16. Sofia #3
Damir steps between my knees before I can close them. “You follow me,” he says, voice low. “Disobey my men. Walk into my medical room. Put your mouth on my blood.”
I swallow. “It seemed hygienic at the time.”
His hand tightens at my waist. “Don’t joke.”
“Then stop saying things that make me nervous.”
His eyes lift to mine. For a second, something rough and exhausted moves across his face. Whatever happened at the warehouse has not left him. It’s there under his skin, in the tension of his shoulders, in the cold fury he’s barely holding back.
But when he looks at me, the fury changes shape. “You were worried,” he says.
“No.”
“Sofia.”
“I was curious.”
“You ran down the stairs.”
“I enjoy cardio.”
“You followed me past Mikhail.”
“I enjoy making him suffer.”
His mouth almost curves. “You licked blood from my arm.”
“I was assessing iron levels.”
That does it.
A laugh leaves him.
Quiet. Brief. Real enough to make my chest tighten.
Then his hand rises to my face, thumb brushing the corner of my mouth. “There is still some there,” he says.
My breath stops. “What?”
His thumb strokes slowly over my lower lip. “My blood.”
The words should be horrible.
They’re not. They’re intimate in a way that feels indecent.
He lowers his head.
I should move back, but there’s nowhere to go except the table, and anyway my hands have already betrayed me by resting against his bare chest. His skin is hot under my palms. His heart beats steady beneath one hand.
Steady. Alive.
I didn’t realize I needed proof until I feel it.
Damir watches the realization pass over my face.
This kiss is slower than the ones before, but somehow more dangerous.
His mouth opens mine with patience, his tongue sweeping in as if he has every right to taste the blood he left there, as if the line between injury and desire has blurred into something neither of us is sensible enough to step away from.
I make a sound into his mouth. His hand slides from my face to the back of my neck, holding me there. The kiss deepens, and my fingers spread over his chest, tracing scars I don’t know the stories of. He shudders once when I touch the one near his ribs, not from pain, I think, but memory.
I pull back a fraction. “What happened?”
His eyes remain on my mouth. “Later.”
“That means never.”
“That means later.”
“You are very committed to being mysterious.”
“I’m bleeding.”
“Convenient excuse.”
His mouth brushes mine. “You liked the blood.”
My face burns. “I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t need to.”
I hate that he’s right.
I hate more that my knees have parted around him and his body is standing between them like he belongs there. His hand rests on my thigh now, thumb moving once over the borrowed fabric of my dress. The medical room smells like antiseptic, blood, and him.
It’s so erotic I feel dizzy.
He leans closer, lips moving to my jaw, then lower, to the side of my throat where his mark has faded but not vanished. The moment his mouth touches it, my fingers tighten against his chest.
“Damir.”
“I know.”
“You’re still bleeding.”
“I’ve had worse.”
“That’s not comforting.”
“It was not meant to be.”
His teeth graze the old bite mark, and heat shoots through me so quickly I gasp. He makes a low sound against my skin.
Then someone knocks on the door. Hard.
Once.
Twice.
“Boss,” Mikhail calls from outside. “Doctor. Now.”
Damir goes very still.
I close my eyes.
For once, I agree with Mikhail. The man is bleeding onto the floor while kissing me in a medical room, and apparently I have become the kind of woman who needs external supervision to remember wounds require treatment.
Damir lifts his head. His eyes are dark, his mouth wet from mine, his chest bare and marked beneath my hands.
“You will stay,” he says.
I blink. “For what?”
“The doctor.”
“You want me to stay while he stitches you?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
His gaze moves over my face, unreadable again but not cold.
I swallow. Then I nod once.
He steps back, just enough to let me slide off the examination table, but not enough to make the room feel normal again.
“Come in,” he says.
The door opens, and the doctor enters first, carefully not looking at my flushed face or Damir’s bare chest more than professional necessity demands. Mikhail stands behind him, takes one look at us, and immediately looks exhausted.
His gaze flicks to my mouth. Then to Damir’s arm. Then back to Damir.
“I see the wound received attention,” he says dryly.
I want the floor to open.
Damir looks at him without shame. “Close the door.”
Mikhail does, but not before I see the corner of his mouth twitch.
My terrible, impossible husband.
I sit beside Damir while the doctor cleans the wound. Damir doesn’t flinch once, but when the antiseptic touches torn skin, his hand curls slightly against his thigh.
Without thinking, I reach for his uninjured hand. His fingers close around mine immediately.
The doctor says nothing.
Mikhail says nothing.
I stare at our joined hands and pretend my heart hasn’t started doing something inconvenient again.
Outside the room, the house remains tense with whatever happened before he returned. Inside, the doctor stitches his arm. And Damir Volodin, who should be impossible to hold, keeps my hand in his until the bleeding stops.