Chapter 37 Nikolaj
Nikolaj
I should be thinking about the call that’s coming next.
About the way my father’s voice will sound—disappointment smothered under venom, the threat braided into every word.
About the silence from my brother, which I now know isn’t loyalty but mercy.
He’s bought me enough time to let me choose how I’ll die.
I should be thinking about escape plans, exit routes, contingency keys buried in walls. But I’m not. I’m thinking about him. The reason my chest feels like it’s caving in beneath the carved word—duty—and the pressure of every sin I swore I’d never commit.
His name’s not even on my lips, but it’s in every breath I take.
Vincenzo is above me, sweat-slicked and golden, the candlelight making a god out of him while he moves like sin incarnate. His hands are braced on my chest, fingers digging into the muscle just above where the carved word still stings.
Duty. As if my skin didn’t already know what was expected of me. As if my soul hadn’t already been etched into a fucking cage by someone else’s hand. But right now, right here—nothing else exists.
Just him.
Just this.
Just the way his hips roll down onto mine, the way his breath shudders every time I flex my fingers on his thighs, holding him steady while I watch his control slip one slow, perfect second at a time.
He’s riding me like he owns my heart, and maybe he does. Maybe somewhere between the first time I bled for him and the last time he said my name, he slipped his hand into my chest and took it.
Because my heart isn’t beating in my ribcage anymore. It’s beating in the man above me.
I started building a home in him. Somewhere in that terrible, perfect in-between space, I stopped following orders and started wanting something I can never have.
He’s beautiful. So fucking beautiful it hurts to look at him, but I do it anyway. I force my eyes open and keep them on him, even when my body wants to arch up and give in, dragging him closer, holding him there until the world burns around us.
And fuck, the irony of that doesn’t escape me.
The Bratva sent me to kill the future King of the Five Families. But somewhere along the way, I stopped seeing him as a crown and started seeing him as mine.
I’m going to die for it.
The candlelight flickers across his skin, painting gold into every drop of sweat, every angle of his collarbones, every line of his stomach as it flexes above me.
His hands are planted right over the scar now.
I don’t even think he realizes it. Doesn’t realize the weight of that touch.
Doesn’t realize that with every roll of his hips, every grind of heat and pressure, he’s pushing against the one thing I was raised never to forget—that duty is not a choice.
And yet, I want him to make me forget.
“You’re staring again,” he rasps, voice so fucked-out and hoarse it scrapes straight down my spine.
“Can you blame me?” I say, my own voice broken and breathless. “You look like a sin that forgot how to be forgiven.”
His eyes flash open, dark and molten, and for a second, he falters in his rhythm, the words hitting him harder than they should. But he recovers, hips rolling down with brutal purpose, grinding into me like he’s trying to bury something deep enough that it’ll never surface again.
I choke on a groan, my hands gripping his hips hard enough to bruise. “Fuck, Vincenzo—”
He leans forward suddenly, his forehead pressing to mine, his breath ragged. “You talk too much,” he whispers, and yet I feel the smallest tremble in him—just under the surface, like he knows what we’ve done can’t be undone.
“So shut me up,” I bite out, and he does—he crashes his mouth into mine with all the fury of a man who knows this is temporary.
Who knows that the second we stop moving, the world will catch up.
Our fathers. Our names. The blood trail behind both of us.
But here, in this moment, we pretend that none of it matters.
He kisses like he fights—dirty and relentless—and I meet him just as hard, biting his bottom lip until he gasps, then dragging my tongue across the sting like an apology I’ll never say out loud.
His hips never stop. Every grind, every press down, is punishment and worship all at once, and I can’t tell if he’s fucking me or trying to exorcise whatever I’ve put inside him.
“Why does it feel like this?” he whispers into my mouth, and it’s not a question. It’s a confession. “Why does it… hurt like this?”
I slide my hands from his hips to his ribcage, slowing him, guiding him—not stopping him, just easing the frantic edge of his movements until the tension shifts from desire to something I never thought I’d ever feel it in the first place. “Because we don’t know how to want gently.”
He lets out a breath like a laugh, but it breaks midway through. He pulls back just enough to look down at me, eyes searching mine with something so naked it makes my stomach twist.
