Chapter 35
thirty-five
Vincenzo
For a long time after the argument, we don’t do anything dramatic.
Nikolaj stays because I told him to, and because, for once in his life, he chooses not to turn a command into a fight just to prove he still can.
I shower while he waits in my bedroom, and even through the bathroom door, I can feel him there, restless as a blade laid on silk, a dangerous thing trying to behave because he knows this night has already come close enough to breaking something important.
When I come back out with damp hair and sleep pants low on my hips, he’s standing near the window with his arms crossed, staring out over the courtyard.
He turns when he hears me. His eyes sweep over me once, and the heat is there—of course it is—because he has never known how to look at me without making a problem out of it. But underneath the heat is that same strained thing from earlier.
Fear.
Not the kind that weak men show when they’re afraid of pain. This is quieter. Worse. The kind that makes Nikolaj careful with his hands because he doesn’t trust himself not to grab too hard and make me vanish out of spite.
I hate seeing it on him.
I hate it more because I understand exactly how it got there.
“Come here,” I say softly.
His mouth tightens. “You keep saying that like I’m trained.”
“You are. Badly.”
A ghost of a smile touches his mouth, but it doesn’t stay. He crosses the room anyway, still in his black shirt and trousers, barefoot now because at some point he took off his shoes without my noticing.
The domesticity of that almost gets me. Nikolaj Dragovich in my bedroom, barefoot and brooding, looking like a man who can overthrow governments but has no idea what to do with an apology once it’s been accepted.
When he reaches me, I take his hand, strip off his clothes, and lead him to the bed.
He lets me.
That, too, matters.
I pull him down with me, and he follows, tension still coiled through him as he stretches out beside me. My bed has held many kinds of emptiness over the years. Tonight it holds the exact opposite, and somehow that’s harder to adjust to.
His body is large and warm beside mine, too real to be memory, too familiar to be new. He lies on his side facing me, one arm bent beneath his head, eyes fixed on my face as if I might change shape if he looks away for even a second.
“You’re staring,” I murmur.
His expression shifts, a faint flicker of old humor under the fear. “Can you blame me?”
“No,” I say. “I’m devastating.”
That gets the smallest huff of air from him, almost a laugh. “Still arrogant.”
“You came into my room to apologize, and now you’re in my bed. I’m feeling supported in the arrogance.”
His hand lifts, then stops in the narrow space between us. It’s such a small hesitation that anyone else would miss it, but it goes straight through me.
Nikolaj, who has never hesitated to take, now pauses before touching my face because there’s some part of him still waiting for me to change my mind.
I catch his wrist and bring his hand to my cheek myself. “There,” I say quietly. His eyes close.
“Look at me,” I say. He does immediately, and the obedience in it is so raw I have to swallow before I speak again.
“I am angry,” I tell him, keeping my voice steady because he needs the truth, not softness pretending to be mercy. “I’m also here. You’re here. We’re in my bed. You apologized. I heard you. That doesn’t erase the mistake, but it does matter.”
He stares at me like I’m offering him a language he forgot and desperately wants to relearn. “I don’t know how to do this without fucking it up.”
“Neither do I.”
“You’re better at pretending.”
“I had eight years of practice.”
Pain flashes across his face, and he starts to pull his hand away, but I hold it there.
“No,” I say softly. “Don’t retreat every time the truth hurts. That’s not what I’m asking from you.”
His throat works once. “What are you asking for?”
I let out a breath. “Honesty before control. That’s all.”
A bitter little smile curls at his mouth. “That sounds simple when you say it.”
“Most impossible things do.”
He studies me for a long second, then leans in. His mouth brushes mine once, barely there, asking in a way I don’t think Nikolaj has ever asked before. Not with words, with the restraint of it. The held breath. The space left for refusal.
I close the distance and kiss him properly. He exhales into it like something in him gives way.
The kiss starts soft, but not easy. There’s too much under it for easy. It’s slow and careful, his hand still cupping my cheek, mine at the back of his neck, our bodies angled toward each other without rushing to close every space.
I taste fear in him. Not literally, not like blood or coffee or the whiskey he had earlier.
I taste it in the way his mouth trembles once before he steadies it, in the way he kisses me as if he’s memorizing and apologizing at the same time, as if every press of his lips has to say what he couldn’t get right in words.
