14. Robin #2
“The kind where we’re both honest about what we’re feeling instead of dancing around it.” I shift to face her more fully, suddenly nervous but determined to push through. “We’ve been avoiding this conversation, but I think we need to have it.”
“Robin—”
“Do you still feel the same?” The question tumbles out before I can second-guess myself. “As you did before you sent me away from Las Vegas? Because I know a lot has happened since then, and people change, and I don’t want to assume?—”
Eva stares at me for a long moment, and I can see something like incredulity building in her expression.
“How can you even ask me that?” she says finally, her voice rough with emotion. “After what I did to get you back?”
“That could have been about pride, or?—”
“Robin.” Eva slides from her chair to kneel on the floor beside me, taking my hands in hers. “Of course I’m still in love with you. I always will be. That’s not something that changes with time or circumstances or—” She stops, swallows hard. “I thought you knew that.”
Tears prick at the corners of my eyes, relief and joy and about six other emotions I can’t name all flooding through me at once.
“I feel the same,” I whisper. “I love you too. I never stopped, even when I was angry, even when I thought we were over. It terrified me how much I still loved you.”
Eva’s smile is radiant, transforming her entire face. She leans forward to kiss me, and I let her for a moment, savoring the familiar taste of her, the way she sighs against my lips like she’s been holding her breath for weeks.
But then I pull back, because we’re not finished yet.
“But there’s something else,” I say. “If we’re going to make this work—really work—I need you to promise me something.”
The wariness creeps back into Eva’s expression. “What kind of promise?”
“You can’t go scorched earth again.” The words come out in a rush. “What you did to save me, all those people who died... I can’t carry that kind of guilt, Eva. I can’t be responsible for that level of violence.”
Eva sits back on her heels, considering. When she speaks, her voice is measured. “I can’t promise you that.”
My heart sinks. “Eva?—”
“Especially not now,” she continues. “Not after spending time with your family, seeing what they mean to you. You’re not just necessary to me anymore, Robin. You’re necessary to them . You’re the center that holds them all together.”
“That doesn’t mean?—”
“If someone takes you again—or if someone takes any of them—I will not hesitate to do whatever it takes to get any of you back.” Eva’s voice is steady, implacable. “I won’t ask your siblings to sacrifice you, either. They need you as much as you need them.”
I stare at her, wrestling with the implications of what she’s saying. Part of me wants to argue, to insist that violence is never the answer, that there have to be other ways to resolve conflicts.
But another part—the part that watched my little sister lying in a hospital bed while medical bills piled up around us, the part that sold myself at auction to keep my family together—understands exactly what Eva means.
“I don’t agree with it,” I say finally.
“I know.”
“But I understand it.” I take a shaky breath. “And…maybe that’s enough. Maybe compromise is the basis of any relationship—accepting that the person you love won’t always make the choices you would make.”
Eva’s expression softens. “You can live with that?”
“I can live with that.” I lean forward, resting my forehead against hers. “As long as you can live with me questioning those choices sometimes.”
“I wouldn’t want you any other way.”
This time when she kisses me, I don’t pull back. I let her draw me closer, let her hands tangle in my hair, let the heat building between us wash away the lingering tension from our conversation.
When she deepens the kiss, I arch into her touch, needing the reassurance of her body against mine.
“I love you,” she whispers against my throat, and the words send shivers down my spine.
“Show me,” I breathe back.
Eva’s hand closes warmly around mine as we leave the study. Neither of us speaks. The silence isn’t awkward, though—it hums, charged with everything we just said, everything we finally admitted.
Back in the bedroom, she shuts the door behind us and leans against it. My breath catches at the sight of her. My Eva—still so dangerous even with all that ice melted, eyes molten fire in the low light—and yet, tonight, she’s also mine in the simplest, most vulnerable way.
“I love you,” I whisper again, because I can’t stop saying it now that I’ve started.
She comes to me, cups my face like I’m precious. “I love you, too,” she breathes.
