36. Mila
MILA
Warm and cushioned under the blankets, I struggled to fight the allure of sleeping.
Not a final sleep.
Just a lazy, this-is-cozy, I-don’t-want-to-get-up leisure mood.
I yawned, waking up on the second day after I was shot twice for insisting on lingering to get those files in Yusef Antonov’s office.
Lying around for too long made me restless. I was too hardwired to want to move. A fugue state of idleness would eat away at my sanity after a while—something I’d learned from when I had been cared for after that last beating I’d received.
After the surgery to patch me and sew me up, something I’d heard from the nurses at the hospital, who informed me that I would make a full recovery but would be tired from the sedatives and medicine, I knew that I’d be bed-bound for a while.
But now, a new force of spirit made me want to get up and resume the rest of my life.
The life I wanted to embrace fully, with Lev. With loving Lev.
Earlier, I’d been drifting in and out of sleep. In those blissful moments of being half awake but kind of out of it, I listened to Lev. He’d talked to Alexei. Nikolai might have come by as well because I could’ve sworn I heard him.
But it was the conversation I’d picked up pieces of between Lev and Adrik that had jumpstarted me to want to wake up fully. All so I could kiss this gentle assassin and control freak of an enforcer.
I heard bits and pieces of it.
His plans.
His intentions.
His goal and dream and fantasy all rolled up into one combination of a future that I wholeheartedly wanted to believe in.
He loved me.
I wasn’t just a slave.
I wasn’t only a thing to own and use as a tool.
Lev loved me.
He didn’t only care about me.
He didn’t simply want me to live for the sake of working for his family.
Lev Volkov, the fearsome enforcer, loved me.
As I rolled on my side to face him better—a task made infinitely easier with the bounty of pillows that I’d been propped up on as I rested—I sighed.
It was a sound of pure happiness as I watched him sleep.
He lay next to me, his head slumping to one shoulder.
Sitting up but reclined, he looked like he’d only dropped off to sleep in that position because he’d been staying with me nonstop, ready to jump into action and help me, prepared to be on call and deliver on anything I desired.
If this was what being pampered felt like, I supposed a girl could get used to it.
Not me, though.
I didn’t want to be coddled or treated as a delicate, broken thing.
I wasn’t either of those.
I couldn’t call myself delicate when I’d be tested and hardened by the atrocities of my past.
I had been broken before, but all the pieces that made me up were glued together again—because of him.
Lev had been the founding source of happiness and security, and I would never lose sight of all that I owed him.
He stirred, almost as if feeling the brunt of my attention on him spurned him into waking up. Blinking his warm, dark eyes open slowly, he stirred and turned to face me. Like his first thought when he woke would be of me, to seek me out.
A tender smile lifted his lips as he made eye contact with me. In this quiet, comfortable moment of merely watching each other, we connected on a level that surpassed time and touch.
Our souls meshed.
Our hearts united.
“I—”
He pressed his fingers to my lips. “I have something to say first.”
I nodded, fighting a smile at his impatience.
When he took his fingers away, I licked my lips. “But what I want to tell you is important.”
He furrowed his brow, looking torn between insisting that he have his way or to let me have mine.
Since I’d already overheard snippets of what he’d told Adrik about me, I had a hunch that I knew what he was going to greet me with now. And I looked forward to hearing him confess those same things all over again. To me.
“Okay.” He frowned, implying that he didn’t think it was okay. “You can go first.”
Damn. Now I was tempted to hear him out instead. “Um. You can.”
He grinned slowly, a wicked and slow change of his usually stern face.
“I want you to marry me.”
I huffed, amused at his highhanded approach. “Are you asking me?”
“Do you want me to ask you?” he challenged.
“I do.”
“Now you’re just jumping ahead.”
I laughed lightly, feeling so damn happy and free to embrace this bliss that my heart was about to overflow.
“I’m not good at asking for things, Mila. You know that,” he teased, cupping my face. “I’m better at just telling you what I want. What I expect.”
“And what do you expect by telling me that you’d like it if I married you?” I asked, snuggling into his touch.
“A lifetime of loving you.”
I raised my brows. “That’s it?”
“That’s literally it. That’s all that matters. A lifetime of being able to love you. Because I do, Mila. You might have come into my life with another purpose, but from the moment I first saw you, I was intrigued to know you, to understand how you could be so defiant and strong.”
He leaned in close and kissed me like he wanted to pour all that love into one heartfelt gesture.
“I love you, Mila. And I would love it if you could be my wife.”
“Not a slave you bought?” I mocked.
He shook his head then kissed me again. “My wife.”
Another kiss.
“The woman I love.” Another kiss and he crawled closer, lying over me but careful not to crush me.
“The partner I want in the field with me.”
I clung to him with my good arm as he kissed me for longer, hovering over me and stretching his arm out.
“The spy I need to count on.”
He moved further, kissing me again but seeming to grope for something on the table.
“The sweet submissive under my control.”
Another kiss as he settled back on his side, facing me rather than covering me.
“But most of all, as my wife.” He held out a ring box, showing me what he’d reached for. “Mila, will you marry me?”
I smiled, gazing at the ring. He meant it. He’d really thought this out. “I can’t wear that.”
“Okay. That’s what I told Selma.” He reached over me again and held out another ring box.
