Chapter 29
AXEL
The room they've given us is something out of a dream Aurora would have had at sixteen.
Stone walls, low ceiling, fireplace already burning when we walk in.
The bed is enormous, buried in white linen, positioned so whoever's in it can see straight out the floor-length window to the sky.
Which is still moving. Still doing that impossible thing, green and slow, unhurried by anything happening down here.
I stand in the doorway and watch Aurora walk into the room ahead of me.
She turns a full slow circle, taking it in, her coat still on, cheeks still flushed from the cold outside. She looks at the fireplace. The window. The bed.
Then she looks at me.
"You planned all of this," she says.
"Margareta helped."
"Axel."
I don’t know how to take all this love and attention. I look away and scratch the back of my neck. "Viktor sourced the location."
"Axel." She crosses to me, takes my jacket lapel in one hand. "You planned all of this."
I look down at her. Her eyes are still slightly red at the edges from crying on the hill. Her hair is windswept. She has never looked better in her life.
"I wanted to give you something real," I say.
She holds my gaze for a moment, something moving across her face that I feel in my chest before she even acts on it. Then she goes up on her toes and kisses me, soft at first, her free hand coming to my jaw.
I pull her in by the waist.
She makes a small sound against my mouth, and the softness dissolves immediately, her fingers curling into my lapel, her body pressing into mine. I walk her backward toward the bathroom without breaking the kiss, reaching past her to push the door open.
The bathroom is warm, the floor heated, a deep stone bath along one wall, and a shower built into the opposite corner with glass on three sides. I reach past her and turn the shower on, then come back to her.
She's already working the buttons of her coat.
I move her hands away and do it myself.
Her coat falls. Then her sweater, lifted over her head. She shiver-laughs at the air on her skin and reaches for my jacket, shoves it off my shoulders. Her fingers find my shirt buttons, and she works them from the bottom up, deliberate, watching her own hands.
I watch her face.
Mine, I think, the way I always think it. But it lands differently now, heavier and warmer and nothing like possession. More like a declaration of certainty.
She spreads my shirt open and runs both palms flat up my chest, over my shoulders, and pushes it off. Her eyes travel down and then back up, and she bites her lower lip once before she can stop herself.
The rest of our clothes go quickly. No ceremony. Just necessity, both of us already wanting, the air in the bathroom warm and thickening with steam.
I walk her backward into the shower.
The water hits us both, and she gasps, tilting her face up into it immediately, eyes closing, the tension leaving her shoulders in real time.
I watch it happen. Watch the cold and the travel and the weight of the last several weeks wash off her incrementally, her breathing slowing, her expression going loose.
I push her hair back from her face.
She opens her eyes.
I kiss her jaw, her neck, just below her ear, taking my time. My hands move down her sides, over the small new curve of her stomach, and I feel her breath change. I press my palm flat there for a moment. Just a moment.
She covers my hand with hers.
We stay like that while the water runs over us, neither of us speaking. Then I reach for the soap and she stills.
"Really?" she says.
"You're cold. You need warming up."
"I'm warm."
"Warmer," I say, and start at her shoulders.
I take longer than necessary. She calls me insufferable twice.
I ignore it both times, working the tension out of her neck, shoulders, and down her spine while she braces against the stone wall and makes sounds she's trying very hard to suppress.
By the time I reach the small of her back, she's stopped arguing altogether.
"Axel." My name comes out unsteady.
"Mm."
"If you don't—"
I turn her around.
Her back hits the stone wall, and I'm on her immediately, my mouth on her throat, her collarbone, my hands cupping her breasts. She arches hard into my palms. I drag my thumbs across her nipples, and her whole body shudders, her head falling back against the wall.
"P-Please," she breathes.
"Tell me what you want, Aurora."
"You know what..."
"Say it."
Her eyes open, dark, furious, and wanting. "Touch me."
"I am touching you." I chuckle.
"Axel—"
I slide one hand between her legs, and she cuts off, grabbing my forearm with both hands. Already slick, already aching, and I've barely done anything. The knowledge of it does something dangerous to my self-control.
