30. Anastasia
Rhett pulls up outside what looks like a road full of abandoned warehouses. I don’t question anything as he gets out. He always manages to make it around to my side before I’ve finished unclipping my seat belt.
He’s got his gun out, eyes tracking the entire deserted area, and his earpiece is in. A creeping sense of unease skitters across my skin as I get out the car and his arm encircles me. The outside is ominous, but we don’t linger. Rhett leads me inside, and we ascend a spiral staircase to the top before he pulls out keys.
“This is where you live?” I ask in a hushed tone since everything echoes in here.
“In D.C., yes.”
So he has more homes than one.
Inside I’m taken aback at the stark contrast of open beauty and homely warmth. It’s like an industrial-style loft converted into a large open-plan apartment. There’s a black and dark wood kitchen with an island in the back left corner, and the living area opposite it is like nothing I’ve seen before. It’s as if the sofa is double-sided. One side faces a rustic fireplace and a cubby stacked with wood; the other faces a projector screen spanning the wall, and in front of it is a rug and a coffee table. Even the bathroom is semi-open, with an elegant double shower, a deep freestanding bathtub, and the toilet in a lockable cubicle. On the other side is an impressive setup of a desk, a chair, and so many screens, like back in the Den. Then, finally, I take in the large four-poster bed with black linens.
I’m craning my neck and gawking at the space made of original wood and brick, with slanted wood beams on the ceiling, but the place has a modern touch.
“I think I like your place better,” I say, wandering in deeper.
“I imagine your father had a lot of sway in yours.”
Rhett drops his keys onto the island and shuffles out of his jacket. I watch him head over to the fireplace to light it. It’s not electric like the one in the penthouse, and I’m in awe of something so simple as Rhett sparking real flame onto the wood he piles in.
There’s something different about him in here. This is his safe place. No doubt highly guarded by more cameras than I can count, and he’s so relaxed, like we’ve stepped into a world where evil can’t touch us.
I take off my jacket, looking for somewhere to hang it. I feel like a careful tourist, not warning to disturb his peace in here.
“This place is yours too now—you know that, right?”
“Do you promise?” I say. It comes out in a bubble of panic that bursts. After everything I confessed to Oma today, what exhausted me the most was thinking this could end. “You said you can’t promise tomorrow, but promise you won’t want to leave me. No matter what’s to come.”
More bubbles grow in me when he paces away. My brow furrows. I’m bracing for a rejection, or at least an uncertain brush off, and I’ll just have to understand.
“I’ve thought about it,” he confesses, and it slices me inside. “I thought about everything in all those months, because I didn’t know how I was going to live with what I’d done. But the worst part is that it wouldn’t matter if I left you. I could leave here today and never see you again, but even if ten years went by, I would still do it all again if someone took you. I would always choose to condemn my soul, no matter how wicked, to save you, because I can never stop loving you. I will do whatever it takes to make sure your heart only expires after it’s full of everything you ever desired from this life.”
“You love me,” I breathe. It’s a knife in my chest but an immense pressure relieved at the same time.
He turns back, and I’ve never seen him look so desperate and desolate. “I fucking live for you, Anastasia Kinsley. I want to marry you and build that damn house with the porch. I want to love you until we’re six feet under, and I’ll find you in the next hell. What I feel for you isn’t something anything in life prepares you for. You’re in my fucking bones,my every thought. If such a thing as a soul exists, you’re half of mine—there’s no other explanation. So leaving only lets him win. I’m going to love you in every day, every fucking second. I’ve caught you, little bird, and I’m never letting you fly away, because I’m going with you.”
My lip wobbles, and I hug myself. “I live for you too, Rhett Kaiser. I think the last four reckless, insane, terrible months have made that pretty damn clear. And yes.”
“Yes?”
“Anastasia Kaiser sounds better anyway, so I guess my answer is yes, I’ll marry you.”
Rhett breathes a short, disbelieving laugh with the shake of his head. He crosses over to me, and I lean into him when he’s close enough.
