Chapter 17
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Kira
I don’t know what pulls me out of sleep at first. The room is quiet except for the low hum of the air conditioner.
Then I hear it again—a scrape of metal, soft but wrong.
The lamp near the couch spills a thin line of light across the floor, and in that light, Artyom is already standing, still and alert, watching the door.
“What is it?” I whisper.
He doesn’t answer. Just raises a hand, palm flat in the air, telling me without words to stay exactly where I am. His eyes don’t leave the door. The stillness in him is almost worse than fear, it’s cold and absolute focus.
A second later, the lock clicks.
The sound is small, almost polite—just the click of metal against metal—but it slices through the quiet like a knife. Every nerve in my body goes rigid. The air itself seems to change, thinning around us, heavy with something unseen.
Artyom moves before I can even breathe. One clean, silent step forward.
His hand finds the back of his waistband, steady and practiced, fingers closing around the cold outline of the gun.
His whole body shifts with it—shoulders lowering, weight settling on the balls of his feet, ready to spring.
The muscles in his forearm tighten, the tendons flex beneath his skin.
He’s a shadow pulled taut, every part of him wired for the impact he already knows is coming.
Even the air between us feels charged, like the room is holding its breath, waiting to see what breaks first—the lock, or us.
Then the door bursts open. A shape rushes through the darkness, fast and heavy.
The noise that follows is furniture scraping, of breath colliding with force.
I barely manage a gasp before a hand catches my wrist and yanks hard enough to bruise.
The pull sends me stumbling off balance, the room tilting as adrenaline spikes through me.
Artyom is already there. He crosses the space between us in two strides, his body slamming into the intruder with the weight of something trained, practiced.
The impact shakes the wall. A framed picture falls and shatters somewhere behind them.
The man grunts, tries to swing again, but Artyom catches the motion, pins his arm, drives him back against the dresser so hard the lamp flickers.
I stumble toward the bed, half crawling, half falling onto it, clutching the blanket like it could stop what’s happening. My pulse is so loud it drowns everything else. The air smells like sweat, metal, and fear.
The fight is brutal but quiet—grunts, the thud of fists meeting flesh, the scrape of shoes on the floor. A knife flashes in the man’s hand, catching a glint of light from the lamp. For one breath I can’t move, can’t even scream, watching the blade swing upward.
Artyom twists at the last second, catching the man’s wrist mid-swing. The movement is fast—too fast for my eyes to follow—and then the blade reverses direction. A wet, muffled sound cuts through the air as he drives the knife straight into the intruder’s throat.
The noise that follows is low and choking, wet and human, the kind of sound that makes your stomach turn because it’s not supposed to exist outside of nightmares. The man jerks once, hands clawing at his own neck, and a spray of blood hits the wall, then me.
The heat of it shocks me more than the sight.
It dots my cheek, warm and slick, sliding down to the corner of my mouth before I can move.
The metallic taste floods my tongue when I breathe in too sharply.
My knees buckle, and I catch myself on the side of the bed, every pulse in my body beating out of sync.
The knife slips free with a sickening sound and clatters across the hardwood. That tiny metallic note feels obscene, too normal against the chaos.
The intruder collapses face-first onto the carpet, twitching once before going still. Blood spills out in a dark, heavy pool that spreads across the rug, soaking through the fibers until it glistens under the lamplight.
Artyom stays crouched beside him, one hand pressed to the man’s throat, his movements controlled even as the red seeps between his fingers. His breathing is steady, measured, as if he’s counting seconds. When he finally looks up at me, his eyes are calm, his voice level.
“Are you hurt?”
I shake my head, words caught somewhere in my chest. My hands won’t stop trembling. There’s blood on the sheets, splattered across my legs.
He pulls his phone from his pocket, presses a number.
“Mikhail. Clean-up, now.” He ends the call, tosses the phone onto the dresser, and comes to me.
