Chapter 30 Nikolaj
Nikolaj
I’m too drunk to be rational and too fucking full of him to care. I make it three corridors before I realize I’m not walking—I’m storming.
Sei la mia rovina.
How dare he call me his downfall—his fucking ruin—when he’s the death of me.
There’s blood in my mouth again. Don’t know if it’s from biting the inside of my cheek or just the taste of regret curdling behind my teeth.
The vodka didn’t help. It never does. I took it straight from the bottle when I got back to my room, pacing like an animal, hand bruised from punching the wall just once to see if I’d feel it.
I did, but not enough. Not nearly fucking enough because I keep hearing his voice.
You’ve already won. Now, get out of my head.
As if I wanted to win. As if I’m not already drowning in him.
The worst part is, he walked away again like he always does when he doesn’t know what else to say.
With that stiff spine and clenched jaw, and the glassy eyes that only I seem to catch.
He left me on the balcony with silence and ghosts, and the weight of a war neither of us knows how to end.
So now I’m here, at his fucking door.
I don’t knock, I shove it open, and he’s standing in the center of his room like he’s been waiting.
Black silk robe hanging open over bare skin; tanned, tattooed, and fucking regal. His gloves are tossed across the armchair like they don’t matter. His hair’s damp from a shower. His mouth looks red, like he’s been biting it—or someone else has.
The fury that surges through me at that thought is so fast it’s blinding.
He’s holding a glass of something dark. Probably whiskey. Of course it’s whiskey. When he turns, the glass doesn’t even shake. “You’re drunk,” he says flatly.
“I’m pissed,” I correct, slamming the door shut behind me. “But sure, let’s go with drunk.”
He sighs and doesn’t flinch when I cross the room. Doesn’t reach for a weapon, doesn’t pretend he’s surprised. He just watches, calm and composed. “I thought we were done.”
“No,” I growl. “You thought you could end it.”
He exhales, a faint shake in the breath he tries to hide, and lifts the glass to his lips. “I said you won,” he mutters.
“You don’t get to say that like it’s some neat fucking confession and walk away like it’s closure.”
He finally sets the glass down, turns, and the look in his eyes nearly knocks me off my axis.
“You want blood?” he snaps. “You want me to say it again? Fine. You win, Dragovich. You fucking win. You cracked me open and hollowed me out, and now I don’t know how to wake up without you in my fucking bloodstream. Does that make you happy now?”
I swallow hard. He’s flushed, angry, and so fucking beautiful. “No, it doesn’t,” I whisper. “Because that sounds a lot like surrender.”
He steps closer, eyes gleaming. “I’m not surrendering,” he says darkly. “I’m daring you.”
I don’t move. Every nerve in my body screams for touch, but I stay planted, because this—this is a goddamn line, and if I cross it now, I won’t just fall. I’ll destroy everything.
“You want to bring this king to his knees?” he breathes. “Come and try it.”
I shouldn’t.
I shouldn’t.
Because everything inside me is fractured from what Arseniy did, from the walls they tried to build in my mind, from the memories they tried to gut and bury.
But Vincenzo Vieri is the one thing I can’t kill, can’t run from, can’t control.
And right now, all I want is to fuck him up so thoroughly that no part of him can walk away again.
So, I do exactly what he asked for. My gaze drags down his body, and I can’t stop.
The cut of his chest. The lines of muscle disappearing under that silk.
It shouldn’t make me ache like this, but it does.
I want to trace every mark and every scar.
My pulse is a fucking riot, my fingers twitch at my sides, and I take one slow, measured step forward.
Then another. Until we’re chest to chest and I can feel the heat rolling off his bare skin.
“Christ,” I whisper before I can stop myself. “You’re beautiful.”
He smirks faintly, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “You didn’t come here to flatter me, Nikolaj.”
“No,” I say, my voice rough. “I came here to remember why I can’t stay away.”
My mouth finds his like it’s the only oxygen I’ve ever craved. It’s not a kiss—it’s war. He grabs my shirt like he’ll tear it off if I don’t first. My hands are in his hair, then on his jaw, then fisting the fabric at his waist.
He’s not passive and not surrendering. He’s meeting me blow for blow, dragging me down into him like he’s starving.
He groans into my mouth as our bodies collide.
It’s teeth and tongue and bruised lips and breathless curses in Italian and Russian.
We’re denial and rage and bloodlust packed into the brutal press of mouths that were never meant to meet like this.
He tastes like liquor and hate and the kind of yearning that ruins men.
