."
I pull my shirt over my head and toss it onto the back of the couch, toeing off my boots as I drop into the cushions. Then I stand back up, unbutton my trousers, and kick them off. Just boxers now.
It's about comfort—we've been together for years.
Nothing about it is meant to mean anything.
We've seen each other's bodies several times.
Even showered together—that was a long story, but we did it out of necessity.
Oh, Berlin... I'm not going to lie, showering with her was a total nightmare. At the beginning at least.
We sink into the couch, pick a horror movie. A few fries hit the floor—we ignore them.
The only thing I notice is her thigh brushing mine, and how my chest tightens like I'm seventeen again and don't know how to breathe around her.
Her bare thigh shifts against mine—warm, skin on skin, accidental or on purpose, I can't tell anymore.
She shifts again, getting comfortable, and ends up half-draped against my side. Her shoulder presses into my chest, cool skin against my bare ribs. Every muscle in my body locks down.
"You're warm," she murmurs, not looking away from the screen. Like it's nothing. Like she hasn't just set fire to every nerve ending I have.
I grunt something that might be words and drape my arm along the back of the couch behind her. Safer there. My fingers brush her shoulder—just barely, just enough to feel how soft she is. She doesn't move away.
I count backwards from ten. Then twenty. Then I lose count.
Minutes pass. The movie plays. Some guy's getting murdered on screen and all I can focus on is the weight of her against me.
Then her head tips sideways and lands on my chest.
Fuck.
I feel her hair tickle my collarbone, smell smoke and something darker. My heartbeat kicks hard enough I'm sure she can hear it hammering against her ear. I tell myself it's just comfort. Same as always. Nothing new.
My hand drops from the couch back to her upper arm—slow, careful, like I'm defusing a bomb. My thumb finds the soft skin just above her elbow and traces small circles there. Absent. Innocent. The kind of touch that means nothing.
Except it means everything.
She sighs—this tiny sound that goes straight to my cock—and nestles closer.
I keep my eyes locked on the screen and start counting backwards from one hundred so I don't do something catastrophically stupid like turn my head and bury my face in her hair. Or slide my hand lower. Or pull her onto my lap and finish what seventeen years of wanting has built up to.
She's right here, tucked against me like she's always belonged there. Knees pulled up, eyes fixed on the screen like we're watching a baking show instead of a man getting his insides rearranged.
"How the fuck can you watch this and be this calm?"
She doesn't answer. Just that faint, knowing smile.
"Like... the guy literally had his guts pulled out."
"There are worse things."
I know exactly what she means. I've seen the way she stares into empty corners like someone's standing there.
I've sat in psychiatrists' offices with her, heard her plead for a diagnosis so she could take a pill and quiet whatever hunts her.
Every test came back clean. No diagnosis.
No pill. Just my little Alena, and the ghosts that follow her like shadows she can't shake.
When the credits roll, I ask, "Bed?"
"Bed."
We brush our teeth—her toothbrush, her things, her scent threaded into my place like she belongs there. Which, in truth, she does. I have just as much of me scattered through her home. We live together in two houses.
A few minutes later, we're in bed. She slides under the covers first, hair spilling across my pillow. I follow, close enough to feel the heat coming off her skin, far enough to pretend that's enough.
She pulls out her phone and opens that puzzle game she loves.
"That's bad before bed—"
"I know. Sleep."
I pluck the phone from her hand and drop it into my nightstand drawer. Same routine every night. She exhales, rolls onto her side, and within minutes is gone. She always sleeps fast, like she's running from her own thoughts.
I drift not long after—until I feel it. Her body pressed against mine, then the sudden jolt.
She jerks awake, eyes wide, staring at the corner like someone's there.
The room chills. Frost creeps across the window.
Whispers.
I'm on my feet instantly, wrapping my arms around her.
She fits against me like she was carved for it—soft curves shaking, my hands spanning her back, heartbeat slamming against hers.
She trembles so hard it feels like her bones might rattle loose.
Whatever she saw in her sleep—whatever came for her—would have killed me outright.
I pull her tighter to my chest, press my lips to her hair and hold them there—longer than necessary, breathing her in. Smoke, cold night, that dark undercurrent only I seem to sense. My hand slides down her back, palm flat against her spine through my hoodie, steadying her shakes.
She doesn't pull away. If anything, she leans into my palm like it's the only solid thing in the room.
"Baby, please... I'm here."
But she keeps shaking. I hate how helpless I feel when they take her.
Then the nod. The same silent bargain I've seen a hundred times.
