Chapter 9 Lily
LILY
This feels unreal. Like I’ve stepped into someone else’s dream—a fairytale, a movie scene that was never supposed to belong to me. Everything about this moment has that soft, glittering edge, the kind you see on the movie screen when the girl gets the guy.
And somehow, impossibly, that’s exactly what I did.
I got him. I won the guy no one ever gets—the one wrapped in shadows and sharp edges, the one whose very presence makes my pulse kick into a sprint.
He’s the kind of man who steals the air from a room without even trying, the kind who makes every hair on the back of my neck stand on end, not from fear, but from the unbearable thrill of being seen.
And now he’s looking at me. Choosing me.
My heart can’t decide if it wants to fly or burst.
Once he finally lets me go at the altar—after a kiss that is far too R-rated for a room full of witnesses and earns an actual whoop from my college friends—Aleksandr growls low against my mouth at the sound, a promise of retribution that only I can hear.
Then he grabs my hand and we practically run down the aisle to Beyonce’s voice pouring out in that flawless, aching cover of “At Last,” a song so perfect it makes my chest hurt. .
Well, he runs; I half trip, half fly, dragged behind him in a blur of silk and adrenaline because all he cares about now is getting us out of that room.
The sound swells as we burst into the hallway, and for one breathless, impossible second, I feel like I am floating inside the lyrics.
At last. My love has come along. We turn the corner, and Aleksandr immediately swings us into a room.
The seating room is like something out of a painting: warm green walls washed in soft light, chestnut-brown furniture arranged in intimate little clusters, and accents of gold that catch like candlelight in every corner.
It’s beautiful and rich and alive, but none of it touches me the way he does.
My entire body is still buzzing from the kiss, from the growl, from the way his hand refuses to let go of mine like he’s terrified someone might still try to take me away.
We skid to a stop in the middle of the room, half laughing, half breathless, and for a moment all I can hear is the song, the pounding of my heart, and his voice in my head, low and rough, whispering like it’s a vow: mine.
“Okay, I understand the dress, the colors, and flying my college friends out, but the song,” I gasp, walking over to the desk on the right side of the room.
“What about the song?” Aleksandr asks as he tugs at the knot of his tie—a perfect periwinkle silk, patterned with black and gold embroidery that catches the light when he moves.
“You picked At Last—both the Etta James and the Beyoncé versions—and A Thousand Years. How did you even know those were my favorites?” I giggle, propping myself up higher on the table until my feet leave the floor.
The relief is immediate; as gorgeous as these Louboutins are—custom, with his initials AIP for Aleksandr Ivan Petrov and my new ones LGP for Lily Grace Petrov—they hurt like the second coming of hell.
Aleksandr smirks and crosses the room, heading straight for the sideboard. He picks up a bottle of prosecco—of course it’s prosecco, because he knows I hate champagne—and pulls down two crystal glasses to go with it.
“A Thousand Years is the song for Twilight, and that is your favorite guilty pleasure movie.” He smiles a blinding, white smile that makes my stomach flip and unravels the foil around the cork of the bottle.
“Guilty pleasures are supposed to be secret,” I say with a smirk, leaning back on the heels of my hands, the table edge pressing into the backs of my thighs.
Aleksandr pops the cork with a clean, practiced motion and only shrugs. “There are no secrets between us,” he says simply. “And At Last was for me.”
“My favorite song? At Last was for you?” I lift a brow as he pours the prosecco into two crystal glasses, the pale fizz catching the light. “I don’t believe that.”
He picks up both glasses, crosses the room, and offers one to me. “Do you know what moya means?” he asks, a slight tilt to his head.
“No,” I admit, fingers brushing his as I take the glass. “But you’ve called me that for years.”
“Moya means mine, Lily,” he says. His voice is quiet but steady. “I’ve known you were mine since high school. And finally, at last, you are.”
I stare at him, my mouth falling open just a little because—what?
Who says that? Who thinks like that? My brain short-circuits trying to process how utterly insane this is.
For a man to just… know? To decide that I was his years ago, to keep that to himself while he’s been watching me, learning me, yearning for me all this time?
It’s obsessive. It’s completely unhinged.
And the worst part? I feel the heat from his words all the way down to my knees.
He raises his glass, eyes never leaving me. “A toast,” he says.
