Chapter 27 - Zara #2
He is close and there’s none of that careful energy that has been serving my parents' needs rather than anything else. Just us, in the penthouse, in the quiet after.
“They're gone,” I exhale hoarsely.
“How are you?” he asks, and the question is so simple and so directly meant that it thaws something in my chest.
“I don't know yet,” I tell him honestly. “I think I will be fine.”
He nods, choosing not to press the matter anymore. In his nod is the understanding that this answer is real and sufficient. That is one of the things about him that truly endears him to me.
“My parents like you,” I tell him.
“Your mother assessed me,” he replies.
“That means she likes you. I think she only bothers assessing people she thinks are worth the effort.”
He pauses, his exhales washing over my lower lip.
"And your father?" he asks.
I remember how he squeezed my shoulder at the door, eyes moving between me and Mikhail when he had seen us at the airport, calculative about a person he is deciding to trust.
“He's still deciding,” I murmur. “But he's a thoughtful person. The fact that he's still deciding means he hasn't ruled it out.”
Mikhail's arm tightens around me, briefly and completely, like I’m going to run away if he doesn’t.
I cup his jaw tenderly, the way I have been putting my hand there at the moments when nothing else is the right language, feeling the small movement of the muscle, the jaw that has been set for four days finally relaxing.
“Come here,” I say.
For a long moment, he just looks at me and something that looks a lot like relief, grief, and hunger all at once on his face.
“My biggest fear recently has been losing you,” he whispers.
“Never.” My voice trembles. “You don't get to lose me.”
Then his mouth is on mine.
The kiss is long. It’s not frantic but slow and purposeful, like he's relearning the layout of my lips.
His tongue slides against mine, slow and hot, and my hands fist in the front of his shirt, pulling him closer, pulling him down to me.
He tastes like a mix of coffee and whiskey and something deeper, something that's just him.
My Mikhail.
The world narrows to the wet sound of our mouths, the stutter of his breath against my cheek, the way his fingers slide back into my hair, tilting my head to kiss me deeper.
I don't know how long we stand there, but it’s long enough that my lips feel swollen, long enough that the tension in his shoulders finally, finally drops.
“Take me to your room,” I murmur against his mouth.
He pulls back just far enough to look at me. His pupils are blown wide, and there's a hesitant question there. This man—this dangerous, tattooed, lethal man—is standing in my arms asking silent permission to touch me.
Permission that he has always had.
“Please,” I say.
He takes my hand.
We climb the stairs together, and it feels like a pilgrimage. Each step takes us further from the fear and the running and the nights spent working together in his office, too terrified to do anything but hold on.
Each step brings us closer to something we've been denying ourselves since that nightmare began.
His bedroom door closes behind us, the curtains already drawn.
Mikhail turns to me, and I see the shift in his body—the way his posture changes, the predator softening into something else. Something that belongs only to me.
“Tell me what you want,” he says lowly.
“You.” My voice doesn't shake now. “All of you. Slowly.”
A muscle jumps in his jaw. He walks me backward slowly and I go without resistance, which is itself a thing I would not have done in Dubai, would not have done three months ago.
I let him have this because I trust the person moving me there. His forehead drops to mine and we breathe in the same air for a moment.
The distance closes between us; he reaches for the hem of my shirt, lifting it with a gentleness that makes my eyes sting. His knuckles graze my stomach as the fabric rises. My arms go up. The sweater falls to the floor.
“You're so beautiful,” he says earnestly as his eyes shine. He says it like a fact—like gravity, like sunrise—and his eyes trace the curve of my shoulders, the swell of my breasts above my bra, the bronze expanse of my skin.
My fingers find the buttons of his shirt. One by one, I work them open, revealing the ink that covers his chest—the sprawling black that tells his story in images instead of words. When I push the fabric off his shoulders, it joins my shirt on the floor.
“You're shaking,” I whisper.
“So are you.”
We are. Both of us, trembling like teenagers, like we haven't done this before, like the weeks of fear and planning have stripped away everything but this raw, aching need to be close.
He unclasps my bra. The straps slide down my arms. His breath catches audibly when I'm bare to him, and he lowers his head to press his mouth to the hollow of my throat, right where my pulse beats wild and visible.
“I love you,” he says against my skin. “I love you so much it terrifies me.”
The confession hits like a wave, warm and overwhelming. My hands come up to cradle his head, fingers threading through that dark, messy hair.