His teeth catch my bottom lip, sharp enough to warn, not enough to stop, but I don’t care. I don’t want to be careful. I shove the robe off his shoulders, he lets it fall, and fuck me—he’s gorgeous.
Bruises from this past week’s simulation are starting to bloom along his ribs; dark against golden skin.
A healing cut just under his hipbone, and a faint mark on his neck where someone must have clipped him during drills.
His lip is split, and he’s still standing tall, still waiting for my command.
My prince.
My ruin.
“You don’t get to shut me out,” I growl, dragging my hand down his chest. “You don’t get to walk away when I’m still bleeding for you.”
“You think you’re the only one bleeding?” he snarls, shoving me backward, hard, until I trip and land on the bed. He’s on me in seconds, straddling me, eyes dark and wild and so fucking mine. “I dream about you every night. Sei la mia rovina; you haunt me.”
I grip his thighs, digging my fingers in. “Then let me be real.”
I slam my mouth onto his like he owes me something sacred and I’m here to collect.
His jaw’s tight, but he opens for me anyway because we’ve already passed the point of no return, and he knows it.
His lips part on a breathless curse, and I swallow the sound whole—devour it like I’ve been starved on silence and he’s my first taste of sound.
I press my forehead to his, our breaths tangling. “I hate you,” I whisper, my voice breaking. “I hate you because I can’t stop wanting you.”
He closes his eyes, jaw tightening, like he’s trying not to fall apart. “Then we’re both fucked,” he says.
I flip us, and his hands are in my hair before he can stop them, gripping, tugging, cursing me under his breath between frantic kisses. But he doesn’t push me away. He pulls me deeper, his thighs flexing around my hips.
“You’re mine,” I whisper against his mouth. “Say it.”
“No.” He hisses the word, defiant, but his breath is hitching, and his nails dig crescents into my shoulders.
I bite his bottom lip. Not enough to break skin—but close. “Say it, Prince.”
He snarls. “Fuck you.”
“Working on it.”
He jerks, a strangled noise ripped from his throat, and I feel his cock twitch against me. “See?” I whisper. “Your body already knows who it belongs to.”
“Shut up.”
“No.”
I sit back on my heels just long enough to rip my shirt off, then lean over him again, grinding down until he groans into my mouth. “You think I’m a ghost? You think I only exist in dreams?”
I grab his wrists and slam them above his head, pinning him down, watching his pupils blow wide. “Look at me, Vincenzo,” I growl. “I’m real. I’m here. And I’m not going to haunt you—I’m going to ruin you just like you’ve destroyed me.”
He stares up at me, chest heaving, lips red and wet, neck marked and vulnerable. “Nikolaj…” His voice cracks around my name and it feels like he’s handing me the knife and baring his throat.
I kiss him again, slower this time, angrier somehow, because I hate that we got here like this but I love that we got here at all. I break off the kiss and press my forehead to his, breathing hard, trembling with restraint I barely have. “Please don’t say my name like that unless you mean it.”
“I do.” His voice is hoarse, almost broken. “You’ve already taken everything else by making me want what I shouldn’t have. What’s left to hide?”
Our clothes come off in violent, graceless movements. I crawl over him slowly, letting every inch of my body drag across his until I’m straddling his waist and he arches beneath me, groaning and bucking up against me. “This isn’t mercy, Prince.”
“I never fucking wanted mercy,” he growls.
Good, because mercy was never on the table, only conquest.
Only us.
I kiss him again—slow, filthy, deep. My tongue fucks into his mouth like I’m already claiming him from the inside out. He moans into it, thighs spreading wider, his whole body trembling like it doesn’t know how to hold the weight of what’s happening.
I release his wrists only to flip him over, dragging him onto his stomach. He groans, breath hitched, hips lifting of their own accord as if his body’s chasing what I haven’t given him yet.
“Fuck, you’re greedy,” I mutter, dragging my hands down his back while admiring his tattoos, fingers digging into every muscle, every bruise. “You want to be fucked, my king?”
“Yes,” he hisses. “Please, Nikolaj—”
My name from his lips unravels something I didn’t know I still had left.
I reach over into his nightstand and find a small bottle of lube and I coat my fingers fast. Then I spread his cheeks and lick a fat stripe over his hole before I press two fingers in without warning, curling them deep, watching the way his body arches into it, greedy despite his pride.
“Such a pretty little hole,” I whisper against his spine. “And it’s all mine, isn’t it?”
He nods frantically, pride shattered, face half buried in the sheets. “Yours, all yours.”
“Louder.”
“Yours, Nikolaj,” he gasps, and the sound sets fire under my skin. “No one else… just you.”