Chapter 19 Nikolai #2
“We need to move,” he says. His voice is a ghost of itself. “Now.”
“Alexei, wait.”
“The window is closing, Nikolai. We are exposed.”
“Look at your hands.” I stand up, my legs trembling but holding. I cross the distance between us, my bare feet cold on the concrete. I reach out and take the weapon from his hand. He lets me take it—that alone tells me how far gone he is. I set it on a crate.
“You almost shot a stray cat. You haven't slept in two days. We’re about to drive into a city full of people who want to kill us, and you can’t even hold a gun straight.”
“I am functional.”
“You’re a machine with a broken gear.” I reach out, placing my palms flat against his chest. His heart is racing, a frantic, irregular thud under the dark fabric. “And I am a man who was just unmade. We are about to walk into the end of our lives.”
“All the more reason to find a more secure location.”
“No. All the more reason to remember why we’re doing this.” I grip the front of his sweater, pulling him toward me. “I need five minutes. I need to feel something that isn't the cold or the fear. I need you to feel something that isn't a mission parameter.”
His eyes search mine. I see the war in him—the Kennel's voice telling him to move, to be efficient, to survive, clashing with the newer, hungrier voice that I put there.
The new voice wins.
He kisses me with a desperation that tastes like salt and smoke. It’s not the clinical exploration from before. It’s a collision. His mouth is hot, his tongue demanding, his hands gripping my hips hard enough that I’ll have bruises in the shape of his fingers by noon.
I moan into his mouth, my hands tangling in his hair, pulling him closer until there is no air between us. I feel his cock, hard and thick against my thigh through his tactical pants.
“Five minutes,” he growls against my lips, his breath hitching. “Then we go.”
“Five minutes.”
He spins me around with a force that makes my head swim and shoves me against the warehouse wall. The cold concrete is a shock against my palms, a grounding contrast to the heat of his body pressing into my back.
He doesn't have the patience for a bed. He yanks my borrowed pants down. The chill of the warehouse hits my bare skin for a heartbeat before he drops to his knees behind me.
I choke on a sob of pure, sharp pleasure when his mouth finds me.
His tongue is a hot, wet muscle fucking into my entrance, his stubble scraping against my sensitive skin.
He doesn't use lube; he uses his own saliva and the sheer force of his hunger. It’s filthy.
It’s raw. It’s the most honest thing I’ve ever felt.
“Alexei, please—” I brace myself against the wall, my fingers scratching at the brick as he pulls me harder against his face.
His hand reaches around, fisting my cock, stroking me with a brutal, unyielding rhythm that matches the work of his tongue. After weeks of nothing but pain, the sensory overload is too much. I’m already on the edge, my body attuned to his touch like a wire waiting for a spark.
“I’m going to—I can’t stop it—”
He pulls back just enough to growl, “Then don’t stop. Give it to me.”
He plunges his tongue back into me, his hand speeding up, and I shatter.
The orgasm is a physical demolition, a scream that echoes off the high rafters, my release spilling over his fingers and down the concrete.
He doesn't stop until every tremor has left my legs, his mouth keeping me anchored as the world tries to dissolve.
When he stands, he’s breathing like he’s just run a marathon. His eyes are glazed, dark with a primal satisfaction.
“My turn,” I whisper, turning around and dropping to my knees before he can object.
“Nikolai, the time—”
“I don’t care about the time.”
I yank his zipper down. His cock springs free, angry and hard and leaking at the tip. I take him into my mouth without hesitation, swallowing him to the root. He groans—a sound I’ve never heard him make, a low, broken animal noise that strips away the last of the Accountant.
His hands find the back of my head, his fingers digging into my short, bristly hair.
He doesn’t wait for me to set the pace. He takes over, his hips driving into my mouth with a desperate, rhythmic violence.
He fucks my throat with the same intensity he uses to clear a room.
No finesse. Just the raw, tectonic shift of a man who has been starving for seventeen years.
I take him deeper, wanting the fullness of him, wanting to be the thing that finally breaks his control.
“Nikolai—fuck—”
He grabs my shoulders and shoves himself in one last time, his entire body going rigid. He shouts my name—actually shouts it—and I feel the hot, thick pulse of his release hit the back of my throat. I swallow all of it. I want every part of him inside me.
When I pull back, his legs are shaking so badly he has to lean against a pillar. His face is flushed, his chest heaving, the clinical mask shattered into a thousand pieces. For ten seconds, he is just a man.
Then the world returns.
Outside, a dog begins to bark. High-pitched, rhythmic. Then another, closer. The low, distant hum of a car engine on the access road shifts—slowing down.
Alexei is moving before the sound of the engine even registers. He pulls up his pants, reaches for the suppressed weapon on the crate, and his eyes go flat. The Monster is back, but it’s a different version—one that is protecting its own.
We wait. Ten seconds. Twenty.
The car accelerates again, the sound fading as it continues down the road toward the industrial park. The dogs settle into a low growl and then silence.
“Four minutes,” I say, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. My heart is still hammering, but now it’s the steady beat of a survivor. “We should have been quieter.”
“Yes,” he says. His voice is clipped, professional, but he catches my eye. “We should have.”
He gives a small, exhausted huff that might have been a laugh in a different life.
“Get the duffel,” he orders. “The Civic is around the side.”
I pull up my pants, the wool sweater settling back over my hips. He guides me toward the small personnel door, his arm around my waist, his body a shield I no longer have to ask for.
The morning light is a harsh, biting gray as we step outside. The air smells of snow and exhaust. It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
Because he’s beside me. Because we’re no longer a file and a subject.
We are two ghosts, walking into a city that believes we are dead.
The car is waiting. The hunt is closing in.
We drive toward the horizon, and I don't look back.