Chapter 27 Vera #2
“I know,” I whisper against his back. “I know. You did what you had to do. You protected us. You protected everyone.”
His hands come up to grip my arms where they’re wrapped around his chest, holding on like I’m the only thing keeping him upright.
And maybe I am.
“Take them away,” Dad says quietly to the guards giving us this moment. “Same as before. Burn the bodies. They don’t get graves.”
People start filing out to give us privacy. My father pauses as he passes, his hand briefly touching my shoulder in a gesture of comfort and support and then he’s gone too.
Finally it’s just Dimitri and me and two blood stains on the marble floor.
He turns in my arms and buries his face in my neck, and I feel his shoulders shake. He’s not making noise (too stubborn even for that) but I can feel the grief wracking through him.
“I’ve got you,” I murmur, running my hands through his hair. “I’ve got you. It’s over. It’s done.”
“He was my brother,” he chokes out. “My baby brother. I was supposed to protect him.”
I kiss whatever skin I can find with my lips.
“You protected him for years, but he made his choices. He chose power over family. He chose to betray you.” I keep one hand tangled in his hair while the other rubs down his spine.
“You gave him chances,” I tell him softly.
“More than he deserved and he threw them away. "
Dimitri lets loose a deep, shuddering breath. “I know. I know that. But it still—”
“Hurts,” I finish. “Of course it hurts. It’s supposed to hurt. That’s what makes you different from Konstantin and Alexei. You still feel it. You still care.”
We stand there for so long that the sun finishes setting and the hall grows dark.
Eventually Dimitri pulls back. His eyes are red but dry now and he gently cups my face with both hands.
“Thank you,” he says quietly.
I raise an eyebrow as I drape my arms around his shoulders. “For what?”
“For standing with me. For not running. For—” He stops, struggling for words. “For choosing me despite everything.”
“Always,” I promise, watching the shadows in his eyes lighten at that. “I’ll always choose you. I love you.”
He kisses me. It’s soft and desperate and full of everything we can’t say.
And slowly, carefully, we start to piece ourselves back together.
Both families officially recognized our leadership before they left. Dimitri as the undisputed head of the Volkov family and me as his equal partner and bridge to the Ashfords. Not a symbol of a treaty. Not a bargaining chip. But a real leader in my own right.
The alliance between families is real now and it’s built on truth instead of manipulation, on trust instead of fear.
We won. But victory tastes like ash when it costs this much.
In our bedroom, Dimitri is quiet, grieving in that silent way he has.
I don’t push him to talk or try to force him to process faster than he’s ready for. Instead, I just hold him, providing him the physical comfort he needs. For too long he’s been alone and not able to have anyone to shoulder his burdens and I intend to fix that.
We’re lying in bed, his head on my chest, my fingers running through his hair in slow, soothing strokes. His arm is wrapped around my waist, hand splayed across my lower back as he holds me, anchoring himself.
“I killed my brother,” he says eventually. His voice is quiet and matter-of-fact, like he’s trying the words out to see how they sound.
“I know,” I respond softly because it’s true, he did, and he needs to hear it.
The muscles in his powerful back ripple as he tries to figure out what to say next. “It was the right thing to do.”
I nod, never ceasing stroking his hair. “It was,” I agree.
“It was the only thing I could do,” he continues.
“Yes.”
“But it still hurts.”
“It does,” I agree and my hand moves to his face, tracing the line of his jaw. “It always will and that’s okay. It’s supposed to hurt.”
He turns his head to look at me and his gray eyes are devastated in a way I’ve never seen before.
“How do you live with this?” he asks desperately and my heart breaks to see the torture on his face. “How do you move forward when you’ve done something like this?”
“Together,” I tell him, stroking the roughness of his cheek. “We live with it together. We carry it together. You don’t have to do this alone.”
His hand comes up to cover mine on his face and a thousand emotions cross his face. “I don’t deserve you,” he says hoarsely.
“Yes you do.” I lean down and kiss him softly. “You deserve everything good and all the happiness in the world. After all this darkness, you deserve light.”
His expression shifts and the devastation doesn’t disappear but it’s joined by something else.
Need. Hunger. The desperate desire to feel something other than grief.
He kisses me back harder, rolling us so I’m beneath him.
His hands are on my face, in my hair, mapping my body like he’s trying to memorize every inch.
“I need you,” he breathes against my mouth. “I need to feel something other than—”
“I know,” I interrupt, already pulling at his shirt. “I know. I’m here. I’m right here.”
