Chapter Fourteen - Nikola
The penthouse is dark when I return, only the faint glow of the city filtering through bulletproof glass. It’s past three in the morning, and every muscle in my body aches with the particular exhaustion that comes from violence without resolution.
The raid was a failure. Clean, surgical, executed with precision… and completely fucking useless.
The warehouse was empty except for evidence that someone had cleared out hours before we arrived. Marcus Hale’s people are ghosts, and we’re chasing shadows while they tighten the noose around everything I’ve built.
The bullet graze on my arm throbs with each heartbeat, a superficial wound that shouldn’t matter but does. It’s a reminder that I’m not invincible, that the walls I’ve constructed around Elara aren’t as impenetrable as I need them to be.
I strip off my jacket carefully, feeling the fabric pull against the makeshift bandage one of my men applied in the field.
It needs to be cleaned properly, stitched maybe, but the thought of going to the medical floor and explaining how I let someone get close enough to tag me feels like admitting defeat.
Better to handle it myself. Quick vodka rinse, butterfly bandages, ignore it until it heals.
The bedroom door is closed but not locked; Elara’s small rebellion against my security protocols. I start toward the bathroom, planning to deal with the wound before she wakes and asks questions I don’t want to answer.
Light floods the hallway before I make it three steps.
“You’re bleeding.”
I turn to find Elara standing in the bedroom doorway, wearing one of my shirts and nothing else. Her hair is sleep-mussed, eyes still heavy, but she’s looking at me with an alertness that suggests she’s been awake longer than she should be. Waiting.
“It’s nothing.” The words come automatically, the same deflection I’ve used a thousand times with a thousand different people. “Go back to bed.”
She doesn’t move. Doesn’t retreat into the bedroom or accept my dismissal.
Instead, she walks toward me with deliberate purpose, and I find myself frozen, watching her approach like she’s something dangerous.
Elara is all curves and generous hips, and the sight of her alone is enough to make my mouth go dry.
“Let me see.” It’s not a request.
“Elara—”
“Let. Me. See.”
The command in her voice does something to me I don’t want to examine. I’m used to being obeyed, to making decisions and having them followed without question. Having someone stand in front of me and demand compliance—demand the right to take care of me—it’s disorienting.
She reaches for my shirt and I catch her wrist automatically. “It’s just a graze.”
“Then it won’t hurt to let me look at it.” Her eyes meet mine, steady and unyielding. “Unless you’re afraid of what I’ll find?”
The challenge in those words loosens something in my chest. I release her wrist and lift my arms slightly, letting her push my shirt up and over my head. The fabric pulls against the wound and I can’t quite suppress the sharp intake of breath.
“Just a graze,” she repeats flatly, staring at the blood-soaked makeshift bandage on my upper arm. “Sit down.”
“I can handle it—”
“Nikola.” My name sounds different in her mouth than it does in anyone else’s. Less professional, more intimate. “Sit the hell down.”
I sit.
She disappears into the bathroom and returns with the first aid kit I keep stocked with enough supplies to handle anything short of major surgery.
When she kneels between my spread thighs, carefully unwrapping the soaked gauze, I have to force myself to breathe normally.
“This needs stitches,” she says, examining the wound with a clinical detachment that would be impressive if I weren’t hyperaware of how close she is, how her hair falls forward to brush against my bare chest, how her fingers are gentle despite the steel in her voice.
“Butterfly stitches will hold it.”
“It’ll scar worse.”
“I have plenty of scars.”
She looks up at me then, and something in her expression makes my throat tight. “I know. I’ve counted them.”
The admission hangs between us. When she went exploring my body two nights ago, mapping damage with curious fingers—she was paying attention. Cataloging. Remembering.
“This is going to hurt,” she warns, reaching for the antiseptic.
“I can handle pain.”
“I know that too.” She pours the liquid over the wound without ceremony, and I focus on her face instead of the burning sensation spreading through my arm. “You handle everything. Control everything. Manage every crisis like you’re running calculations in your head.”
The observation is too accurate to be comfortable. “That bothers you.”
“It terrifies me.” She dabs at the wound with gauze, movements efficient despite the tremor in her hands. “What happens when something goes wrong that you can’t calculate your way out of?”
“Like tonight?”
She meets my eyes. “Like tonight. Like every night you walk out that door and I have to wonder if you’re coming back.”