"Fuck," I breathe against her neck. "You're soaked for me."
"Y-yes." Her nails dig in.
I work her slowly, watching her face because I can't look away from it — the way her lips part, the flush moving up her throat, the way she fights to keep her eyes open and loses. Her hips start moving against my hand.
"More," she says. "I need more."
I give her more. She comes apart in under two minutes, shaking, both hands gripping my arm, my name leaving her mouth in pieces.
I carry her to the bed.
She's laughing by the time I lay her down, that slightly breathless laugh she does when she's overwhelmed and happy at once.
"The sheets," she says. "We're soaked—"
"I don't care about the sheets."
I come over her, bracing on my forearms, and she reaches up and drags her fingers through my wet hair and pulls me down to her mouth. I kiss her slowly this time, in no rush, because we have until morning, and I plan to use every hour of it.
I move to her jaw. Her neck. I bite the joint of her shoulder, and she gasps, her fingers tightening. I suck a mark there deliberately, feel her pulse jump under my mouth.
Down to her collarbone. Her sternum. I cup her breast in my palm and take her nipple into my mouth and suck, slow and focused, and she arches clean off the mattress with a sharp cry that echoes off the stone walls.
"Oh God—"
I do it again. She's squirming underneath me, hips rolling, fingers in my hair holding me there. I give her what she wants, taking my time, switching between them until she's shaking.
"Please," she breathes. "Please, Axel—"
"I've got you." I kiss down her ribs. The soft plane of her stomach. I feel her muscles jump under my mouth.
Then lower.
She spreads for me before I even ask, one hand going immediately to my hair. I look up at her from where I am, and she looks back at me, chest heaving, eyes black with wanting.
I lower my mouth to her.
She cries out, hips snapping up. I hold her steady with my forearms and work her slowly, learning the sounds she makes, cataloguing what pulls those broken little whimpers from her versus what makes her grip my hair hard enough to sting.
I find the rhythm that builds her up, and I keep it, relentless, not rushing, feeling her thighs tremble against my shoulders.
"Don't stop," she says. "Don't you dare stop."
I have no intention of stopping.
She comes undone slowly, the orgasm cresting and cresting before it breaks, her back bowing off the bed, her thighs clamping around my head, my name tearing out of her throat raw and desperate and unmistakable.
I don't stop until she's pushing at my shoulders.
I climb over her, settle between her legs, and her hands go straight to my face, pulling me down to her mouth. She kisses me deep and slow, tasting herself on my lips, and the sound she makes against my mouth nearly finishes me before I've started.
"Now," she says against my lips.
I push inside her.
We both go still.
Her eyes close. Her mouth falls open. I stay there, buried in her, forehead dropping to hers, just feeling the heat of her, the way her body fits around me like the question already knew the answer.
"Move," she whispers. "Please."
I move.
Slow at first, deep, watching her face because her face is the best thing in the world right now, every expression raw and unguarded. Her hands slide to my back, nails dragging lightly.
"You feel incredible," I tell her, low against her ear. "Every fucking time."
She makes a soft, desperate sound.
"Tell me what you want."
"Harder." Her hips roll up to meet me. "I want to feel it."
I give her harder. Her breath punches out with each thrust, her nails going from light to sharp. The headboard finds the wall. I don't care.
"Look at me," I tell her.
Her eyes open.
"Good girl." I feel her clench around me the second I say it. "You like that."
"Yes!” she breathes, but her hips are moving with mine now, chasing it.
"You like it when I talk to you." I dip my head to her throat. "Want me to tell you how good you feel? How fucking perfect?" I feel her shudder. "How I've been thinking about this since the moment we walked in that door?"
"Axel—"
"Say my name again." My hand slides between us, finds her clit. "Go on."
"A-Axel." Broken this time, desperate. "I'm going to—"
"I know." I work her faster. "Come on. Give it to me."
She shatters.
I follow seconds later, burying my face in her neck, her name in my mouth, her hands holding me to her while everything else disappears.
We lie tangled in the ruined sheets afterward, the fire across the room painting everything amber. The window still shows the sky, the lights dimmer now, softer, like they're winding down for the night. Aurora is on her back, one arm across her eyes, breathing slowly back to normal.
