Chapter Twenty-Five
Mirabel
I stand up and let my legs carry me back to my bedroom.
Just a few hours ago, I was going to leave for good. The duffel bag still sits by the door where I dropped it, mocking me. All those carefully folded clothes. The toiletries wrapped in plastic bags. The ultrasound photo tucked into my wallet.
I’d been so sure.
I draw the curtains. The late afternoon sun is too bright, too cheerful, too much. The darkness helps. Makes the room feel smaller. Safer. Like I can hide here, and the world will forget I exist for a little while.
Fuck, this is insane!
I lie on the bed I thought I’d never sleep on again. The same sheets. The same pillow I’ve slept on since I arrived. Yet everything feels different. My body sinks into the mattress, and I stare at the ceiling, counting the crown molding details I’ve memorized over the past months.
The tears come.
I don’t know what they are. Sad or happy or just frustrated. Maybe all three. Maybe none of them. My head is reeling with all the information that would be too much even for a crappy soap opera.
My sister is alive.
Arkady saved her.
He’s been hiding her here while I cleaned and cooked and fucked him, never knowing she was twenty feet above my head.
Baby Aleks is not a betrayal—he’s an orphan. A baby Arkady chose to raise, even though he swore he’d never have children. Even though the paternity is questionable.
And I’m pregnant. With his baby. The baby I was about to run away with.
The tears keep coming, hot and messy, soaking into my hair and the pillow beneath me. My throat tightens. I curl onto my side, hand pressed to my stomach where our child grows, and let myself break.
Because Debra is alive.
Because she suffered things I can’t even imagine.
Because Arkady saved her, and I wanted to hate him for keeping secrets.
Because I love him anyway.
God, I love him. Despite everything. Maybe because of everything.
The crying exhausts me. My eyes burn. My throat aches. The pillow is damp beneath my cheek, and I don’t have the energy to move.
Then I fall asleep. Maybe just half-asleep. That in-between place where nothing feels solid.
The pictures continue, jumbled up in time and space.
Debra.
I see her at eighteen, laughing on the school trip, her face identical to mine in the reflection of a shop window. Then I see her the way she looked today—thin, haunted, flinching at shadows. The two images overlap, refusing to reconcile. How does one person become the other?
Endless torment, that’s how. Fuck. I can’t even imagine what she’s lived through.
The pain of missing her crashes over me. All those years searching. All those sleepless nights. All those times I felt her presence, heard her voice, convinced myself I was going insane because dead people can’t talk to you.
Except she wasn’t dead.
Then I see her pain. Feel it like it’s mine. Because we’re twins. Because what hurts her hurts me. The violation. The fear. The endless days bleeding into endless nights with no escape, no hope, nothing but survival.
My stomach cramps. Nausea rolls through me—pregnancy or horror, I can’t tell.
Gratitude swells next. For Arkady. He saved her. Pulled her out of that hell. Gave her space to heal. Protected her, even when it meant lying to me. Even when it meant I’d hate him.
But the anger is there too. Sharp and hot. He kept her from me. Let me grieve. Let me search. Let me think I’d failed her.
The emotions cycle through me on repeat, too fast to process. Love and rage and grief and relief until I can’t tell which is which anymore.
Then there’s the pull toward Arkady. The need for him that I can’t explain. It’s not just physical, though God knows my body wants him. It’s deeper. Like he’s become necessary. Like I’ve folded him into myself and can’t extract him without bleeding out.
The protectiveness surges next. For my baby. For the tiny cluster of cells inside me that will become a person—our person. A life we made in secret, in darkness, in the space between control and surrender.
Babies, I should say.
Because I feel it for baby Aleks, too. Poor little thing. What a start to life. His mother dead by her own hand. His father possibly the man raising him or possibly not. Unwanted by the family that should have claimed him. Orphaned in every way that matters.
Except Arkady chose him. Chose him despite his vow. Chose him when he could have walked away.