The vulnerability in those words does something dangerous to my carefully maintained control. I reach up with my good arm, cup her face in my palm. “I came back.”
“Bleeding.”
“Bleeding but alive.” My thumb traces her cheekbone. “I promise you that.”
“You can’t promise that.” Her voice cracks slightly. “You can’t control everything, Nikola. Not even you.”
She’s right, and we both know it. Admitting that feels like giving ground I can’t afford to lose, so instead I lean forward and kiss her.
She makes a small sound of surprise before melting into it, her hands coming up to rest against my chest. The kiss tastes like midnight and fear and relief, and when she pulls back her eyes are darker than they were moments ago.
“Hold still,” she murmurs, reaching for the butterfly bandages. “This needs to be closed properly.”
I watch her work, hyperaware of every point of contact between us. Her knees pressing against the inside of my thighs. Her breath warm against my skin. The concentration on her face as she carefully aligns the wound edges and applies each strip with precision.
“Where did you learn to do this?” I ask, more to distract myself from how her proximity is affecting me than from genuine curiosity.
“My brother used to get into fights.” She doesn’t look up from her task. “Someone had to patch him up before our parents found out.”
The casual mention of her family—the life she had before me—sends an unexpected pang through my chest. “You miss him.”
“Every day.” She secures the last bandage and sits back on her heels, examining her work. “He’d probably try to kill you if he knew what you’ve done to my life.”
“Probably.”
“Definitely.” She reaches for the roll of gauze to create a proper dressing over the butterflies. “He was always protective. Stupidly so, sometimes.”
“Sounds familiar.”
She glances up at me, and there’s something almost like affection in her eyes. “You’re both idiots who think violence solves everything.”
“Sometimes it does.”
“Sometimes it just gets you shot.” She wraps the gauze around my arm with careful precision. “Hold this.”
I press my finger against the gauze while she secures it with medical tape.
The domesticity of the moment—her kneeling between my legs, tending a wound, both of us half dressed in the middle of the night—it’s more intimate than sex.
More real than any of the careful negotiations that have defined our relationship until now.
When she finishes, she doesn’t move away. Her hands rest on my thighs, warm through the fabric of my pants, and I can see her pulse jumping in her throat.
“Thank you,” I say quietly.
“For what?”
“For caring whether I live or die.”
Her fingers tighten on my legs. “I hate that I care. I hate that I spent three hours lying awake wondering if you were coming back. I hate that seeing you bleeding made me want to find whoever shot you and hurt them worse.”
The fierce protectiveness in her voice does something primal to me. “Elara—”
“I’m still angry at you.” Even though she cuts me off, she’s leaning closer now, drawn by the same magnetic pull I’m feeling. “I’m still furious about everything you’ve done, everything you’ve taken from me.”
“I know.”
“I also can’t stop thinking about you.” The admission seems to cost her something. “Can’t stop wanting you, even though I know I shouldn’t.”
My hand finds the back of her neck, fingers threading through her hair. “We shouldn’t do this.”
“Probably not.”
“Tomorrow this will be complicated again.”
“It’s already complicated.” She’s close enough now that her breath mingles with mine. “But tonight I don’t care.”
When she kisses me, it’s different from before. Less desperate, more deliberate. Like she’s made a choice and she’s owning it completely.
I try to pull her up, to bring her into my lap, but she resists. Instead, she pushes me back slightly, hands firm against my chest, claiming control of the moment.
“Let me,” she murmurs against my mouth.
“Let you what?”
Her smile is dangerous. “Take care of you.”
Before I can process what she means, her hands are at my belt, working the buckle with steady fingers. Everything in me wants to take over, to direct this encounter the way I direct everything else in my life.
The look in her eyes stops me. There’s a challenge there, a demand for trust that’s more intimate than anything we’ve done before.
I force myself to lean back, hands gripping the edge of the couch hard enough that my knuckles go white.
Letting someone else take control goes against every instinct I have, but something about the way Elara is looking at me—like she needs this, needs to be the one in charge right now—makes me willing to try.
She opens my pants with deliberate slowness, and I have to suppress a groan when her hand wraps around me through my boxers. The touch is exploratory, curious, like she’s mapping new territory.
“Still think this is a bad idea?” she asks, voice low and teasing.