Chapter Seven #2
My fingers trace the lines of ink, learning them by touch. When I reach the scar through his right eyebrow, he catches my hand and brings it to his mouth, pressing a kiss to my palm.
“Your turn,” he says, voice rough.
He strips off the rest of his clothes with the same efficiency he used on mine. And then he’s naked above me, all hard muscle and predatory grace, his cock hard and heavy against my thigh.
“I need inside you,” he says. “Need to feel you around me.”
“Yes.” I’m already reaching for him, guiding him to my entrance. “Yes, please… now.”
He slides in slowly, watching my face the entire time. The stretch is exquisite, almost painful, but I don’t want him to stop. I want to feel this—want to feel him everywhere.
When he’s fully seated, he stills. He pauses a moment, breath ragged.
“Okay?” he asks.
“Perfect.” I wrap my legs around his hips, pulling him deeper. “Move.”
“Bossy.” But there’s affection in his tone as he starts to move.
The rhythm he sets is neither gentle nor brutal—it’s something in between. Claiming without cruelty. Possessive without domination. Each thrust drives him deeper, hitting something inside me that makes my eyes roll back with pleasure.
The Persian rug shifts beneath us with each movement, the silk threads whispering against my overheated skin. Somewhere in the house, a clock chimes the hour. The mundane sound contrasts sharply with what we’re doing, making it more visceral, more real.
“Look at me,” Arkady demands.
I force my eyes open. His face is inches from mine, jaw tight, eyes burning into me with an intensity that should terrify me. Instead, it makes me clench around him.
“Hey,” he says softly. “Stay with me, zaychik.”
“I’m here.” I cup his face with both hands. “I’m right here.” I don’t know why he needs me to keep saying it, but for some reason, I want to. Because I’m here, not being dragged off into a world I would never return from.
He kisses me then, deep and slow, tongue mimicking the rhythm of his hips. The dual sensation is overwhelming. I feel him everywhere—inside me, on top of me, surrounding me completely.
When he shifts the angle, hitting that spot that makes me see dancing lights, I cry out against his mouth.
“That’s it.” He does it again, and again, each thrust more deliberate than the last. “Give it to me.”
“Arkady—”
“Give it to me, Mirabel. Let me feel you come.”
The command pushes me over the edge. My orgasm crashes through me like a tsunami, stealing my breath and whiting out everything else. I feel myself clenching around him, feel him groan against my neck as I pulse and contract.
“Fuck,” he mutters. “Fuck, you’re perfect.”
His rhythm stutters, becoming less controlled, more desperate. A few more thrusts and he’s coming too, emptying himself inside me with a low sound that’s half curse, half my name.
We stay locked together for long moments afterward, both of us trembling and spent. His weight pins me to the rug, grounding me in a way nothing else has since the kidnapping. I run my fingers through his hair, feeling the rapid beat of his pulse against my own.
Eventually, he rolls to the side, taking me with him so we’re face to face on the Persian rug. His arm stays locked around my waist like he still can’t quite believe I’m real.
“Hi,” I say stupidly.
The corner of his mouth lifts. “Hi.”
We lie there in the quiet of the library, and for the first time since I was grabbed, I feel safe.
But safety comes with a price—the weight of what I haven’t told him.
“Arkady,” I start, my voice quiet.
“Mm?” His eyes are closed, one hand tracing lazy patterns on my hip.
“There’s something I need to tell you.”
His eyes open immediately, sharp and alert despite what we just did. “What is it?”
I take a breath, steadying myself. This is it. The moment I admit what happened, what I know, what I’m still trying to understand.
“Today, when I was leaving my father’s house—” I begin.
His phone rings.
The sound is sharp and intrusive, disrupting the intimacy of the moment. Arkady’s whole body tenses against mine, and I see the exact second his mind shifts from lover to boss.
“Arkady,” I say quickly.
But he’s already sitting up, reaching for his discarded pants. He checks the screen and his face transforms, all the softness draining away, replaced by something hard and unreadable.
“Arkady?” My voice sounds small. “What is it?”
He doesn’t answer. Just stares at the phone like it’s delivered a death sentence. Then he’s on his feet, pulling on his clothes with jerky movements.
“I have to go.”
“Go where?” I sit up, pulling the throw blanket from the nearby armchair to cover myself. “What’s happening?”
He buttons his shirt wrong, curses, starts over. “I just have to go.”
The familiar pattern makes my stomach twist. This is how it always is with him. Disappearing without explanation. Leaving me in the dark.
“Arkady, please.” I stand, wrapping the blanket around myself. “Just tell me what’s going on.”
He looks at me then, and the expression on his face is agony. “I can’t. Not right now.”
“You mean you won’t.”
His jaw works. “Mirabel—”
“No.” The word comes out sharp. “You don’t get to do this. Not after—” I gesture at the rug, at the evidence of what we just did. “Not after that.”
Something flashes across his face—guilt, maybe, or frustration. But when he speaks, his voice is flat. “I’ll be back. We’ll talk then.”
“That’s what you always say.”
“Because it’s true.” He crosses to me, cups my face in both hands. “Whatever you need to tell me, it can wait. This can’t.”
“How do you know?” I demand. “You don’t even know what I was going to say.”
“Because I know that as long as you are under my roof, I can protect you from whatever it might be.” His thumbs stroke my cheekbones. “And I promise you, zaychik, we will deal with it. But first I have to—”
He stops, shakes his head. Kisses my forehead once, hard.
“I have to go.”
And then he’s striding toward the door, leaving me standing there wrapped in a blanket in the middle of his library.
“Arkady, wait—”
But he’s already gone. I hear his footsteps echoing through the house, then the sound of the front door, his car engine.
Then nothing.
I sink down onto the rug where we just made love, the Persian silk soft against my bare legs. The room still smells like him—cologne and sweat and sex. Evidence of his presence everywhere except where it matters.
He’s gone again.
And I have no idea where. No idea when he’ll be back. No idea what crisis just pulled him away from me.
Again.
The secrets between us feel heavier now. Mine about the kidnapping, about hearing Gavriil’s name, and the word Dubai. His about wherever he just disappeared to.
I press a hand to my stomach where his touch still lingers, where our combined heat still warms my skin. Where our baby grows. The words I was going to say sit trapped, unspoken.
Maybe that’s for the best.
Maybe some secrets are safer left buried.
But even as I think it, I know it’s a lie. Because in Arkady’s world, buried secrets don’t stay buried. They claw their way to the surface eventually.
And when they do, someone always bleeds.