I blink hard, trying to gather words, my throat tight as I lift my glass with shaky fingers. “T-to what?” I stammer, sounding like I’ve forgotten English.
His lips curve—not into a smirk, but something softer, deeper. “To you,” he says. “To you finally being exactly where you belong.”
And the way he says it—like there was never any other ending but this—makes my pulse stutter so violently I almost forget to breathe.
I bring the glass to my lips because I need something to do with my shaking hands, and the prosecco is crisp and cold, bubbles bursting soft and sweet on my tongue. It steadies me—barely. My pulse is still doing that wild, uncoordinated flutter.
By the time I lower the glass, my feet are already screaming again.
These shoes are beautiful, but they feel like medieval torture devices.
I set the glass on the table beside me and bend forward to unstrap one, fingers fumbling with the tiny buckle.
I but I can’t unlock it with my nails and give up, reaching for the second, but the heel snags in the hem of my skirt.
“Seriously?” I mutter under my breath, twisting awkwardly to try and free it without ripping the dress. I can hear Aleksander finishing the last of his drink behind me, slow and unbothered. By the time I glance up, he’s already set his glass aside.
“Did the shoes hurt even with the insoles?” Aleksandr says, stepping closer, crowding into my space, and then he’s kneeling down—right there, between my knees—like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
“Y-yeah, but they’re gorgeous and I love—” My breath catches, the rest of the sentence scattering when his big hands gently move mine out of the way.
“I’ve got it,” he says quietly, his voice so low it slides over my skin like a whisper meant only for me.
His head dips down, and all I can see is the dark sweep of his hair and the expanse of his shoulders filling the space between my thighs.
My heart stops. The air feels thick, charged, as his fingertips trace over the arch of my foot, following the delicate line of my ankle before carefully freeing the trapped heel from the folds of my dress.
His hands are large, warm, steady, and the simple act makes me want to melt into the table behind me.
And all I can think is that I’m never going to survive being married to him.
“Oh, Alek you don’t have to-” I stammer, trying to pull my foot back, but he holds my ankle firmly, not hard enough, but to keep me from moving away.
“I will do what I want,” he says, leveling me with a glare that makes my mouth snap shut. “And I want to take care of my wife.”
Holy shit. I don’t think there is anything hotter than hearing him says my wife, and then he eases the shoe off entirely, cradling my foot in his hand. I practically shiver with the way my clit throbs.
I barely have time to exhale before he does something that sends my pulse into chaos.
He lifts my bare foot to his mouth and presses a slow, firm kiss to the sole, lips lingering just long enough for the heat of it to sink in.
My breath hitches—loud, sharp—and I grip the table behind me so hard my knuckles ache.
Without a word, he reaches for my other foot.
His fingers slide beneath the strap, unbuckling it with an easy precision that makes me shiver.
He works the second heel off, discarding it quietly on the floor, and then his mouth is there again, pressing a slow kiss to the tender arch, warm and deliberate, his lips dragging slightly over skin that has never been touched like this.
The sensation is too much, overwhelming in a way that shouldn’t be intimate but is, achingly so.
My whole body hums, nerves pulled so tight that I feel like a wire about to snap as I stare down at the man on his knees in front of me, his mouth against my skin as though this moment belongs to no one else but us.
“Seriously, I had them on for like thirty minutes, it’s not that—”
The words die on my lips the moment his hand moves.
I don’t even realize I’ve gone silent until the air around us thickens.
Aleksandr’s hand—large, warm, and unyielding—slides from my ankle in one unbroken path, his forearm bracing closer as he wraps his palm around my calf.
The strength in that touch is startling and tender at once, fingers curling lightly, as though he’s mapping every inch of me.
“You know,” he says, his voice low and steady, “years of being around you… knowing you… and I still haven’t figured out one thing.”
His breath ghosts over my skin as he speaks, lips so close I feel the heat of every word.
My chest is too tight, too small to hold the frantic pace of my heart. “W-what?” I whisper.
“How to get you to stop trying to please everyone around you, hmm?”
His hand keeps moving, gliding up the curve of my calf, leaving every inch of skin tingling in its wake. When he reaches the back of my knee, he doesn’t stop. His thumb presses into that sensitive hollow, and then his mouth follows.