Chapter 9 Salvatore #2
He backs me up against the counter, big hands palming my ass underneath his shirt. I need the pain tonight, I need to feel his viciousness one last time.
“Salvatore,” he breathes against my lips. “Talk to me, lyubumiy.”
I can’t, cuore mio.
I drag him back to me by the front of his shirt and kiss him again, needing the shape of his mouth to fill every part of mine still capable of speech.
Then one second I’m against the counter; the next, he’s lifting me with one arm under my thighs because anger has always made him stronger, and desire makes him stupid enough not to care where we land.
We hit the rug in the sitting room in a tangle of limbs and breath and half-buttoned clothes. There’s something almost embarrassing in how quickly the fight drains out of both of us.
He rolls us so I’m on my back, but there’s no triumph in it; no dominance game. He looks down at me with a tender look on his face that makes me feel rotten inside.
“You’re cruel when you’re scared,” he murmurs.
I tug him down until his weight settles fully over me, and he comes without resistance. I bury my face in the crook of his neck and breathe in his scent. “Stay here.”
He lets out a small laugh. “I’m literally on top of you.”
I caress his face and shake my head. “You know what I mean.”
His arms tighten around me, and I feel him finally soften. “I know.”
We lie like that for a while, the villa gone quiet around us, and the sharp edges of our fight dissolving into something worse because it’s softer.
Ruslan presses a kiss to my throat, then my collarbone, then just rests there with his cheek against my chest as if listening to my heartbeat like it might tell him more than my mouth will.
It probably does, since he owns it.
“You shouldn’t trust me so much,” I say before I can stop myself.
He lifts his head enough to look at me properly. “Where the fuck is that coming from?”
I should stop, I know I should. But there’s some hideous need in me tonight to leave him with something that counts as a warning, even if he refuses to hear it.
Maybe because I’m a coward. Maybe some part of me wants the absolution of having tried.
“You trust people too easily when you love them,” I say.
He shakes his head. “Not people. You.”
That fucking undoes me so completely, I have to turn my face away. But he catches my jaw gently and turns it back.
“No, look at me.”
I breathe out a long, painful sigh and look into his eyes.
And there he is—Ruslan Dragovich. Future king, arrogant bastard. My ruin and my love, lying over me on the floor of his secret villa, with his heart exposed in his eyes. Because with me, he forgets enough of who he is to make that mistake.
“I trust you,” he says, each word a dagger to my heart. “Completely.”
If he’d struck me, it would hurt less. If he accused me, doubted me, dragged the truth out of me by the throat, it would be easier to survive this.
He trusts me completely—said like a gift and a confession. Said while I’m already standing with one foot inside the betrayal that will gut him.
I pull him down and kiss him before he can see whatever flashes across my face.
Later, when he’s half over me and half beside me and our breathing has finally stopped trying to outrun itself, he presses his lips to my temple and says, “Sleep.”
I turn into him and tuck my face against his throat, because if I sleep at all tonight, it will only happen there.
His fingers slide into my hair and stay. “Salvatore.”
The way he says my name now is quieter than it used to be. Less challenge, more possession and care. I don’t know when that shift happens. I only know I notice it more tonight because everything already feels terminal.
I hum. “Yes, cuore mio?”
He hesitates a second, which, on Ruslan, counts as a full confession. Then he says, “Whatever it is, you can tell me.”
My eyes sting, so I keep them shut. “I know.”
He waits, but I don’t say more.
After a while, his hand moves from my hair to the back of my neck, holding me there, and in the dark, I feel the trust in him like a wound left open on purpose. No suspicion, no calculations. Just certainty that if I don’t speak, it’s because I can’t yet, not because I won’t ever.
He trusts me completely.
That’s how my last night with him ends. Not with rough sex or even with the confession already bruising my ribs from the inside.
It ends with his hand warm at the back of my neck, his breathing evening out as sleep finally drags him under, and one last thing spoken into the dark in a voice so low I almost miss it.
“I’m here,” he murmurs, half asleep already. “I’m not going anywhere.”
I lie awake in his arms with tears I refuse to let fall and think, no, cuore mio. That’s my part.
And because the world is monstrous. Because love never arrives in our lives without bringing its own blade.
Because the worst things are always softened by the shape of trust before they cut deepest, I turn my face into his throat and let him hold me while I memorize the sound of a man trusting me enough to sleep.
I let myself drown in one last night before it all burns.