27. Sofia
SOFIA
Marina is waiting near the entrance when we come in.
She looks like she hasn’t slept properly either. Her hair is tied back, her face is pale, and the second she sees me, her eyes fill with the kind of guilt that makes my stomach twist before she even opens her mouth.
“Sofia,” she says softly.
Damir stops beside me. So do the men behind us.
For one uncomfortable second, the whole entrance hall becomes too quiet. Marina looks at Damir first, then back at me, as if she’s not sure whether she’s allowed to speak. I don’t know what expression he gives her, but whatever it is, she takes one step forward.
“I’m sorry,” she says.
I blink. “For what?”
“For the shopping trip. For losing sight of you. For not noticing sooner. I should have stayed closer.” The guilt in her voice is real.
Marina didn’t do anything wrong.
I did.
I planned it. I made sure Dmitri saw where I would be. I slipped away when the fighting started. I let Arman’s men take me because I thought I was being clever, and then everything became bigger than me, uglier than me, and far more dangerous than the version I had imagined in my head.
Marina thinks she failed me.
I swallow. My throat hurts.
The creep at the club didn’t leave a bruise yet, but I can feel where his arm pressed into me. I can still feel the way my breath stopped. I can still feel the panic of being held from behind, dragged backward, silenced before I could call out.
I don’t want to talk about it. Not with Marina. Not with anyone.
So I reach for the easiest lie.
“It wasn’t your fault,” I say.
Her face tightens. “I should have protected you.”
“You were not my guard.”
“No, but I was responsible for you.”
That almost makes me laugh, not because it’s funny, but because the list of people who feel responsible for me keeps growing while I keep making decisions that make everyone’s lives harder.
“You were kind to me,” I say, and my voice comes out quieter than I intend. “That matters more.”
Marina’s eyes shine. I hate that too, because now I feel like crying, and I refuse to cry in the entrance hall with Damir Volodin standing beside me like he’s ready to execute the marble flooring if it looks at me wrong.
Damir’s hand touches the small of my back. I feel it through his coat and my dress, and my body reacts before my pride can stop it. A small, stupid part of me relaxes.
I step forward quickly and hug Marina before anyone can comment. She freezes for half a second, then holds me carefully, as if I might break if she squeezes too hard.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers again.
“Don’t be,” I say, though I am the one who should be apologizing.
When I pull back, she touches my cheek once, then seems to remember herself and drops her hand. “I’ll bring tea to your room,” she says.
“No,” I say too quickly.
Damir looks at me. Marina looks at me too.
“I mean, not now,” I add. “I’m tired.”
It’s not exactly a lie.
I am tired. I’m also restless, angry, shaken, and so full of Damir from that kiss in the car that I feel like my skin is too tight.
Marina nods. “Of course.”
Damir tells the men something in Russian. I understand none of it, but the tone is enough. Orders, routes, security, probably death threats arranged by priority. Mikhail answers him. Nikolai disappears toward the side hallway. The house starts moving around us again.
I should go to my room. I tell myself that as I turn toward the stairs. I should close the door, shower, change, call Anya, and figure out what kind of lie I’m going to keep telling until it collapses on me.
Instead, I stop halfway up.
Damir is still in the hall below, speaking to Mikhail now, his coat gone because I am wearing it, his shirt stretched across his shoulders, his jaw hard, his sleeves rolled back enough that I can see the veins in his forearms. There is blood on his knuckles from the man at the club. Not much. Enough.
He looks up. Our eyes meet.
Everything in me goes still for one heavy second.
Then he says something to Mikhail without looking away from me, and Mikhail leaves.
Damir starts up the stairs.
I should keep walking. I don’t.
He reaches me on the landing, stopping one step below so we are nearly eye level. His face is controlled, but his eyes are not. His gaze drops to my mouth, then my throat, then back to my eyes.
“You should rest,” he says. “And probably see a doctor.”
“I know.”
His jaw tightens. “Sofia.”
“No doctors tonight.”
“You were hurt.”
“I said no doctors.”
He exhales through his nose, and I can see him fighting the instinct to order it anyway.
He doesn’t.
That does something to me.
Maybe it shouldn’t. Maybe basic restraint should not feel like a gift.