She goes to her desk—yeah, alright, she has more than a toothbrush at my place—and tears a sheet of paper from the stack.
Then she starts writing like her life depends on it.
Her hair falls forward, curtaining her face.
She doesn't bother to push it back, so I do.
I tuck a strand behind her ear, kiss the crown of her head, my palm on her shoulder.
She's gone again. That place she goes when the words take her.
People out there buy her books, love her work, adore the storm she puts on paper—but they don't see this.
Don't see how fragile she is when the stories come for her.
She'd signed a deal with the other side, and when the ink starts to flow, she isn't mine anymore.
I hate that feeling.
When she finally drops the pen, she looks at me and smiles. And I smile back—the only woman who'd ever earned that from me without trying. Then she folds into my chest, and my ribs feel too small to hold the thing she makes me feel.
"Bed?" I ask.
"Balcony," she says.
A cigarette run. Probably the whole pack.
I pull on my grey sweatpants, skip the shirt—no sense walking all the way to the closet now. She wears my hoodie and nothing else, bare legs pale against the dark carpet. She doesn't care about the cold.
The balcony door opens to a knife of night air.
Her bare feet touch the stone and she flinches.
I scoop her up without thinking, settling her on my lap once we reach the chair.
Bare legs over mine, my hoodie riding up just enough to show the edge of lace underneath.
She doesn't fix it. I forget how to breathe.
It's second nature by now. I think it started back when we were still flirting—back when it could still be a game. Now it's just ours. She'd curl up, fold her legs over me, move without watching her balance—because she knows I'd never let her fall.
I reach into the mini fridge I'd had installed out here just for her, pull two beers. I light two cigarettes, pass her one.
God, I hate that she smokes. Every drag feels like another reminder that one day I might be standing in a hospital, deciding if I want to go on without her. I wouldn't. The answer's always going to be no.
I push her hair back again, fingers lingering at her neck longer than necessary—skin cold from the air, pulse rabbit-fast under my thumb. My thumb brushes the side of her throat, feeling her pulse jump. She tilts her head just enough to give me more skin.
Neither of us acknowledges it.
We sit like that for a while—her sideways on my lap, smoking, drinking, the city lights blurred below us.
Then she shifts.
Not just a small adjustment—she moves, swinging her other leg over mine, and suddenly she's straddling my lap. Facing me. Shit.
My hands go to her hips on instinct, steadying her. My brain short-circuits.
"Babe," I manage, voice rough. "Not like this. You know—"
My dick is already getting hard under her. Traitor. She must feel it pressing against her through my sweatpants.
"Oh, come on," she says, settling her weight fully onto me like it's nothing. Like she's not sitting directly on my cock with only two thin layers of fabric between us. "I know your dick by heart. It's fine."
It's not fine. Nothing about this is fine. And fuck, it's more than fine.
She adjusts, getting comfortable, and I feel every movement like a brand.
Her thighs bracket mine, heat seeping through lace and cotton. I grip harder, fighting the urge to flip her under me and finally take what's been mine for seventeen years.
I grip her hips tighter, knuckles white, trying to keep her still. Trying to keep myself from doing something we can't take back.
"Alena—"
She takes a drag of her cigarette, exhales smoke to the side, casual as anything. "What? I'm just sitting."
Just sitting. Right on my hard cock. In nothing but my hoodie and black lace panties. On my lap. Facing me.
I close my eyes. Count backwards from a thousand. It doesn't help.
Her free hand comes up to my chest, fingers tracing the ink there—my tattoos, the ones that tell our story. She traces her name over my heart as she's done a hundred times before.
But never like this. Never straddling me with her thighs spread over mine.
"You're tense," she murmurs.
No shit.
Moments like this, it would make perfect sense to just hold her tighter, to press my mouth to hers—but I've spent seventeen years learning how to bury that urge so deep it can't climb out. At least, not where she can see it.
Seventeen years of practice, and still every move she takes feels like theft of sanity for me. One day the urge might crawl out anyway—and God help us both when it does.
Because tonight, with her bare legs over mine and my heartbeat under her hand, I'm not sure how much deeper I can bury it.
She settles against me, head on my shoulder, cigarette burning down between her fingers.
I want to tell her everything—the fear, the want, the terror of losing her. Instead I hold her tighter.
Seventeen years of almost.
Tonight feels like the edge of never.
My phone buzzes again on the table inside. Through the glass door, I can see the screen light up.
I ignore it.
Whatever it is can wait.
She can't.