“Get up, we are moving to the room next door.” Fortunately, whenever I stay in a hotel, I always book the two rooms next to mine for added security and privacy, so I can remove her from the mess immediately.
I can’t move. My knees lock. “I—he—”
“I know,” he says quietly. “Come on.”
He takes my hand, careful this time, guiding me off the bed. My legs barely hold me. I stare at the stain spreading across the rug, the body already fading into shadow.
He leads me to the adjoining room, through an internal door, and into the bathroom. The smell of blood clings to everything. My pulse still won’t slow.
Inside, the light is too bright. I blink against it as he turns on the water, tests the temperature with his hand, then looks at me again. His eyes are calmer than they should be.
“Clothes off,” he says softly.
I freeze.
“You’re covered,” he says quietly. His voice has none of the usual steel in it. “You’ll get sick if you leave it on you.”
I look down. The blood has already started to dry, sticky against my skin, dark along my arms, dotted across my collarbone.
The shirt clings to me, cold and heavy. When I peel it off, it makes a faint tearing sound.
My sweats and underwear go next. For a second I just stand there, bare and shaking, unable to separate the heat of my skin from the memory of that man’s blood on it.
Artyom doesn’t turn away, but he doesn’t stare either. His gaze is focused, steady, like he’s keeping himself anchored. He takes a towel, wets it in the sink, and brings it back to me.
The first touch is careful. He wipes my shoulder slowly, the towel warm and rough against the cooling skin beneath.
Each stroke lifts another streak of red, and I can smell the faint mix of soap and iron in the air.
My body flinches on instinct, but he just keeps going—my arms, my hands, the side of my neck—methodical, efficient, but quiet about it, like speaking would break whatever fragile control we both have left.
I can’t tell if I’m shivering from cold or from what I’ve just seen.
The blood has sunk into the small lines of my palms; he notices, takes my hands in his and works until the color fades from them.
His hands are bigger, rough from old scars, yet his touch stays impossibly gentle, tracing over me like he’s terrified of doing more harm.
When he kneels to clean the blood from my legs, I feel something twist inside me—a mix of shame and heat and gratitude I don’t know how to separate.
“Why are you doing this?” I whisper.
“Because you’re shaking,” he says simply.
“I’m fine.”
He doesn’t answer and keeps going, wiping away every trace until there’s only clean skin and goosebumps.
He cleans the soles of my feet, cleans the marble floor beneath me, eradicating the physical evidence until the air between us grows heavier with every breath, choked with the knowledge of what happened.
He tosses the towel aside, the sound muffled by the thick carpet. “Look at me,” he commands.
I do.
Whatever wall was left between us starts to crumble. The anger, the fear, the constant push and pull—it all collapses under the weight of something else entirely. His hand slides up, tracing the line of my hip, the contact searing. He stops just long enough to give me time to pull away. I don’t.
He leans in, his mouth close enough that his breath grazes my cheek. “Tell me to stop,” he murmurs, his voice a low, rough challenge. But I don’t want him to stop.
He doesn't look at my body. He looks only at my face, searching for the crack in the composure I can no longer hold.
Then he surges up, and his hands everywhere.
They grip my hips, hard, pulling my body flush against his, the black fabric of his shirt pressing into my naked skin.
The difference in texture, cold cotton against my searing flesh, is an immediate, jarring contrast. The scent of him—smoke, leather, and the lingering, metallic tang of fresh blood—is overwhelming, terrifying, and intoxicating all at once.
His mouth crashes down on mine. It’s not the controlling kiss he gave me in the cocktail room; this is desperate, demanding, driven by a need he can’t mask. He takes the small, terrified sounds I make, swallowing my fear, claiming my breath.
I finally let go. My hands fist in the black fabric of his shirt, clinging to the only solid thing in a world that just turned upside down. I kiss him back with the panic still raging in my chest, transferring the fear into something that felt like furious, violent need.
He breaks the kiss, lowering his head, and finds the hollow of my throat, tracing the erratic pulse there with his teeth.