I pull back to breathe against him. “I’m not leaving.”
His eyes open, pale and startled. “Vincenzo.”
“I’m not leaving,” I repeat, firmer now. “Not tonight. Not because of this. You made one mistake, then came here, terrified enough to apologize with your whole chest. I’m angry, and I’m still yours. Those things can exist in the same room.”
The next kiss is different. He’s the one who starts it, but this time there’s no sharpness, no attempt to take control before vulnerability makes him feel exposed.
He kisses me with everything laid bare, and I feel the fear in it so clearly I almost can’t breathe. His mouth moves over mine slowly, deeply, devastatingly, and I answer with both hands on his face because I need him to feel the steadiness of me.
I need him to know I’m not a ghost he has to chase through memory anymore. I’m here. I’m choosing to be here. Even furious, even hurt, even with the whole world outside the door waiting to sharpen consequences out of our names.
He makes a sound into my mouth that I have never heard from him before. Not a moan, but something quieter. Wounded. The kind of sound a man makes when relief hurts almost as much as fear did.
My eyes burn, and this time I don’t bother being embarrassed by it.
We kiss for a long time.
Long enough that the night shifts around us.
Long enough that my anger stops sitting between us like a wall and becomes something we both lie beside, acknowledged and not allowed to be the whole bed.
Long enough that his body finally loosens against mine, one heavy arm sliding around my waist, his chest pressing closer, his leg tangling with mine.
The kiss remains slow, painfully slow, and somehow, it’s more intimate than anything desperate would’ve been. We have torn each other apart with hunger before. This feels like putting a hand over the wound and holding pressure.
When we finally stop, we don’t move far.
His forehead rests against mine, and his breathing is uneven. My fingers are still in his hair, and his hand is over my heart, directly over the ink of his name beneath my skin, even though my shirt covers it now. He knows where it is anyway. He always will.
“You’re going to kill me,” he whispers.
I let out a soft, shaky laugh. “You’re very dramatic for a man who spent the last decade building a reputation as a soulless executioner.”
His mouth brushes mine, almost a smile. “You’re bad for my image.”
“I’m excellent for your character.”
“My character is already ruined.”
“Then I’m improving the ruins.”
He lets out a faint huff of laughter, but it fades quickly. His eyes are still too serious when he pulls back enough to look at me.
Something changes in his face then. I see it happen and don’t understand it fast enough to name it. A decision. A shift. The fear doesn’t leave, but it organizes itself into purpose, and with Nikolaj, that is always dangerous in some way.
“What?” I ask.
He slips out of the bed with sudden intent, leaving the sheets cold where his body was. I push myself up on one elbow, watching as he crosses the room toward the chair where he left his coat.
His back is tense beneath his black shirt, shoulders drawn tight, and for one horrible second, I think he’s leaving. The old wound reacts before logic does, chest clamping down so hard I almost say his name too sharply.
But he doesn’t go to the door. He reaches into the inside pocket of his coat.
I sit up fully. “Nikolaj,” I say, my voice cautious now. “What are you doing?”
He pauses with his hand inside the coat, shoulders rising and falling once. Then he turns back. There’s something in his hand, but he keeps it closed in his fist.
My heart begins to pound.
He comes back to the bed slower than he left it, eyes never leaving mine. The fear is back now, but different. Panic, but not the kind from earlier when he thought I might send him away.
He climbs onto the bed and settles between my legs, not sexual, not teasing, no smugness anywhere in him. He kneels there with my thighs on either side of him and the closed fist held carefully near his chest.
“Nikolaj…?” I say again, softer this time.
“Don’t say my name like that yet,” he says, voice rough. “I need to get this out before I lose my fucking nerve.”
That alone stills me.
Nikolaj Dragovich has no shortage of nerve.
He has walked into rooms full of men who wanted him dead and looked bored by their ambition.
He has slit throats, taken empires, stared down fathers, brothers, kings, traitors, and ghosts.
If he’s afraid now, it’s because this matters more than surviving any of them.
So, I shut my mouth.
He looks down briefly at the space between us, then back up. His eyes are too bright, too open, and it costs him visibly to keep them on me. Then I notice the tips of his ears have gone pink.