“I love you too.” My voice breaks on the last word. “Mikhail, I—”
He lifts his head and kisses me quiet. His hands move down my sides, over the flare of my hips, and he walks me backward until the backs of my knees hit the bed.
We sink down together.
Achingly slow, he removes the rest of my clothes like unwrapping something precious, and each inch of skin he reveals, he worships with his mouth—the curve of my belly, the soft flesh of my thighs, the sensitive hollow behind my knee. I'm not just naked beneath him.
I'm laid bare, opened, seen.
Mikhail's weight pins me to the mattress, his hips nestled between my thighs, solid as an anchor. His dark hair falls messily across his forehead, and I reach up to push it back, letting my fingers trail down to the ink that crawls up his throat.
Thorny and intricate vines, wrapping around the column of his neck like something that could choke him but chose not to.
“You're staring,” he murmurs, voice low and rough as gravel.
“I'm memorizing.”
His mouth quirks—that almost-smile that never quite reaches his eyes but settles somewhere deeper. “You've had months to memorize me, Zara.”
“Not enough time.” My thumb traces a thorn. “Never enough.”
Something shifts in his expression. The danger that lives in the sharp planes of his jaw, in the lean muscle that cords his shoulders—it softens. Just for me. Just for this breath of time where the world outside doesn't exist.
His lips find my forehead, creeping to my temple, then the bridge of my nose.
Each kiss is deliberate, worshipping.
“I want to taste you,” he says against my cheekbone, and the words are a demand wrapped in velvet.
My breath catches. “Yes.”
He pulls back just enough to look at me, my bronze skin against the pale canvas of his chest, where more ink sprawls across his pectorals, down his ribs.
“You're sure?”
“Mikhail.” I cup his face, feel the slight rasp of stubble against my palms. “I've never been more sure of anything.”
He exhales, long and slow, like he's been holding that breath for years.
Then he's moving, sliding down my body with the fluid grace of a predator who's chosen gentleness.
His lips map my collarbone, the swell of my breasts, the soft curve of my belly.
Every inch of me is sacred ground and he crosses it like a pilgrim.
My fingers curl into the sheets. The cotton is cool against my heated skin.
His mouth hovers at my navel, breath warm. Hands sliding beneath my thighs, he lifts them over his shoulders with a reverence that makes my throat tight.
“Look at me,” he says.
I do.
The dim light paints his features in gold and shadow. Those vines around his throat seem almost alive, pulsing with his heartbeat. He holds my gaze as he presses a kiss to the inside of my knee. My calf. The delicate skin of my ankle.
I am undone.
Then his mouth finds my center, and everything else dissolves.
His tongue is slow, exploratory at first, Tracing the seam of me like he's learning a language only my body speaks. The sensation is liquid heat—spreading outward from where he touches, curling through my belly, loosening joints I didn't know I'd locked.
A sound escapes me, something between a gasp and his name.
“There you are,” he breathes against my wetness. “Come back to me.”
He licks again, deeper this time, parting me open. His tongue finds my clit and circles it with excruciating patience. Steadily and rhythmically attentive, a man who has all the time in the world.
My hips rise to meet him—involuntary, instinctive.
His hands press them back down, grounding.
“Stay with me,” he murmurs. “Feel everything.”
The vibration of his voice against my sensitive flesh sends a tremor through my spine. My hand finds his hair, fingers threading through the dark mess of it, and I hold on.
He alternates between long, flat strokes and precise, pointed flicks. Each pass builds something inside me—not the frantic climb toward climax that other lovers have chased, but a slow, spreading warmth, like honey poured into tea, the first sip of whiskey after a long winter.
“Mikhail.” His name is a prayer on my lips.
He hums in response, and the sound reverberates through me.
My thighs tighten around his head. He groans like he's the one being consumed, and the vibration tips me closer to the edge. But he doesn't let me fall. He pulls back, kisses the crease of my thigh, nuzzles against the soft skin there.
“Not yet,” he says. “I'm not done with you.”
Tears prick at the corners of my eyes. Not from sadness. From fullness. From the impossible tenderness of this man who carries violence in his bones choosing to be soft with me.
His fingers replace his tongue—one pressed inside me, then two, curling forward to find that spot that makes my vision blur. His mouth returns to my clit, sucking gently, and my back arches off the bed.
“There,” I gasp. “There.”