I pull her down into a kiss that’s slow, savoring, two people relearning the taste of certainty. But as always between us, there’s an undeniable hunger, too, and soon enough I feel my body ignite.
Clothes come off between kisses, her fingers sliding my sweater up, my hands unfastening her blouse. Skin meets skin at last—and it’s like a fuse catching.
She pulls me toward the bed, arranges me on it, a little further down the bed than usual, making sure the pillow is there under my head, and then crawls up over me to take my lips once more. When she pulls away and says, “I want to taste you while you taste me, darling. Would you like that?”
I nod at once, because anything Eva Novak wants to do with me is fine by me.
With deliberate slowness, she shifts, swinging her body over mine until her thighs bracket my head.
I’m already lost in the sight of her above me, bare and glistening, so focused that I even jump a little when she moves to press an open-mouthed kiss to my inner thigh.
Her tongue drags up the length of my slit, and my hips buck against her mouth. I have to force myself not to let her distract me entirely, and I lift my own head, parting her folds with my tongue.
Her moan vibrates against my clit and anchors me in the moment, in the taste of her, the feeling of her rocking against my face. We set a slow, lazy pace, licking and sucking in turn, exploring each other with a focus and a tenderness we haven’t always made time for in the past.
The whole world fades away. All that exists is the sensation of Eva’s cunt, her mouth, the pleasure rising between us.
It’s a feedback loop of sensation, desire bouncing back and forth until I’m certain I’ll explode.
Her scent fills me, heady and intoxicating.
Her taste is everywhere, slick and salty-sweet.
My thighs tremble around her head, but she just holds me tighter, refusing to let me go, refusing to break the circuit we’ve created.
“You feel so wonderful,” she murmurs against my pussy. “So wet and hot and eager. And your cunt clenches every time I praise you, darling, my good, sweet girl—you’re such a greedy little thing, aren’t you? But you love it when I tease you, don’t you?”
I’m moaning and panting and squirming on her fingers, and the pleasure is so intense it’s almost painful, and all I can do is nod frantically, bury my face in her cunt, lick and suck and moan and let her know how much I need her, how desperately I’m coming apart at the seams.
“Together,” she pants against me.
I’m moaning and panting and squirming on her fingers, and the pleasure is so intense it’s almost painful, and all I can do is nod frantically, bury my face in her cunt, show her how much I need her, how desperately I’m coming apart at the seams.
“You’re so perfect,” she breathes. “My Robin, my good girl, my beautiful, clever, lovely little bird. Come for me. Let me feel you come apart, darling, please, please?—”
The orgasm crashes through me just as hers seizes around my tongue and fingers. My whole body convulses, pleasure tearing me apart, while her thighs clamp around my head and I drown in the ecstasy of her climax.
We ride it out together, shaking, gasping, clinging to each other through the storm. It feels endless, like we’ve been pulled into some private universe where only we exist—two bodies, two hearts, perfectly aligned.
When it finally ebbs, she collapses to the side, climbing up me until we’re tangled face-to-face, hair damp, mouths swollen. We’re both laughing breathlessly, kissing between gasps, tasting ourselves on each other.
I touch her cheek, overwhelmed by the sight of her like this—unguarded, radiant, soft.
“This,” I whisper. “This is what it means to be together.”
Her eyes shine, fierce and vulnerable at once. “Together. Equals.”
“Equals,” I echo, and kiss her again, slow and deep, sealing the promise with our mouths as surely as we did with our bodies.
Later, curled against her chest with my head pillowed on her shoulder, I let myself believe that we might actually make this work. That love and compromise and honest conversation might be enough to bridge the gap between our different worlds.
But even as contentment settles over me like a warm blanket, there’s a cold and unwelcome thought burrowing under as well. Tomorrow, Uncle Stefan and Dimi arrive. Tomorrow, Eva will be pulled back into Consortium politics and family dynamics I don’t fully understand.
For now, though, I’ll hold on to hope.