Chapter 33
Maksim
Two Months Later
Two months.
Two fucking months of her in my house, and every time I step through a door I brace for the hit, like she’s an intruder I should’ve shot on sight, except I’m the one who keeps opening the locks wider.
I’m pissed about it. Obsessed with it. Can’t decide which feeling wins on any given day.
The townhouse doesn’t smell like me anymore.
It smells like her. Marshmallow—soft, sweet, stupidly addictive. That scent clings to everything: the sheets, the pillows, the collar of my shirts she steals when she thinks I’m asleep.
I catch myself burying my nose in her neck sometimes, inhaling like a junkie, chasing that sugar warmth until she laughs and punches my chest.
I don’t stop. Can’t.
She lights cashmere candles when she thinks I’m not looking, those thick, expensive ones that smell like expensive sweaters and quiet money. They burn low on the coffee table now, throwing gold flickers across the walls.
She’s all moved in.
My arm is draped across her shoulders, the other between her thighs—fingers tracing idle, possessive lines up the inside where she’s still slick and swollen from earlier.
Naked, under the throw blanket that’s more decoration than cover at this point. Her legs draped over mine, her back against the arm rest. My cock rests heavy against her leg—half-hard again, because apparently two rounds weren’t enough when she’s this close.
Her hair has grown, the purple streaks are ghosts now, faded to pale lilac at the tips, washed out by too many showers, too many nights of my hands fisting it while I fucked her from behind, from the side, against walls, over counters.
I’ve redyed mine twice, but the blue’s fading.
What’s left is sky blue in the blonde, natural, the color my father used to spit at.
“Weakness,” he’d say, like the shade itself was proof I’d never be strong enough.
I hated it then. Hate looking at it now. Every mirror feels like an accusation.
Her fingers slide into my hair, tugging gently at the roots. Nails scraping just enough to drag me back.
I blink. Realize I’ve been staring at the candle flame, lost in the rhythm of her breathing.
“What did you say, Beda?” I mutter, voice gravel from sex and silence.
“I said let it grow out.” Her thumb brushes the shell of my ear, soft. “No more colors.”
My hand stills on her thigh. Fingers curl in—possessive, instinctive.
“No.”
She tilts her head, studying me. “Why not?”
“Because I don’t like the blond.” The words come out flatter than I mean them to. “Reminds me of shit I’d rather forget.”
Her eyes flick over my face, searching, not pushing.
“Then dye it blue again,” she says simply. “I like that color on you.”
I consider it. Weigh the weakness of giving in against the way she looks at me when the blue catches the light, like I’m hers in a way that matches her purple.
“No. Purple,” I say. Not a question. “I’ll do purple. Same as yours.”
Her mouth curves—just a fraction. Small, pleased.
“Matching again?” she teases, voice soft.
“Da.” My hand slides higher, cupping between her legs where she’s still slick with me. She inhales sharp, thighs parting on reflex. “So everyone knows you’re mine. And I’m yours.”
She laughs—breathless, quiet. “Possessive about me Maksim?”
“Maybe.”
I shift to lean in. Forehead to hers first, then mouth.
Slow this time. Not the frantic, bruising kind from earlier.
Deeper. Hungrier. Like I’m trying to crawl inside her and stay.
Her fingers tangle tighter in my hair, pulling me closer.
She melts, softens against me, body going liquid under my hands.
Three quick sharp raps sound from the door.
My body goes rigid. Every muscle locks like a trap springing.
Ayla freezes too, her breath catching against my lips.
I pull back just enough to meet her eyes. They’re wide, alert, already scanning toward the hallway like she’s calculating distance to weapons.
“Stay,” I command.
She nods once. Sharp. Trusting in the way that still fucks me up.
I stand, grabbing my jeans off the floor and stepping into them without looking away from the door. My hand closes around the pistol on the coffee table before the waistband is even buttoned.
The knock comes again. Harder this time.
Then a voice through the wood. “Open the door, Maks. It’s me.”
Behind me, Ayla exhales. “Oh. It’s Kostya!”
She starts to push herself up from the couch, scrambling to get herself into my shirt.
The way her voice lifts when she says his name hits something ugly in my chest.
My hand shoots out and presses her back down against the cushions
“No.”
Her brows knit together. “What—”
“Stay.”
She looks down at herself, tugging the hem of my shirt lower over her thighs. “I’m fine.”
“No.” The word comes out sharper than I meant it to.
Her chin lifts. “Maksim—”
“Go change.”
She glances toward the hallway, then back at me, stubborn lighting in her eyes.
“No.”
