14. Harper
HARPER
I can’t sleep, so I get up around two, telling myself it’s just to check on Ginger, though I’ve checked on her every night for weeks without needing an excuse for it.
She’s fine, tangled in her blankets, one arm flung over the edge of the bed the way she sleeps most nights now. I straighten the comforter over her and step back out into the hallway.
Viktor’s there, leaning against the wall a few feet from his own door, a bottle of vodka in one hand, no glass.
“Are you drinking?” I keep my voice low. “It’s two in the morning.”
“It is.” He doesn’t sound remotely apologetic about it. “Couldn’t sleep either, I take it.”
“No.”
“Join me.”
I hesitate, glancing back toward Ginger’s door out of habit. “I have to be up for her in a few hours.”
“There’s help around for exactly that, if you sleep in. You’re allowed to, occasionally.” He says it simply, like this is obvious, and maybe it is, and I’ve just never let myself believe I’m allowed the occasional late morning.
I follow him instead of arguing further, and he detours through the kitchen for a second glass before leading me out through the back doors toward the pool.
The water’s lit from underneath, pale blue against the dark, and we sit at the edge with our feet in, drinks in hand, the vodka sharper than I expect on an empty stomach.
“Tell me something true,” he says, echoing the line from our first real dinner, months ago now. “Not for anyone else. Just for me.”
“You already used that line on me once.”
“It worked the first time.”
I laugh, and the sound carries out over the water. I tell him about my mother, about the year after our father left when Mia basically raised me herself, fourteen years old and suddenly responsible for a little sister neither of our parents had room for anymore.
“She never once complained about it,” I say. “Not that I heard, anyway. I used to think that meant it didn’t cost her anything. I know better now.”
“What changed your mind?”
“Raising Ginger. Realizing how much you can carry and still show up smiling for the person you’re carrying it for.
” I trace a finger along the surface of the water, watching the ripples catch the light.
“I used to resent her a little, honestly. For leaving when she did. Now I mostly just wish I’d told her how much I understood, before it was too late to say it. ”
“She knew,” Viktor says. “People always know more than we give them credit for.”
“You sound very sure of that.”
“I’ve had to believe it, about a few people I lost the chance to say things to.”
Viktor’s quiet for a moment, turning his glass in his hand. “My father ran things before me. Badly, mostly. I spent my whole childhood watching him make decisions out of fear disguised as strength, and I promised myself I’d never run anything that way.”
“Have you kept that promise?”
“Some days better than others.” He looks at me, unguarded in a way I haven’t seen from him before, not at the club, not at the courthouse, not once.
“I believe fear makes bad leaders and worse fathers. I’ve spent fifteen years trying to prove that to men who’d disagree with me violently if I said it out loud. ”
“That’s not a small thing to believe.”
“No. It’s cost me more than I’d like to admit.” He sets his glass down on the tile beside him. “I didn’t expect to end up testing that belief on a six-year-old who isn’t even mine by blood. But here we are.”
“She adores you.”
“I adore her too.” He says it plainly, no hesitation, the same way he said it on the porch days ago, and hearing it a second time lands even harder than the first. “And I adore her mother more than I know what to do with most days.”
I don’t look away from him even though every instinct I have says I should.
“Harper.” His voice drops, rougher now. “I can’t keep pretending this is just an arrangement. I’ve tried. I’m done trying.”
Then he kisses me, and it’s nothing like the doorstep, slower, deliberate, both of us fully choosing it this time instead of getting swept into it by adrenaline and a stranger’s daring. My hands find his shirt, his hand slides into my hair, and neither of us pulls back for a long time.
When we finally do, he doesn’t say anything else. He just stands, pulls me up with him, and laces our fingers together, leading me back through the dark house toward his room instead of mine.
I don’t hesitate this time. I follow him all the way to his door, and when he pushes it open and pulls me inside, I go without a single thought about what happens after tonight.
The door closes behind us, and his hands are on me again.
One at the small of my back, the other sliding up into my hair.
He doesn’t rush the kiss. He just takes it, slow and deep, like he’s been waiting for permission he finally decided not to ask for.
I taste the vodka on his tongue and something warmer underneath it.
My back hits the wall. I make a small sound against his mouth, and he answers it with a lower one, almost a growl, and then his hands are under my shirt, palms flat against my skin, pushing the fabric up.
“Off,” he says, voice rough.
I lift my arms. He pulls the shirt over my head and drops it somewhere behind him. The cool air hits my bare stomach, and I shiver, but it’s not from the cold. His eyes drop, tracking the line of my chest, the rise of my chest with every breath. He looks at me like he’s memorizing.
“You’re staring,” I whisper.
“I know.” His thumb brushes the edge of the lace. “I’ve been wanting to.”
I reach for the buttons of his shirt. My fingers are less steady than I want them to be. One button, then another. He doesn’t help. He just watches my hands work, jaw tight, like holding still is costing him something.
When the last button comes free, I push the shirt off his shoulders, and it falls. The heat of his skin under my palms is almost shocking.