“You look at me like you’re waiting for the world to end,” he says hoarsely, voice caught somewhere between a challenge and a confession. He tilts his head down, hair falling loose from where I’d fisted it earlier, eyes glassy with lust and something heavier. “Why do you always look like that?”
Because it already did. Because I don’t want to remember why I was sent here. What I was meant to do. Who I’m supposed to be. I want to forget that I was trained to destroy him.
“I’m not waiting for anything,” I say, my voice low, broken open at the edges. “I’m just watching the only thing in this world that doesn’t make me feel like I’m rotting inside.”
That earns me a stricken look—for a second, I think he might stop. Might pull back, press a palm to my face, and ask me what the fuck I mean by that. But he doesn’t.
He leans forward instead, until our foreheads almost touch, and whispers, “You undo me, Nikolaj.”
My breath stutters, my heart fucking skips a beat, and he grinds down harder, dragging a moan out of my chest that tastes too much like surrender. I slide my hands up his thighs, over his hips, and up to his waist where I grip him like I might fall apart otherwise.
Every roll of his body is a fucking masterpiece—controlled, reverent, filthy. I’m not even thrusting anymore. He’s doing all the work, riding me like I’m his to claim, to keep, and I let him, because I am.
I’m so fucking his, it aches.
His jaw clenches when he starts to get close, and I can feel the tremble in his thighs where they bracket mine, the tension in his stomach, the way his breath breaks against my cheek in these quick, shivering exhales.
I arch my hips up to meet him, and he gasps—sharp and ruined—and digs his nails into my chest without meaning to.
Right over the scar.
My whole body jolts, and he freezes.
I know he feels it, the way the muscle jumps under his palm, the faint raised edge of the carved Cyrillic letters that started it all. He stares down at his hand, then back at me. There’s a flash of something in his eyes—shock, guilt, maybe even fear—but I don’t let him speak.
I grab his wrist and guide it back to the mark.
“Don’t flinch,” I murmur, even though I’m the one fighting not to collapse under the weight of everything unsaid. “Don’t look at it like it’s something you did to me. You didn’t. That’s not yours.”
He exhales shakily, and when he lowers his body back onto mine, chest to chest, he keeps his hand over it. Not to press. Not to hurt. Just to feel. Like he’s trying to replace the old memory with something else. Something that feels like worship instead of cruelty.
Duty. Branded into me like I’m nothing more than a weapon.
A reminder of who I am, where I came from, and why I was sent here—to kill the boy currently fucking himself on my cock.
He’s naked and glorious and mine, even if only for tonight.
Even if the second my father calls, this illusion will shatter like glass dropped from the top floor.
Because I know it’s coming.
That call.
That voice, cold as vodka and just as sharp, demanding to know if I’ve fulfilled my task. If I’ve lived up to the Dragovich name. If I’ve torn out the heart of our enemy and sent it back still beating.
But my father won’t understand that my target is the one holding my heart now.
Prince of the East Wing. Enemy of the Bratva. My ruin.
His lips part again, his eyes slam shut, and for a moment, he looks lost. And I know he feels it too. The truth of what this is now. Not a power play, not a tactic, not even lust.
It’s love.
I kiss him back harder. Grip his waist tighter.
Thrust into him like I’m trying to stay alive.
He whimpers into my mouth when I shift my angle, dragging another moan out of him that sounds like God, like he’s unraveling in real time, and I swallow it.
Swallow every gasp, every curse, every shaky breath like it’s holy.
And I tell myself this is enough. That I can pretend a little longer. That I can lie to his face and lie to myself and pretend this world isn’t going to chew us both up the second we stop fucking and start feeling.
He braces his arms on either side of my head, muscles trembling as he rides me, eyes squeezed shut like he can’t look at me. His jaw is clenched, his whole body’s tense, and when I brush my thumb lightly over his ribs, he shudders.
“Vincenzo, look at me.”
But he doesn’t move. He just lets out a fractured exhale, his grip tightening like he’s afraid I’ll vanish underneath him.
“Baby, please,” I say, my tone gentler now. “I need you to look at me.”
He does, and fuck—his eyes are shattered and still somehow full of fire, seeing the pieces of me I haven’t let anyone else see. The ones that aren’t Dragovich. That aren’t an heir. That aren’t cold and sharp and trained to kill.
He leans down again, forehead pressed to mine, breath ragged. “We’re both going to die for this,” he whispers just as I feel a drop hit my cheek.