We shed our clothes and then he’s covering my body with his and it feels like coming home. His weight is solid above me, his skin warm against mine, and I wrap my legs around his waist to pull him closer. I need him closer.
His forehead presses against mine, gray eyes locked on brown, and for a moment we just breathe together. His hand comes up to cup my face, thumb tracing my cheekbone with such tenderness it makes my chest ache.
“I love you,” he whispers. “I love you so much it scares the shit out of me.”
“Well we can change that.” I turn my head to kiss his palm. “Love me instead.”
He smiles and the sight is so beautiful it takes my breath away. “Always.”
He lines the head of his cock up with my entrance and sinks into me, his eyes never leaving mine. There’s no darkness, manipulation or possession born of insecurity. Instead, there's a simple, beautiful truth. “I love you, Vera and I choose you for all time.”
“I choose you too,” I gasp, arching into him as he fills me completely. My hands slide up his back, over his shoulders, feeling every shift of muscle as he moves. “Always. Forever. I choose you, Dimitri.”
God, I’ll never get sick of how overwhelmingly full I feel every time his hips meet mine.
His mouth finds my neck, kissing and tasting, marking me in ways that will fade but that I’ll feel for days.
His hands are everywhere—tangled in my hair, cupping my face, and sliding down my sides to grip my hips.
“So beautiful,” he murmurs against my skin, one of his hands teasing my nipples and plucking at the strawberry pink buds which force me to cry out. “You’re so beautiful. How did I get so lucky?”
“We both got lucky,” I manage, my nails digging into his back as pleasure builds. He groans at the sensation and it’s the most satisfying sound I’ve ever heard.
His hips snap into mine leisurely as Dimitri sets the pace. One of his hands slides down to where we’re joined and he plays with my clit. I cry out at the added sensation, unable to help myself and he captures the sound with his mouth, kissing me deeply, swallowing every gasp and moan.
“I love you,” he says again and again. “I love you. I love you. God, Vera, I love you.”
“I love you too,” I manage between gasps and kisses. “God, Dimitri, I love you so much. So, so much.”
With one more particularly deep thrust, I come apart.
My breath stutters through my orgasm, one hand gripping Dimitri’s bicep for dear life.
Dimitri’s strokes get shallower as he too reaches his climax.
With a loud grunt, he spills inside me, his whole body shaking before he collapses on top of me, his forehead pressed to my sternum.
I run my hands down his slick back, trying to catch my breath.
Dimitri raises his head to look at me with love filled eyes before he rolls slightly to the side to take his weight off me but keeps me pressed against his chest, one leg hooked over mine, his arm wrapped tight around my waist.
His other hand finds my slightly rounded stomach where the baby is growing. His palm spreads wide across my skin, warm and possessive and tender all at once.
“Our baby,” he says softly, his voice full of wonder. “Our family.”
I cover his hand with mine, threading our fingers together over where our child is growing. “Our family,” I echo.
“We’re free,” he says quietly. His palm is warm against my skin. “For the first time since this started, we’re actually free.”
“We are,” I agree, kissing the damp skin of his collarbone, right over one of many scars. “No more threats. No more conspiracies. Just us.”
“So what do we do with that freedom?” His voice is wondering like he can’t quite believe it’s real.
“You can teach me how to shoot,” I joke and from the way Dimitri’s chest suddenly rumbles, he also finds that funny.
“Oh, that was happening one way or another,” he promises me, smoothing my hair and dropping a kiss to my head. “First thing tomorrow we’re going to the shooting range and we aren’t leaving until I’m assured you won’t accidentally kill me whenever you hold a gun.”
“Jackass,” I mutter affectionately, but I’m still thinking about his question. What do we do with all that freedom? I mull it over for what feels like forever before I finally come up with an answer.
“We live,” I say finally.
“Hmm?” Dimitri asks sleepily.
“Your question. What do we do with that freedom? We build something good. We raise this baby in peace instead of war. We prove that something beautiful came from all this darkness.”
That seems to wake Dimitri up and he shifts to look at me, propping himself up on his elbow. His hand moves from my stomach to my face, thumb brushing across my cheekbone.
“We can be happy,” he says softly. “If that’s allowed.”
“It’s allowed,” I whisper, turning my head to kiss his palm. “It’s more than allowed. It’s what we deserve and after everything we’ve been through, we deserve to be happy.”