I trace the line of a scar low on his ribs without meaning to. He catches my wrist, not hard, just enough to stop me.
“Harper.”
“What?”
“If we keep going, I’m not stopping.”
I look up at him. His eyes are darker in the low light, pupils blown. There’s no performance left in his face. No careful distance. Just want, and the decision already made.
“I don’t want you to stop.”
Something in him breaks open at that. He kisses me again, harder this time, and walks me backward until the backs of my knees hit the edge of the bed.
We go down together. His weight settles over me, careful even now, and I feel the full length of him pressed against my hip through the thin fabric of his pants. The solid heat of it makes my breath catch.
His mouth moves to my neck, then lower, to the hollow of my throat. I tilt my head back, and my fingers slide into his hair. He leans down, and his mouth is on my breast, hot and open, tongue circling, and a soft, helpless sound leaves me before I can stop it.
“Fuck,” he murmurs against my skin. “You feel—”
He doesn’t finish the sentence. He just keeps going, mouth and hands working in slow tandem, learning what makes my hips shift under him. I can feel how hard he is, the controlled restraint in the way he’s still holding most of his weight off me.
I want that restraint gone.
I reach between us and palm him through his pants. He goes still for half a second, forehead dropping against my collarbone, a low, broken sound vibrating in his chest.
“Harper—”
“I know.” My voice doesn’t sound like mine. “I want this. I want you.”
He lifts his head. Looks at me like he’s checking one last time that I’m still here, still choosing it. Whatever he sees must be enough, because the last of the careful distance leaves his face.
He sits back just long enough to strip the rest of his clothes, then mine. When he’s fully over me again, there’s nothing left between us. Skin to skin.
The heat of him settles heavy and real against my thigh. I can feel the thick, hard length of him and the way his breathing has gone uneven.
His hand slides down between my legs. Fingers stroke through the slick heat there, and my hips lift into the touch without my permission. “Shit,” he says quietly. “You’re already so—”
“I know.” I pull his mouth back to mine. “Don’t make me wait.”
He doesn’t. He pushes into me in one long, controlled stroke.
The stretch is sharp at first, then deep, then everything. My breath leaves me in a broken exhale against his neck.
He holds still, buried to the hilt, forehead pressed to mine, giving me time even though every muscle in his back is tight under my hands.
“Okay?” he asks, voice low and strained.
I nod, then manage actual words. “Yes. God—yes.”
He starts to move. Slow at first, almost careful, pulling nearly all the way out before sliding back in. Each thrust drags against something that makes my thighs tighten around his hips.
I dig my fingers into his shoulders. He feels it and goes deeper, the rhythm steadying into something heavier.
“Look at me,” he says.
I do. His eyes are dark, locked on mine, and the intensity of it is almost more intimate than the way he’s moving inside me. There’s no distance left. No arrangement. Just this.
“Viktor—”
“I know.” He kisses me once, then drops his mouth to my ear. “I’ve got you.”
The pace builds. His hand slides under my knee, opening me further, and the next thrust hits so deep a soft, helpless sound spills out of me.
He answers it with a low groan, the kind that vibrates through his chest into mine. Sweat starts to slick between us. The bed creaks softly under the force of him.
I can feel myself getting closer already—too fast, too much—but I don’t try to slow it down. My nails scrape lightly down his back. His breathing turns ragged.
“Harper,” he says, almost a warning.
“Don’t stop.”
He doesn’t. He drives into me harder, the control finally slipping. Every thrust is deeper, rougher, and I meet him for each one, hips lifting, chasing the pressure coiling tight and low in my stomach. His hand finds mine and pins it to the mattress above my head, fingers laced tight.
The orgasm hits without warning, sharp and full-body, my back arching hard off the bed as I come around him with a broken cry against his mouth.
He follows almost immediately, burying himself deep with a rough, guttural sound, hips stuttering as he spills into me.
His weight settles heavy for a second, then he catches himself on his forearms, so he doesn’t crush me.
We stay like that, still joined, both of us breathing hard. His forehead rests against mine. I can feel his heartbeat racing against my chest.
After a long moment, he eases out of me carefully and rolls onto his back, pulling me with him so my head lands on his chest. His arm wraps around my shoulders. One hand starts tracing slow, absent patterns along my skin.
The moonlight cuts a pale line across the sheets.
I listen to his heartbeat slow beneath my ear.
“Well,” I say eventually, breaking the quiet. “That wasn’t pretending.”
He laughs, low and real, and presses a kiss to the top of my head. “No. It wasn’t.”
“I should probably feel more complicated about this than I do.”
“You’re allowed to just feel good about it, Harper. Not everything has to come with a complicated feeling attached.”
“That’s very unlike you. Since when do you allow yourself simple?”
“Since about twenty minutes ago.” His hand traces slow, absent patterns along my shoulder, and I feel him smile against my hair rather than see it. “I’m willing to make an exception tonight.”
Neither of us says anything else for a long while, and I don’t need him to. Whatever this was before tonight, it isn’t that anymore, and for the first time since I walked into his club with a ridiculous proposal, I’m not afraid of what that actually means.