Chapter 36 #2
I laugh once, but it comes out thinner than I mean it to. “That sentence alone is exactly why the answer is no.”
His mouth twitches.
Then he climbs higher over me, one knee settling between my legs, one hand planted by my head. Close enough that his heat starts swallowing the space between us.
“Here,” he says, thumb brushing the sharp point of my hip through the hem of his shirt. “Low enough no one sees it unless I want them to.”
A pulse kicks low in my stomach.
Annoying.
Because part of me can see it too clearly—black ink against skin, hidden and intimate and his in a way that makes something stupid in my body tighten.
I shove that thought away immediately.
“No.”
His eyes flick over my face, reading too much. “You thought about it.”
“I thought about how psychotic you sound.”
A short laugh leaves him. Real enough to warm his mouth for half a second.
Then it’s gone.
“You let me inside you,” he says, voice lower now, roughened by drink and the kind of mood that never really leaves him. “But under your skin is where you draw the line?”
I hold his stare.
“Yes.”
His thumb stills on my hip.
The room feels quieter all of a sudden. The city beyond the windows is still there, breathing in the dark, but in here it’s just him over me, his body heat, his hand, his eyes going that dangerous pale kind of unreadable.
“My skin is mine, Maksim.”
The words come out calm. I make sure they do.
Because this matters more than the filthy little thrill trying to spark under my ribs. More than the way he’s touching me like he’s already picturing it. More than the vodka warmth loosening my limbs and making everything feel a little softer around the edges than it should.
Mine.
He hears it.
I know he does because something in his face closes. Not anger exactly. Worse.
Acceptance.
The kind that doesn’t soothe me at all.
For a second he says nothing. Just looks at me like he’s filing the words away somewhere deep and private, where all his ugliest thoughts go to sharpen their teeth.
Then he bends lifting my leg and presses his mouth to the inside of my thigh.
A slow kiss. Open-mouthed. Distracting.
I exhale through my nose and hate that my body arches for him anyway.
“Possessive asshole,” I mutter.
He hums against my skin, amused.
“Da.”
His hand slides up under the shirt, warm palm flattening over my stomach. He drags his mouth higher, stopping just before he gets what he wants.
“Would you hate it?” he asks.
The question is too soft.
That’s what makes me turn my head and look down at him.
His face is half-shadowed. Hair still damp from the shower. The mark on his neck from my knife just barely visible above the collarbone. He looks younger like this, somehow, and more ruined at the same time.
“Yes,” I say.
It comes out too fast to be entirely true.
His eyes lift to mine. I feel the lie in the air between us immediately.
So does he.
I push up higher on my elbows. “I’d hate that you’d force it or didn’t ask.”
That lands. Harder than I expect.
His jaw shifts once. And there he is again—that brief flash of something underneath all the arrogance and teeth, something too still and too deep to name.
Then he smooths it over.
“I would never ask.”
“I know.”
The answer leaves before I can pretty it up.
His mouth curves at one corner. Not quite a smile. Not kind.
“Good,” he murmurs.
I should push him off me.
Instead I reach up and drag my fingers through his damp hair, because apparently some part of me enjoys making bad decisions when he’s looking at me like that.
“You’re not strapping me down and tattooing me by force, psychopath.”
A dark laugh vibrates out of him, low against my skin.
“Who said anything about strapping you down?”
I slap the back of his head lightly.
He bites my thigh for it.
Not hard enough to hurt. Just enough to make me jerk and curse at him, which only makes him grin into my skin like a fucking menace.
“See?” I mutter. “This is why you don’t get permission for anything. You’re violent.”
“No one gives me permission, Beda.”
There’s something in the way he says it that makes me pause.
Something true.
My fingers slow in his hair.
He must feel it, because he lifts his head and looks at me again, the rooms gone softer around us from alcohol and low light and the long drag of the day finally settling into our bones.
I trace the fading cut at his throat with the edge of my finger.
He goes still.
“You like it,” I say quietly.
His gaze doesn’t leave mine. “Da.”
“I thought you’d hate it or be upset after.”
“I like knowing you can make me bleed.”
A little shiver works through me.
Hot and dangerous.
My fingertip lingers over the mark. “I like it too.”
That changes the air all over again. His hand tightens once against my stomach.
Then he shifts, climbing fully over me now, his weight careful but absolute, all that restless violence banked down into something quieter. More intimate. Which, somehow, feels riskier.
His mouth brushes mine once.
Twice.
Slow enough to make me want to drag him down by the throat and ruin the mood on purpose.
Instead I whisper, “Still never getting a tattoo.”
His forehead drops to mine.
I feel his laugh before I hear it. “We’ll see.”
The words are light.
Too light.
I open my mouth to tell him exactly where he can shove his ink, but the vodka is catching up to me now, warm and mean and softening my edges despite myself.
The bed is too comfortable. His body is too heavy in a way my body has already started recognizing as safe, which is probably the most dangerous part of all of this.
My eyelids dip.
He notices immediately.
His thumb strokes once across my side, thoughtful. Possessive. Quiet.
“Tired?”
“Drunk,” I mumble.
“Same thing.”
“It’s not.”
“It is on you.”
I glare at him lazily. “I hate you.”
“No.”
His mouth ghosts over mine again, barely there.
“Sleep.”
I should tell him not to order me around. Should tell him to move. Should tell him I’m not a dog he gets to pat into obedience.
Instead my hand slides out of his hair and lands on his shoulder, loose and heavy. My body sinks deeper into the mattress. Into the heat of him. Into the room.
The last thing I register before sleep starts dragging me under is the way he looks at me after I stop fighting it.
Too still.
Too intent.
Like I just handed him something without meaning to.