But after everything, after Sergei, Dmitri, the church, the guards, the house, the lies, the running, the panic in that club, and the car ride where Damir could have demanded every answer and chose not to, his silence feels like more than silence.
It feels like effort. For me.
“I’m going to your room,” I say.
His face is unreadable. “My room?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
I lift my chin. “Because I want to.”
He watches me for a long moment, as if he’s checking whether this is fear, shock, guilt, or another escape plan.
It’s probably all of them. It’s also want.
I want him so badly that I’m tired of pretending the ache in my body is only stress.
I want his mouth, his hands, his weight, his voice when he loses control.
I want to feel alive in a way that is mine, not something stolen by men who think they can grab, arrange, trade, or claim me without consequence.
Damir steps closer. “Tell me what you want, Sofia.”
“I want you,” I say. “I want to go to your room, I want you to touch me, and I don’t want to talk about anything else right now.”
His eyes darken. “All right,” he says.
Then he turns and walks up the stairs beside me. He lets me choose each step, and maybe that’s why by the time we reach his door, I’m the one who grabs his shirt and pulls him down to me.
His mouth comes to mine hard. The door is still half open.
I don’t care. He walks me backward into the room while kissing me, one hand at my waist, the other reaching behind him to shove the door closed.
It shuts with a solid sound, and then I’m against it, his body pressed to mine, his mouth taking the air I still don’t want to think about losing.
This kiss is not like the one in the car.
That one was relief and anger. This one is choice.
I push his shirt open with shaking fingers, too impatient for buttons. One tears loose and falls somewhere on the floor. Damir makes a low sound against my mouth and catches my wrists for one second.
“Careful,” he says.
“No.”
His eyes flash.
I pull my wrists free and drag my hands down his chest. “I don’t want careful.”
He studies me, breathing hard, and I know he understands what I mean and what I don’t. I don’t want to be handled like glass. I don’t want to be interrogated. I don’t want to be pitied. I want him to know I’m here because I chose to be, and I want him to want me without making me feel breakable.
His hands slide under the coat and push it off my shoulders. It falls to the floor.
Then he touches me the way I asked.
His mouth comes down on mine again, and his hands are firm on my waist as he turns me away from the door and walks me toward the bed. I pull at his belt. He grips the back of my dress and drags the zipper down, slow enough to make me shiver, rough enough to make my body tighten with anticipation.
“Still no talking?” he asks against my mouth.
“Less talking.”
He gives a short, dark laugh. “That I can do.”
The dress comes off. He looks at me in the low light, and something hot and possessive moves across his face. I stand there in my underwear, throat marked, hair loose, skin already flushed, and for once I don’t cover myself.
Damir steps in and cups my breasts through my bra, thumbs dragging over the lace until my nipples tighten. I gasp, and his attention drops instantly to the sound.
“There,” he says, voice low. “That is better than silence.”
I should snap at him. I can’t, because he lowers his mouth to my breast and sucks my nipple through the lace, and the heat of it punches straight through me. My hands go into his hair. I arch into him. He unhooks the bra with one hand and pulls it away, then takes my bare breast into his mouth.
My knees weaken. He catches me easily and pushes me down onto the bed.
I land on my back, breathless, while he stands over me and strips off his shirt.
His chest is hard, marked with old scars and fresh tension, and the sight of him like that makes my anger shift into something more dangerous.
Need, maybe. Hunger. Something that has been waiting under every argument we have had since the church.
He removes his belt. I watch his hands.
He knows I’m watching. His mouth curves slightly, but his eyes stay serious. “Tell me if you want me to stop,” he says.
“I won’t.”
“Tell me anyway.”
My throat tightens. Not from fear this time.
“If I want you to stop, I’ll tell you.”
He nods once. “Good.”
Then he comes down over me. His body covers mine, heavy and hot, but he keeps his weight on one forearm. His free hand moves down my stomach, into my underwear, and when his fingers touch me, both of us react.
I’m already wet. Too wet to pretend this is only adrenaline.
Damir’s eyes darken. “You came to my room like this?”
I turn my face away, embarrassed for half a second.
He grips my jaw carefully and brings me back to him. “No hiding.”
I hate that I missed those words. I hate that my body responds to them like it remembers being safe under his hands, even when my mind keeps arguing that safety and Damir Volodin should not belong in the same sentence.