This one wasn’t the massive, gaudy mountain of a diamond on a thin band.
This second option was a simpler, flatter band of a darker metal with light sapphires lining it.
Still pretty and feminine, but more practical. “This is what I thought you’d like.”
I held my hand out, my heart racing at how this man was changing my life again. “You asked your cook for advice?”
He smiled as he slid the ring onto my finger. It was a perfect fit, and I held it up to admire it.
Tugging my hand to his mouth so he could press a kiss to my knuckle near the ring, he nestled closer. “She’s a good judge of character, usually. I suppose she thinks every Mafia queen needs a showpiece.” He framed my face, stroking his thumb over my cheek. “But you outshine any ring or gemstone.”
I relished the soft press of his lips on mine.
“Just to confirm. That was a yes?”
I laughed. “Yes. Yes, I will marry you, Lev.”
We kissed again, but just as it began to get heated, he pulled back and frowned. “What were you going to say that was so important?”
“I love you.”
Testing out those three vital words for the first time was another leap of faith. Another example of how I was free.
Happy tears threatened to spill from my eyes as I was instantly overcome with bliss. With him kissing me again and cradling me close, I recognized that I had already started building a new life here. Not one defined by captivity, but by choice.
He’d asked me to marry him, and I had the power in my words to say yes.
“And I love you,” he whispered against my lips.
Time ceased to matter as we lay together and snuggled, kissing and holding each other the best that we could with my injuries.
He was mindful of the bandages covering my skin.
The strap that kept my arm down was cumbersome when I wanted to raise my hand to feel him, but he didn’t push me to any degree of pain.
Intimate and lazy, we lay there and kissed, sealing the promise of our love for each other as we embraced. But all too soon, it wasn’t enough. That familiar rush of desire coursed through my veins. My heart hammered faster in anticipation of the thrilling ride to make love to him.
Lev.
My fiancé.
He was on the same page, already thinking of letting things get more heated between us. As he stroked his hand down my stomach, since I was only in a thin nightgown following the surgery, I tensed at the touch of his fingertips from where I’d been whipped years ago, a punishment for being too slow.
“What?” he asked, leaning up and watching my face for a sign that he should stop. “Is this too much?”
“It’s not enough,” I protested as I put my hand on his erection.
He groaned, thrusting into my hand. “But what was that reaction for? You flinched.” His hand stayed put, resting on my stomach.
“My scars,” I admitted shyly. “There’s so many of them and I worry that they aren’t a pretty sight.”
He smirked, sliding his hand lower. “I love every inch of you. Scars and all.” Before he could dip his fingers into my pussy, he swiped a line low on my stomach. “I look forward to a scar here.”
I furrowed my brow.
“A C-section scar,” he explained smugly. “Because with how small and short you are, you’d never be able to push out a son who’d have my genes and size.”
I gaped at him. “You just proposed.”
He kissed me as he untied the nightgown and urged it to fall free. “I did. You accepted, by the way.”
“And you’re already thinking about children?” I asked, slightly alarmed. I’d need more time to embrace that change in my life, in my body. Deep down, I was secretly thrilled to start a family of my own.
“Not necessarily,” he admitted. “But I distracted you from worrying about scars, didn’t I?”
I sighed against his lips, kissing him as he fingered me and spread my arousal over my skin. I was already so wet for him. I always was. “Maybe. Because now I’m only thinking about the act of making a baby.”
“Me too,” he murmured as he nudged me to roll onto my side slightly. The shift on the bed favored my injured shoulder, so I wouldn’t be lying on it at all.
He spooned me, bracing me against him as he urged me to lift my leg and drape it over his.
Nuzzling my neck, he continued to kiss me and rub his dick up against my ass.
More fumbling under the sheets resulted in him shedding his pants, but as he lined the wide, smooth head of his cock to my entrance, I put my hand on his that was fondling my breast. “Are we allowed to do this?”
He chuckled.
“I mean am I allowed to do this? So soon after surgery?”
He kissed me, sucking on the skin under my ear. “I will go slow.” Another suctioning press of his lips that had me shivering. “Gentle.” He paired it with a push of his dick into me. “With all the love I am capable of.”
I leaned against him, opening up to him.
Mind, body, and soul, I lowered the last of my guard to let him in.
And he was—in. So deep, like always. He slid into me with long, steady pushes. Aided with the slippery juices he coaxed me to drip, he took his time to not jostle me too much. Once he was fully inside of me, sheathed to the hilt, I moaned and pushed my ass against him.
“More, Lev. I need—”
He withdrew and thrust back in again. “That? You need my cock stuffing you?”
I answered with a low moan. “I need… you.”
Hearing me submit with that generalization pushed him from a slow and tender lover into a determined machine developed for my pleasure.
His lips stayed on my skin, kissing, licking, and sucking until I was panting and writhing against him.
His hands stayed on me, one fondling and squeezing my breast while the other was at where we were joined, his finger stroking circles around my clit and making me so desperate to come.
And most importantly of all, his thick dick wedging into me until we were both pushed to let go.
I surrendered just before he did. My pussy clenched and spasmed as waves of pleasure washed over me.
His dick jerked deep inside, shooting his seed up into me where maybe, someday, our future might take root and prove that we weren’t destined to only be a family of two.