“Your father would have me assassinated to hear that,” he says, but it doesn’t stop him from taking my face in his hands.
“Probably,” I whisper.
“Anastasia Kaiser,” he repeats like he’s tasting it on his tongue. There’s a flare of desire in his blue eyes that search mine. “That sounds sexy as hell.”
He kisses me hard, promising.
“I love you,” I say. Then it’s as if a strain in me is finally relieved. I’m free. “When you were gone it was all I could think about. How I never got to tell you I love you. That you mean everything to me, and nothing can change that. I don’t want this to ever end.”
Rhett’s eyes close, and he leans his forehead on mine. “We never end. In this life and the next. I found you first, and you found me back. We’re inevitable. I love you, Anastasia. With everything I am, I love you.”
Something changes in our kiss. The air. The way we move. It’s declaring and binding that this is absolute. I lift myself up into his arms, and he moves.
“Fire or movie?” he murmurs against my lips.
“Fire,” I say breathlessly. “Definitely.”
He lies me down, hovering over me, and I try to stay with him. Here. I try to keep hold of what’s burning so perfectly between us, but when his body presses to mine and his hand slips down my side, I’m right back there in my stone cell.
“Wait,” I pant.
Rhett stops, pulling back. I don’t know what to say, but he doesn’t need anything. He tucks my hair behind my ear and settles down beside me instead on the deep plush sofa. I turn so we’re face-to-face.
For a long stretch of silence, we share chaste kisses and soft touches until my heart calms again.
“Rhett?”
“Yes, baby?”
“This is going to sound very unsexy, but Oma is under the impression I’d do better to act rather than talk,” I say tentatively.
“You can act and talk whatever you want with me.”
“I want you to put your hand down my pants.”
Rhett almost breaks a smile, but as quickly as a snuffed-out candle it falls to dark, barely suppressed anger.
“Is that what he did to you?”
“Please,” I say, pressing closer and kissing him. “No talking.”
Rhett’s thumb strokes my cheek. Then his hand makes a slow trail down my body. Over my chin, across my neck. He pauses on my breast, and my brow pulls together with the parting of my lips when he squeezes then pinches my nipple. Rhett captures my moan, deepening our kiss. His touch travels lower, skimming my bare skin where my top has raised. He gets to the button of my black jeans, and that’s when the slither of panic starts to weave through my lust.
I reach my hands up his chest, kissing him harder, as if it will drown out the fear. He pulls down my zipper, and his fingers brush under the waistline of my underwear.
“Tell me if you need me to stop,” he says, voice laced with pain.
My hands clutch his black T-shirt as if my life depends on it as he half-hovers over me, but I don’t want to stop.
“Keep going,” I whisper.
My heart is thundering, but I want this. I want him more than anything, and that bastard doesn’t get to take Rhett from me for another moment.
I moan when his fingers slip over my core.
“I change my mind,” I rasp.
His hand begins to pull out, but mine lashes around his wrist to keep him down there.
“Not about that.” I scramble. “Talk—please. Say anything.”
Rhett pushes up a little more to lean over me, searching my face. “We don’t have to go too fast. If you tell me you want this, I’ll take over, but one word and I’ll stop.”
“This is what I want.”
He nods, then he takes control.
One of his legs slips between mine, and he turns more demanding and heated, determined to make me forget everything but him.
“You’re going to be my wife, Anastasia,” he says huskily, blowing my name like sand across my chest.
“Yes,” I breathe.
“It’s just you and me. I will never hurt you.”
Rhett pulls my top over my head, and I slip out of it. I reach for the clasp of my bra as he hooks his fingers to pull down my jeans and underwear. There’s something erotic about having him over me fully clothed while I lie here completely bare to him.
“You are so fucking perfect,” he growls.
I arch into his assault when his mouth sucks on my nipple while his hand gives the other attention. Unashamedly, my hips lift, desperate for friction with his thigh between my legs.
“You’re mine,” he says, lips trailing up my neck.
“I’m yours.”
“My Ana. My little bird. My wife.”
Yes. Yes. Yes.