My jaw tightens.
I hate that word from her lips.
No.
The way she says it hits me harder every time.
I want to shove her back onto the couch right here, spread her thighs wide with the other, and bury my face between them until she’s sobbing my name.
Fuck the trust right out of her eyes when it comes to my brother, my men, anyone. Make her come so hard she forgets how to look at another man without seeing me first.
Make her body remember who owns every gasp, every shiver, every drop of cum between her legs.
But Kostya’s still outside—knocking again, harder now, impatient and insistent.
And that fucking voyeur’s not getting another show, not even the sound of it.
“Bedroom,” I say instead. “Now.”
She holds my stare, chin up, eyes sparking, then huffs a short, disbelieving laugh.
“You’re an asshole,” she bites.
She pushes off the couch, my shirt hanging loose on her, brushing the tops of her thighs as she walks past me. Bare legs flash once before she disappears down the hall. The bedroom door shuts with a slam.
I exhale through my nose. Force the feral thing back into its cage. Kostya knocks again in repetition.
I’m going to shoot him.
I palm the pistol tighter, thumb the safety off out of habit, and cross to the door.
Gun still in my hand. I open the door.
Kostya leans against the frame like he’s been here all night, coat open, that irritating half-smile already on his face.
He looks past my shoulder immediately.
“Evening,” he says casually. “Did I interrupt something?”
“What the fuck do you want?”
He steps inside without asking.
“Nice place,” he says, glancing around like he’s inspecting furniture. “You’ve redecorated.”
My hand tightens on the pistol.
“You’re not answering your phone.”
“It’s late.”
“You haven’t answered all day.”
“Because it’s on silent.”
Kostya chuckles under his breath. “Convenient.”
He strolls farther into the living room like he owns the building, I follow.
“Why are you here?”
“Because Dad’s been trying to reach you.”
The mention hits the air like rot.
“Nikolai’s number’s blocked.”
“Clearly.”
I stare at him. “If you know that, then why are you here?”
Kostya shrugs, hands sliding into his pockets.
“Because when you ignore Nikolai long enough, he stops calling.”
A pause.
His eyes flick toward the hallway where Ayla disappeared.
“And then he starts sending people.”
My jaw tightens.
“Fuck Nikolai,” I say.
Kostya’s smile fades just a fraction. “He wants you in Russia.”
I don’t answer.
He studies me for a moment longer, then sighs like this conversation is exhausting him.
“Soon,” he adds. “Preferably before he decides to come here himself.”
Behind us, a floorboard creaks down the hallway.
Ayla.
Kostya glances toward the sound, that irritating grin returning.
My fingers tighten around the gun.
I look back at her.
She’s pulled on black leggings under my shirt, the hem still brushing mid-thigh. Her arms fold across her chest, chin tipped up the way she does when she knows she’s being watched.
Kostya’s grin widens.
“Well,” he says lightly. “There she is.”
He starts across the room toward her.
I move before he gets two steps.
My hand slams into his chest and shoves him back.
Hard.
Kostya stumbles half a step, then laughs under his breath like he just got the joke.
“Easy,” he chuckles, lifting both hands in mock surrender. “Relax.”
“Don’t.”
My voice is low enough that it doesn’t need to be louder.
He glances past me at Ayla again anyway, eyes sliding over her slow.
“Still not done with her?” he asks, amused.
Something violent flashes behind my eyes.
“Get the fuck out.”
Kostya’s grin sharpens. “Touchy tonight.”
He takes a slow step backward toward the door, hands still up like he’s humoring a madman.
Then he pauses beside the frame and looks past me one last time.
“Bye, Krasivaya.”
Ayla doesn’t answer. She just watches him leave, arms still folded. The door clicks shut behind him. Silence fills the room again.
My grip on the gun hasn’t loosened.
“Do you ever listen?”
“No. Not to you.”
***
The house is still
Like the walls are listening.
The bedroom is dark except for the strip of street lights pushing through the gap in the curtains, silvering the edge of the dresser, the floor, the mess of our clothes where they were dropped.
The sheets smell like sweat and marshmallows and sex gone warm between us.
Beda’s head is on my chest again.
She does that now. Like it’s normal. Like my body is somewhere soft to land.
Her hair skims my ribs, the ends brushing my skin every time she shifts. One of her legs is tangled with mine under the blanket. Her arm is slung across my stomach, loose and careless.
I take a breath, calming the adrenaline that hits me when she’s this close.
I stare into the dark and listen to her breathing even out, and all I can think about is Nikolai’s voice traveling through Kostya’s mouth. Russia waiting like a grave I haven’t stepped into yet.