I pull her into my side.
She comes without resistance, tucking her head under my jaw, one hand flat on my chest.
"I miss my father," she says.
The words come out quietly, no warning. I feel them land.
"I know," I say.
"I keep thinking about calling him." Her thumb moves absently against my chest. "Then I think about what he said and I can't." A pause. "But I want him to know us. The real us. Not what he thinks we are." She tilts her head back to look at me. "Do you think he'll come around?"
"He loves you," I say it because it's the only thing I know for certain about Luca right now. "Men like your father don't stop loving their daughters. They just need time to stop being proud first."
She's quiet, considering. Then: "I want him there. When the baby comes."
"Then we'll get him there."
"Promise?"
"I'll kidnap him if I have to." And I mean it.
She holds my eyes for a moment, checking for the truth in it, then nods and settles back against my chest.
The fire cracks softly. Outside, the lights keep moving.
"Can I ask you something?" she says.
"You're going to regardless."
She pinches my side lightly. "I asked about her before, but I’m just still curious. Your wife. It seemed a lot went on before she died. Do you still have fond memories of her?"
I go still. "What wife?”
She lifts her head. Frowns at me. "I’m talking about Leo's mother?"
Oh. I smile. It’s time I tell her the truth. "Leo isn't my son."
The frown deepens. She pushes up onto her elbow, looking at me properly. "Wait… What?"
I look at the ceiling for a moment. Then back at her.
"Leo is actually my sister's son," I say. "Elena. She died when he was young. Overdose." The old grief sits flat and familiar in my chest. "I took him in because there was no one else. He's carried my name since he was four years old."
Aurora stares at me.
"You've been raising your nephew," she says slowly. "This whole time. Everyone thinks—"
"Everyone thinks he's mine. Viktor knows. Sergei. Nobody else." I hold her eyes. "It was easier. Cleaner. A nephew inherits nothing in this world. A son inherits everything. I wanted him protected. He’s my family.”
She's quiet for a long moment, something shifting across her face. Then she exhales, a short disbelieving breath.
"That's why," she says, almost to herself.
"Why what?"
"Why he's nothing like you." She shakes her head slowly.
"I kept looking at the two of you trying to find it.
Some similarity. Something. There was nothing.
" Her eyes come back to mine. "He has none of your discipline.
None of your control. I kept thinking, how does a man like Axel produce someone like Leo, and the answer is he didn't."
"No," I say. "He didn't."
"Were you close? To Elena?"
"When we were young. Before the drugs, yes." I stare at the ceiling. "She was funny. Reckless. The kind of person who made every room louder just by walking in." A beat. "She would have liked you."
Aurora is quiet, her eyes on my face.
"I'm sorry," she says softly. "That you lost her."
"It was a long time ago."
"That doesn't mean—" She stops, catching herself. Tries again. "Grief doesn't have an expiry date."
I look at her. She's watching me with that particular expression she gets, direct and unguarded, the one that makes me feel seen in a way I spent most of my life making sure nobody could manage.
"No," I agree. "It doesn't."
She lays back down, her head returning to the hollow of my shoulder. Her hand finds my chest again, rests there.
After a while, she reaches down and takes my hand. Guides it gently to the small swell of her stomach. Presses my palm flat.
I feel it.
The slight, firm curve of her belly. Barely there. Something you'd miss if you weren't paying attention.
I don't say anything. Can't, immediately.
I just keep my hand there, in the dark, feeling the small evidence of something growing, something that is somehow half her and half me and entirely its own thing, entirely new, a person who hasn't happened yet.
Aurora's breathing slows beside me.
My thumb moves in a slow arc across the curve of her stomach.
Hi, I think the same way I thought it on the hillside. I don't know how to do this. I've never done anything like this. My thumb keeps moving. But I'm going to figure it out. I promise I'm going to figure it out.
The fire settles. The lights outside drift, slow and green and indifferent.
Aurora falls asleep.
I stay awake a long time, my hand on her stomach, watching the sky.