Every word inspires surges of pleasure between my thighs, and I’m desperate for him to relieve the ache.
“Please do something,” I beg.
Rhett smiles against my skin. “I am. I’m making sure you never remember a single hand upon you that wasn’t mine. I’m promising you that any hand that does will have it torn from their damn body before I kill them. You’ve always known who I am, what I’m capable of. I don’t have limits when it comes to protecting you. So now, I’m going to take my time to worship every inch of what’s mine. If that’s okay with you, Mrs. Kaiser.”
I’m becoming so wet for him. It’s not normal how much he can turn me on with his words alone. Finally, his fingers slide over my pussy again, and I moan louder this time. He curves one finger into me, swearing thickly at the easy glide, then adds another on his second pass.
There’s still a note of panic in my chest at the feeling, and as if he can sense it, Rhett kisses me once.
“Eyes on me, little bird. Don’t take them off me, or I’ll stop.”
I hold onto his blue eyes, and it wipes away all other thought.
It’s Rhett’s hands on me. Rhett’s body over mine.
I love him. I love him. I love him.
His mouth carries on down my chest, and his teeth nip each of my nipples, sending sparks straight to my clit. Two fingers work me slowly, until I’m whimpering for more.
“When I watched you train, all I could think about was how I wanted to be on the receiving end of the heat and passion it inspires in you. And how it would have ended with you spread out on your back for me.”
Sex with Rhett after training would be explosive—still high from the endorphins and already stretched and sweat-slicked.
“I thought about you touching me often,” I confess. “The top drawer could never come close.”
His eyes flick up from my navel with fiery desire. “We need a top drawer here. I’m most curious about what we could do together on you.”
Rhett kisses my hip bone and my hips lift. He’s setting my skin on fire, inch by inch, and I need his mouth between my legs like I need air.
“I’ve craved the taste of you and been deprived for too long,” he growls.
I throw my head back with a cry when he sucks my clit. My legs fall open for him and his fingers slip out of me, arms hooking around my thighs to devour me without mercy. It’s all he focuses on, and pleasure tightens over my skin. His mouth sucks, then his tongue lashes over me. When he spears his tongue into me I lose it. My hands tighten in his hair, and while I want to ask him to fuck me with the emptiness I feel, I’m also so close from this assault alone.
“Watch me,” he says thickly, the vibrations tingling over my clit.
I manage to prop myself up on one elbow while my other hand threads though his silver locks, and oh my god,the sight is so damn sinful and erotic I come, crying out his name.
My thighs shake and I fall back down, sent into a state of otherworldly bliss as he turns more ravenous, groaning against me to stretch out my orgasm so it feels endless. His grip on my thighs tightens as my body spasms. I’m unraveling from the inside out, but he doesn’t stop.
Tears gather in the corners of my eyes as he combines bliss and torture. It’s unexplainable how I want him to keep going, to do more, and to stop because my clit turns so hypersensitive.
“Again,” he says.
I’m a panting mess, but I don’t tell him no. Even though each stroke of his tongue jolts through me, I don’t want it to end yet.
I think he’s going to pause and undress, that this next time he’ll make me come on his cock, but his position only shifts to slip two fingers back into me.
“Rhett.” I say his name in a whimper, clawing into the couch.
“So tight,” he mutters. He’s gentle, treating my pussy with such care to prepare me for his next round of assault. “I’ve missed you so fucking much.”
“Me too,” I rasp. I forget everything but what he’s doing to me.
Rhett’s fingers pull out, and when they next push in, my back arches at the change of fullness.
“Oh god.” The fullness is addicting, and it surfaces the small anxiety that I don’t think he’ll fit three fingers.
He works them slowly, and my body abides his every wish, because the stretch lessens as I take what he wants to give me.
“Such a good girl,” he says.
My head tips up to watch, and Rhett marvels between my legs, watching his fingers disappear into me. They don’t quite make it to his knuckles, and I don’t think they will when I’m so full.
“One more for me, baby,” he says, kissing the inside of my thigh.