That has to mean something.
I feel a hand on my shoulder.
I don’t know if it’s real or part of my dream. Sleep and waking have blurred together. But the touch feels solid. Warm. Familiar.
Then I feel the warmth of a body at my back. The mattress dips with his weight. He fits himself against me, chest to my spine, legs tucking behind mine. The position is protective, possessive, like he’s trying to shield me even while we sleep.
Then a hand reaches under my top and strokes my back. Slow circles. Gentle pressure. The kind of touch that soothes without demanding anything in return.
Then lips kiss my neck. Soft. Reverent. Like I’m something precious instead of something broken.
I don’t want to wake up.
If this is a dream, I want to stay here forever.
I’m conscious, I’m awake, but I can’t open my eyes. My body knows it’s him. The weight. The scent. The way he breathes. But my mind can’t quite catch up. I’m trapped in that space where I’m nothing but nerve endings and his hands on my skin.
I open my eyes for one second, and in that fraction of a second, I see him. He’s stripped off his shirt. Lean muscle and dense ink. The wings that climb his throat. The latent power I’ve been unable to resist from the first moment I saw him.
Then my eyes close again. Too heavy. Too much effort.
I can’t speak. My consciousness is half back. I can only feel the world with my body.
His hand slides from my back to my hip, fingertips tracing the curve of my waist. The touch is worshipful. Slow. Like he’s memorizing the shape of me. He hooks his fingers under the waistband of my leggings, and I lift my hips without thinking—instinct, not intention—and he slides them down.
Cool air hits my skin. Then his palm, warm and rough against my thigh.
“Mirabel.” His voice is raw. Broken. “Zaychik, I need—”
He doesn’t finish. Can’t finish. But I understand anyway.
He needs me. Needs this. Needs to be close to someone who won’t break if he touches them wrong.
I reach back blindly, finding his thigh, his hip, pulling him closer. He understands. Doesn’t need words.
His breath hitches. Then his hands are everywhere—peeling off my top, unhooking my bra, tracing every inch of skin he uncovers. But it’s not frantic. Not desperate.
It’s tender.
God, it’s so tender it hurts.
He kisses my shoulder. The curve of my neck. The space behind my ear where I’m most sensitive. Each kiss says what he can’t. I’m sorry. I want you. Don’t leave.
I turn in his arms, still unable to open my eyes fully, and find his mouth with mine. The kiss is soft at first. Hesitant. Like we’re both afraid of breaking this fragile thing between us.
Then it deepens.
His tongue slides against mine, and I taste something desperate in it. Something that feels like fear. Like need so raw it has teeth.
I pull him closer, needing to feel his weight, his heat, his solid presence. My hands find his chest—the muscle, the ridges of ink beneath my palms, the steady thrum of his heartbeat.
He’s trembling.
Arkady Laurov—dangerous, controlled, always three steps ahead—is trembling against me.
I pull back just enough to whisper against his lips. “I’m here.”
He makes a sound—half groan, half exhale—and kisses me harder. His hands slide down my sides, over my hips, gripping my ass and pulling me flush against him. I feel how hard he is, feel the rigid length of him pressed between us, but he doesn’t rush.
He just holds me. Kisses me like I’m oxygen and he’s been holding his breath for days.
My eyes crack open for another second. His face is so close I can see every detail—the sharp line of his jaw, the way his lashes cast shadows on his cheekbones, the vulnerability in his expression that he never lets anyone see.
I tug at the waistband of his pants, wanting to feel his skin.
He lifts his hips and pulls them down, kicking them away before settling against me again.
His legs are warm and strong, the coarse hair bristling against my skin.
I hook my calf between them, pulling him closer, grinding my mound against his hard cock.
Then he shifts, pressing me onto my back, and my eyes close again.
Too much. Everything is too much.