"Mine," he grunts, the possessive claim a low, primal vibration against my skin that somehow makes me feel grounded.
I watch his hands rip at his clothes, all discarded with the same ruthless efficiency he uses to dispose of a threat.
He is built like a weapon. Every muscle is carved, honed, and corded with power—the hard planes of his chest, the taut lines of his stomach, the lethal curve of his biceps.
A faint trail of dark hair feathers down his abdomen, disappearing below the tight band of his boxer briefs.
It’s raw, intimidating, and so utterly masculine that it steals the air from my lungs.
The sight of him, unburdened by the layers of control, is just as terrifying as it is alluring.
The huge, marble bathtub is already filling, hot water rushing from the spout. He takes off his boxers and steps into the rising water, pulling me with him. The heat is immediate, shocking, sinking into my trembling muscles. I gasp as the water reaches my waist.
He lifts me, my back pressing against the cool, wet marble of the tub, and hoists my legs high around his waist. The slickness of the water makes the contact instantaneous, an intense, shocking slide of skin against skin.
He drives his hips forward, a sudden, powerful thrust that pushes the warm bathwater up and over the rim of the tub. When he finally enters me, I cry out, a sharp, choked sound that’s half relief, half agony. The air leaves my lungs in a ragged gasp.
“Look at me,” he mutters against my cheek, breath hot and uneven.
My eyes meet his. There’s no tenderness left, only the raw, urgent need to collide.
The rush of the hot water, the sudden, violent filling of the space between my legs, and the terror still burning in my chest fuse into a single, overwhelming sensation.
I am utterly consumed by the feeling of being filled—owned, protected, alive.
He plunges into me with a desperate, frantic pace, driving deep, sinking to the hilt.
Every powerful stroke is a sharp, desperate necessity, like he's trying to purge the violence and the fear that saturates the room through me.
The sheer, overwhelming size of him stretches me past my limit, demanding my complete attention.
“You feel that?” he growls, voice low, rough. “Fuck, you’re so hot.”
My hips rock uncontrollably to meet his relentless force, chasing the friction, needing the rhythmic impact to anchor me, to possess me entirely. His control is gone, replaced by a deep, guttural sound in his throat that echoes the chaos in my mind.
“That’s it,” he whispers against my ear, almost a plea.
His eyes are shut, his jaw clenched hard enough to fracture bone, and I can see the sweat mixing with the water and running down the corded muscles of his neck.
I clutch his broad, wet shoulders, my nails digging deep into the tense, scarred muscle, grounding myself in his pain, in the brutal, beautiful reality of this moment.
I hold on, desperate for him to keep moving, needing him to prove we survived.
The water rushes over our skin, reflecting the chandelier light, a chaotic, silver film over the desperate act. With every thrust, the water ripples violently, splashing against the marble sides of the tub, the sound echoing the primal intensity of our collision.
He changes the angle, his powerful hands gripping my waist, tilting me back to reach something deeper, something vital. The pressure builds—a painful, exquisite knot of tension that demands immediate release. I gasp his name, a broken prayer, the sound muffled by the steam.
“That’s it…,” he breathes, voice thick. “I need to hear you.”
I finally shatter, my entire body convulsing against the cold marble and the hot water.
The climax is a wave of pure, white-hot release that tears through the terror.
I scream his name when I shatter, the sound loud and ragged, my head tilting back and striking the marble with a dull thud I barely register.
He follows immediately after, a guttural groan ripping from his chest as he empties into me, his body rigid and shaking.
He collapses forward, burying his face against my neck, his breath coming in hot, shallow bursts.
He is heavy, exhausted, and completely spent.
For one impossible moment, he is just a man clinging to survival.
His forehead rests against mine, both of us breathing hard, both of us quiet. For the first time since I met him, he doesn’t look like the man who controls everything. He just looks tired. Human.
He brushes a wet strand of hair from my face. “You’re safe,” he says.