He switches back to two fingers, hooking them, which hits a spot inside me that my body starts begging for, again and again. His mouth joins, and my pleasure starts to accelerate. He picks up pace, reaching his other hand over my ribs and massaging my breast.
“Right there,” I say, sprinting right to the edge before he pushes me off with a pinch of my nipple. “Yes, yes—shit.”
This one doesn’t last as long as the first, but I’m a trembling, euphoric mess all the same. He’s so tender in the way he helps me come down. Slowing his pace, trailing tender kisses across my skin. His fingers slip out of me, and I moan at the coolness of the puddle he’s made of me.
Rhett climbs back up my body, and I don’t think I can take anymore, but I want to give him what he gave me. I reach for his belt, but Rhett takes my hands, interlocking our fingers by my head as he captures my mouth.
“This was just about you,” he murmurs against my lips. “Bath or shower?”
“Will you join me?”
“Just to wash and relax, yes.”
“Bath then.”
“Good choice.” He kisses me once more and then eases away. Rhett covers me with a blanket before heading to run the water.
I curl up on the sofa and watch him for a moment. “Who is Kenna to you?” I ask carefully. I haven’t forgotten how bitter she was when speaking about Rhett.
He runs a hand through his hair with a sigh. “We were fifteen when we met. I only knew her for a year before I left. She was sold to Alistair by her father, who was in debt to him. I knew her by another name. For the first time, Alistair took personal interest in her.”
My stomach clenches, knowing what that means in more ways than one.
“You left her behind? At least, she believes you did.”
His eyes fill with misery. “I thought she was dead. I came back for her, but ...” He shakes his head. “We promised we’d make it out together, that we’d adopt new names and he wouldn’t find us. I would be Rhett Kaiser ... and she would be Kenna Radley. I didn’t think she would have taken that name anyway, and that fucking tears me apart. I should have looked again. Investigated more. Instead I accepted Alistair’s perfect setup as he must have known I would come for her.”
“It’s not your fault.”
Rhett doesn’t accept that, but he doesn’t answer. Instead he folds out of his shirt and checks the water temperature.
“How was she?” he asks quietly.
“She’s ...” I don’t know what to say. There’s no point in lying. “She reminded me a lot of you. When we first met, at least. She’s guarded and cold, but she carries herself like nothing could hurt her when she’s the one person in room the whose pain no one could begin to fathom.”
That drops his gaze, and I head over to him, keeping the blanket around myself. My hand cups his cheek.
“You couldn’t have known she was still there.”
“I could have. I could have tried harder, and I didn’t. I was so scared, and you know ... when I thought I”d found her, it killed a piece of me, but also ... there was a part of me that was relieved, because she wouldn’t have to suffer anymore.”
“I’m so sorry,” I say. It’s not enough to even touch what he’s going through, but all I can do is be there for him.
“Want to tell me how you made an ally out of Silas Balenheizer?” he asks, hooking a brow at me.
“I don’t know if I’d call him that. Last I spoke to him, I believed he abandoned the idea because Kenna won’t turn on Alistair.”
“She’s been by his side for thirteen years. Even if there’s a part of her that still wants out, it’s not going to be easy to make her feel like she can trust anyone. Especially after what I did.”
“Let us keep trying with her.”
“Us?” he says darkly, drawing me to him with an arm around me. “I don’t like the thought of you and Silas being an us for anything.”
“I can handle him.”
“It seems so, but I still don’t like it.”
I run a hand up his chest with a tilting smile. “Are you jealous?”
“Wildly.”
Rhett slants his lips over mine, and I take the opportunity to undo his belt this time, slipping my hand over his hard cock. He groans into my mouth.
“You’re killing me.”
“Then let me.”
He shakes his head, pushing the blanket off my shoulders. “Right now, what I want more is just you, me, and this bath. Nothing more.”
“I called it from the start,” I muse, dipping into the hot water. “Underneath the dark, stern exterior that often repels company, you’re a hopeless romantic, Rhett Kaiser.”
“Only for you, little bird,” he says, stripping off his black jeans. “Only for you.”