His body covers mine, solid and warm and safe. One hand slides between us, finding the heat between my thighs. His fingers move over me with maddening slowness—gentle circles, light pressure against my clit—and I arch into his touch with a soft moan.
“That’s it,” he murmurs against my collarbone. “Let me take care of you.”
I’m not sure who’s taking care of who.
His fingers slide inside me, and I gasp, clenching around the intrusion. He curls them just right, stroking that spot that always sends me over the edge, and I’m already close. Already shaking.
“Arkady—”
“I know.” He kisses the swell of my breast. “Come for me, zaychik.”
The orgasm hits slowly at first, then all at once. My body tightens around his fingers, thighs shaking, breath caught in my throat. He doesn’t stop. Just keeps working me through it, drawing it out until I’m boneless and gasping.
When I come down, he withdraws his hand and positions himself at my entrance. Pauses.
“Look at me,” he says softly.
I force my eyes open. Meet his gaze. His eyes are raw. Open. Completely unguarded.
“I need you,” he says. Not a demand. Just truth. “I need this.”
“Then take it.” My voice is hoarse. “Take me.”
He slides inside with one slow thrust, and we both go still.
The sensation is overwhelming. Not just physical—though God, he feels incredible—but emotional. Like every wall between us has crumbled, and there’s nothing left but this. Him inside me. My legs wrapped around his hips. Our hearts beating in sync.
He drops his forehead to mine. “Mirabel—”
“Don’t talk.” I cup his face with both hands. “Just feel.”
So he does.
He moves inside me with a rhythm that’s neither fast nor slow. Just steady. Deliberate. Each thrust measured, like he’s trying to memorize every second of this.
I can’t keep my eyes open. Can only feel—his skin against mine, the pull and stretch as he fills me, the way my body yields to his like it was made for this.
His hands are everywhere. Cupping my breast. Stroking my thigh. Tangling in my hair. Tracing the line of my spine. Like he’s trying to touch every part of me at once, trying to prove to himself I’m really here.
“You’re mine,” he says against my throat. “Say it.”
“Yours.” The word falls from my lips without hesitation. “I’m yours.”
He groans, the sound vibrating through his chest into mine. His thrusts become faster, harder, but still not rough. Still tender despite the desperation bleeding through.
I tighten around him, and he curses in Russian—something filthy from the sound of it, and it’s so damned hot I clench tighter around him.
“Come with me,” he demands. “Need to feel you— Need—”
“Yes.” I’m already there, already tipping over again. “Yes, Arkady, yes—”
We fall together.
The pleasure crashes through me, stealing my breath, turning my bones liquid. I feel him pulse inside me, feel the warmth as he comes, and the intimacy of it—of him coming undone inside me—makes tears leak from beneath my closed lids.
He collapses onto me, burying his face in the curve of my neck, breathing hard.
We lie tangled together, sweat-slicked and trembling, and there are no words. No explanations. No apologies or promises.
Just this.
Him inside me. My arms around him. Our breathing gradually slowing, syncing, becoming one rhythm instead of two.
His hand finds my stomach—the slight swell that’s barely visible but that we both know is there. He spreads his fingers wide, palm flat against my skin, and I feel the reverence in the gesture.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers finally. “For everything.”
“I know.”
“I should have told you—”
“Shh.” I stroke his hair. “Not now.”
He nods against my shoulder. Then he carefully withdraws and shifts us so we’re lying face to face, legs still intertwined, foreheads touching.
His thumb brushes across my cheekbone, wiping away the tears I didn’t realize were falling.
“Sleep,” he says softly. “I’ve got you.”
And God help me, I believe him.
I let my eyes close fully. Let the exhaustion pull me under. Let myself trust that when I wake up, he’ll still be here.
His arm tightens around my waist. His breath is warm against my lips. And in that moment, with his heartbeat steady beneath my palm and his child growing inside me and my sister alive upstairs, everything feels like it might be okay.
Not perfect.
Not without scars.
But okay.
I fall asleep in his arms.