Chapter 23 Aleksei #4
I pull back just enough to look at her face. She’s flushed, wrecked, hair everywhere, and absolutely not prepared for the expression on mine.
“Zatanna.” My voice comes out low. Dangerous in a very different way.
She swallows.
“Are you,” I say carefully, “a virgin?”
Her cheeks go bright red.
She looks away. “Maybe.”
I stare at her. “Maybe?”
She winces. “That’s not really a yes-or-no-friendly question when I’m naked and you’re still inside me.”
I close my eyes for one second. Then open them again. “But all those things you said,” I say, genuinely thrown, “for your… podcast.”
That gets me a look.
“Not a podcast,” she says, sounding faintly offended despite the circumstances. “And I read a lot of romance novels growing up.”
For one surreal second, I don’t know whether to laugh, curse, or carry her straight to city hall.
“Romance novels,” I repeat.
She nods once, sheepish now. “And I have… imagination.”
I let out a breath that might actually be a laugh. “You narrated those files like you’d done everything in them.”
“That was the point,” she mutters. “People don’t pay good money to hear a woman sound uncertain.”
I look at her. At the way she’s trying to hold onto dignity while half-undressed and flushed to the roots of her hair.
At the embarrassment fighting with defiance on her face.
At the fact that she just gave me something no one else ever has, and is somehow still trying to make this into a punchline.
Something in my chest shifts. Dangerously.
“You should have told me,” I say quietly.
Her eyes flash to mine. “When exactly? During the kidnapping? In the bathroom between orgasms? Or while you were busy pretending to date another woman?”
Fair. I don’t have an answer to that.
She bites her lip, then sighs, some of the humor fading. “I didn’t think it mattered.”
It does matter. Every small thing about her matters to me. Not in the fragile, sanctimonious way some men would mean it. But because if I’d known, I would have slowed down. Asked more. Given her a hundred chances to stop me.
And yet she’s looking at me now with no regret in her face. Just nerves. A little embarrassment. And something warmer beneath both.
I slide one hand up her back, keeping my touch gentle this time. “Did I hurt you?”
Her expression softens with surprise, like she didn’t expect that question from me. “No,” she says. Then, after a beat, “Not in a bad way.”
I exhale in relief.
She watches me for a second, then says, quieter now, “You look more freaked out than I am.”
I almost smile. “That’s because you have very poor judgment.”
That gets a tired little laugh out of her.
And then, because apparently I’ve decided to stop pretending this doesn’t matter, I brush her hair back from her face and say, “First, it was not a podcast.”
She snorts.
“Second, you are never allowed to describe this as something you produced.”
Her brows lift. “No?”
“No.” I kiss her once, slow and deep and very deliberate. “This was ours.”
Her breath catches at that. I should not say things like that.
I know I shouldn’t.
But tonight has already crossed every line worth naming.
She studies me with those dark, searching eyes, then asks softly, “Are you mad?”
I think about the question. About the files that haunted me. About the stories she gave away to strangers. About the fact that underneath all of that was this woman, warm and real and brave enough to give me her actual first time while bullets were still fresh in the walls outside.
“No,” I say honestly.
“Then why did you freeze?”
I brush my thumb over her cheek. “Because I’m trying very hard not to do something reckless.”
Her gaze dips to my mouth. “Too late.”
That earns her a real laugh. A low one, but real.
And Christ, I like her like this. Flushed and clever and not at all what I thought when I first heard that voice. I ease out of her carefully, and she winces just a little. I hate that I notice. I hate more that I want to do something absurdly tender about it.
So I do.
I lift her into my arms.
She startles. “What are you doing?”
“You’re not walking anywhere right now.”
“That is dramatic.”
“You can barely stand.”
She considers that. “Fair.”
I carry her to the bed because apparently there’s no going back now, no pretending this suite was ever for anyone else. I lay her down against the pillows and pull the blanket up over her.
She looks up at me, all soft and spent and still a little shy now that the adrenaline is fading. “I can’t believe I just admitted that.”
I sit on the edge of the bed and look down at her. “You should be more concerned about the fact that you arranged a romantic suite for me and another woman.”
Her face flames again. “I hate you.”
“No, you don’t.”
“No,” she admits, too tired to lie well. “Unfortunately not.”
I lean down and kiss her forehead. The gesture surprises both of us.
Then I pull back and say, “Get some sleep.”
She blinks. “You’re just… leaving?”
I glance toward the door, toward the shattered evening still waiting outside it. “I have men to speak to. And a fake date to officially end.”
Her fingers catch my wrist before I can move away.
I look back at her.
“What happens now?” she asks.
And there it is. The question beneath every other one.
I don’t answer right away. Because I don’t know.
A week ago she was a voice in a file. Now she’s in my bed, under my blanket, asking me what happens now like I haven’t already blown my life apart enough to know better.
So, I give her the truest answer I have.
“Now,” I say, “everything gets more complicated.”
She lets out a soft breath that might be a laugh and might be fear. “Great,” she murmurs. “That’s exactly what I wanted to hear.”
I kiss her knuckles once before I stand. “No,” I say. “It’s exactly what I needed to say.”
And when I leave the suite this time, it’s not to go back to some other woman. It’s to deal with the world outside that I just made infinitely more dangerous—
Because now Zatanna is not only in my head.
She’s in my life.