I have to tell her.
I don’t.
My hand stays on the back of her thigh under the blanket, thumb moving once, twice, dragging over soft skin because if I keep touching her maybe I can delay it another minute.
Another five.
But if I wait until morning, she’ll look at me in daylight with those sharp eyes and too much attitude and it’ll turn into a fight before I get the words out.
In the dark she goes softer.
Not weak. Just… softer. Like she forgets to bare her teeth.
“I have to go to Russia,” I say finally.
The words leave a bad taste in my mouth.
She lifts off me immediately.
Instinct moves faster than thought. My arm bands around her waist and drags her back down before she gets more than a few inches away.
She lands against me with an annoyed little huff.
“You didn’t have to grab me like that.”
“Yes, I did.”
My voice comes out rough. Too fast. Too certain.
She shifts against me, irritation in every movement, but settles her cheek back against my chest anyway like she knows fighting me half-asleep isn’t worth it.
“How long?” she asks.
I look up at the ceiling, jaw tight.
“If I can help it,” I say, “two days.”
Her fingers slide into my hair. My whole body reacts before my mind catches up. My eyes close.
Fuck.
She scratches lightly at my scalp, just enough to drag something deep and mean right out of me. My breathing slows against my will. My chest loosens. Every hard edge in me starts going stupid and heavy.
I hate it.
I hate that she can do this to me with her fingers and no effort. I catch her wrist and pull her hand down.
“Stop.”
She punches me in the ribs. Hard enough to make me grunt. I open my eyes and look down at the dark shape of her. “You’re being violent.”
“You’re being mean.”
“I’m always mean.”
She shifts again, and I can hear the hurt in her voice when she says, “Not in the dark.”
My chest pulls tight.
I don’t answer.
Because she’s wrong.
I am mean in the dark.
Just not to her.
Silence stretches, warm and breathing.
She breaks it. “Family?”
I nod before I remember she can’t see it. “Yes.”
Her fingers trace once over the center of my chest, absentminded. Right over my sternum. Right where her weight has started feeling too fucking right.
“So you don’t want to go.”
“No.”
“But you have to.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
I stare into the dark a second longer before I answer. “Or he’ll come here.”
She goes still against me.
“He?” she asks.
“My father.”
The word feels wrong. Too intimate. Too earned.
Nikolai.
That’s who he is.
That’s all.
She sighs, and then her arm wraps around me, tighter than before, like she’s trying to hold something in place that doesn’t want holding.
The pressure of it goes straight under my skin.
“You don’t like him?” she asks softly.
A humorless laugh almost leaves me. Almost.
“No.”
“Okay,” she murmurs, like that settles it. Like the world is simple. “Then go for a couple days and come back.”
My hand tightens on her hip. She says it easy. Too easy. Go. Come back.
Like she’ll be here when I do.
Like I can leave her in this house and trust the locks and my men and the city and fate itself not to swallow her whole.
By the time I came back she’d be gone. I know it with the kind of certainty I usually reserve for blood.
She’d slip out from under me while I was gone, vanish into some alley of the world with that stubborn chin up and a knife in her boot and that death wish she dresses up like independence.
Or worse—someone would get to her first.
The thought turns my stomach so hard I almost sit up.
No.
Absolutely not.
“You’re coming with me.”
She jerks upright so fast this time I miss my chance to stop her.
The mattress shifts. Cold air hits my chest where her body was.
Then the lamp clicks on.
Gold light floods the room, sudden and brutal. I squint against it, blinking her into focus.
She’s sitting there in my shirt, hair a mess, mouth parted, eyes wide with the exact kind of outrage I expected.
“No, Maksim,” she says. “I’m not going to Russia.”
“Yes, you are.”
She throws the blanket off her legs. “I don’t even have a passport.”
“That isn’t a problem for me.”
“You can’t just get a passport overnight.”
“You’d be surprised what I can get overnight.”
Her stare sharpens. “No. I’m not going.”
There it is again.
No.
The word I hate from her because she says it like she thinks there’s still space between us wide enough to make choices separately.
“Yes,” I say, sitting up now, facing her fully. “You are.”
Her jaw sets. “No.”
I lean closer.
“Yes. You. Are.”
Because I’m not leaving you here. I know what happens when I take my eyes off things that matter. Nikolai doesn’t get to step into my life and find something soft enough to use against me.
And if I come back and you’re gone, I will tear the world apart looking for you.
I don’t say any of it.
I just look at her until the room goes tight with it.
She blinks first. “When?”
“Tomorrow night.”