Chapter Thirty-Seven
Arkady
The bedroom is dark and silent.
Mirabel shifts beside me, her back to my chest, her leg draped across my thigh. Even heavily pregnant, she fits against me like she was made for this configuration. My palm rests across the swell of her belly where our baby sleeps.
I haven’t slept. Can’t. Every time I close my eyes, I see the engagement party: muzzle flashes in the garden, Dmitri’s body folding as the bullet tears through him, my father’s face in the Dragunov’s scope. My finger on the trigger. Not firing.
Four days since the attack. Four days of reinforced perimeter sweeps, background checks on every vendor who touched the property, and enough security briefings to make my teeth ache.
But this—Mirabel breathing slow and even against me—this is the first time the noise in my skull has dropped below a roar.
She’s not asleep either. I can tell by the way she’s holding herself, too still, her breathing too measured.
“Can we talk about what happened at the party?” Her voice filters through the dark, low and careful.
There it is. The conversation we’ve been circling.
I don’t answer immediately. I run my thumb along the curve of her hip, feeling the new weight pregnancy has added to her frame. She’s rounder now, softer. I love it.
“We haven’t really talked about it since it happened,” she continues. “I know you’ve been busy with security, but—”
“It was expected.” The words come out flat.
I soften them by pressing my lips to the curve of her shoulder, tasting salt and the faint remnant of her citrus body wash.
“The reason he couldn’t get through the gate was that I had the best security money can buy.
Military-grade surveillance. Kill zones marked to the centimeter.
Men who shoot first and check credentials never. ”
“He still came.” She turns in my arms, and now we’re face to face. Her eyes find mine. “He brought guns to our engagement party, Arkady.”
“Da. He did.” I trace the line of her jaw with my knuckles. “And he left in a convoy with five fewer men than he arrived with. That’s the language he understands. Force met with superior force.”
“Debra.” Mirabel’s hand comes up to cover mine. “She’s terrified. Every time a car door slams or someone walks too heavily down the hall, she flinches. I can see her disappearing back into herself.”
“Debra is protected. Twenty-four-hour armed security. Yanis barely leaves her side.” I stop. Swallow. “And my father knows that if he touches her again, if he so much as breathes in her direction, I will end him.”
“You had him in your scope.” She says it quietly. Not harsh. Just factual. “Stefan told me.”
Blyad. Of course Stefan told her.
“I did. Clean shot. Wind was minimal. Well within range.” I pull her closer, needing the contact. “I didn’t take it.”
“What made you stop?”
The question I’ve been asking myself for three days.
“Killing him in front of sixty guests would have turned our engagement into a scene you’d remember every time you looked at your wedding ring. Because Dmitri was already dead and adding one more body wouldn’t bring him back.”
“And?” She knows me too well. Knows when I’m telling partial truths.
“Because… he’s my father, Mirabel.” The admission scrapes my throat raw on the way out. “The man who gave me life. I owe him something for that.”
Her palm finds my jaw. Warm. Steady.
“That man is dead, Arkady.”
“I know. But knowing and accepting are different things, zaychik.”
She shifts closer, eliminating the last inch between us. Her belly presses firm and round against my stomach. The proof that I’m building something instead of just destroying.
“Our family is the most important thing now.” I let her hear the rawness beneath the words. “You. Our daughter. Aleks. Debra. Everyone under this roof is mine to protect. And I will never let Gavriil Laurov hurt any of you.”
Something shifts in her expression. The fear doesn’t disappear—fear is smart when the threat is real—but it makes room for something else.
“I believe you,” she says.
Two simple words. And yet they mean everything.
I kiss her because I don’t know what else to do with what’s flooding my chest. My mouth finds hers in the dark, and she opens for me immediately. The kiss starts gentle—reassurance, promise—but heat builds fast between us the way it always does.
She makes a small sound against my mouth, and the noise travels straight to my cock. I’m hard already, and she’s rolling her hips, seeking friction.
“Arkady—”
“I need you.” I don’t frame it as a request. This thing between us has never been about asking. It’s about claiming and being claimed in equal measure.
“Yes.” Her hands are already sliding over my torso, nails scraping across my stomach.
I roll her onto her back, careful of the baby, and settle between her thighs.
She’s wearing one of my T-shirts and nothing else.
I push the fabric up to expose her breasts—fuller now with pregnancy, the nipples darker, more sensitive.
I palm one, feeling the weight, then lower my head to take the other into my mouth.
She gasps, fingers tangling in my hair. I work her with my tongue, alternating between soft licks and harder suction, finding the rhythm that makes her breathing stutter and her thighs tense around my hips.
“Too sensitive,” she manages, but her hand on the back of my head keeps me exactly where I am.
I release her and kiss my way across to the other breast, giving it the same attention. Every time I think I’ve memorized her body, pregnancy changes the landscape. New curves. New responses.
My hand slides down her side, over her hip, between her legs. She’s wet already, slick and hot against my fingers. I stroke her through the cotton, feeling the shape of her, the way she swells and opens under my touch.
“Take them off.” She’s breathless. Desperate.
I hook my fingers in the waistband and drag her panties down her legs, tossing them into the dark. Then I’m touching her properly, fingers sliding through her wetness, finding her clit and circling it with the pressure I know undoes her.
“Blyad, you’re soaked.” I watch her face as I work her—the flutter of her eyes, the part of her lips, the flush spreading across her chest. “All this for me, zaychik?”
“Don’t tease. Not tonight.”
She’s right. Tonight isn’t for games. Tonight is about reconnection after trauma. Reassurance that we’re both still here. Still whole.
I withdraw my hand, and she makes a noise of protest that dies the moment I settle between her legs, the head of my cock nudging against her entrance. I shove my briefs down, line up, and push inside with one slow, deliberate thrust.
The heat of her. The tight, wet grip of her body around mine. I have to stop. Have to breathe through the urge to just lose myself.
“Okay?” I ask because pregnancy changes things, and I’m aware of the life between us.
“More than okay.” Her legs wrap around my hips, heels digging into my arse. “Move, Arkady. Please.”
I start slow, withdrawing almost completely before sliding back in. She’s having none of it. Her hips rise to meet mine, demanding more, harder, faster. So I give it to her. Deep and steady, each thrust hitting the spot that makes her gasp and claw at my shoulders.
The bed frame creaks beneath us. Around the house, security works tirelessly. But here it’s just us. Skin and sweat and the intimacy of two people who’ve seen each other at their worst and chosen to stay.
I drop my head to the curve of her neck, tasting the pulse there. My hand finds her breast again as I drive into her. She’s making those sounds—half-gasps, half-moans—that tell me she’s close.
“Touch yourself,” I tell her, lifting enough to watch. “Show me what you need.”
Her hand slides between us, fingers finding her clit. I watch her work herself, the concentration on her face, the way her breathing shifts as she builds. There’s something profoundly erotic about watching her take her own pleasure while I’m inside her.
“That’s it, zaychik. Take what you need from me.”
Her free hand grips my shoulder, nails biting into muscle hard enough to leave marks. I welcome it. Use the sting to anchor myself when the pressure at the base of my spine threatens to tip too soon.
“Arkady… I’m—” She doesn’t finish. Her body clenches around me in rhythmic pulses as she comes. The sensation is exquisite. Nearly unbearable. I grit my teeth and ride it out, prolonging her pleasure with shallow thrusts until she’s shaking and pushing at my chest, oversensitive.
Only then do I chase my own. I pull out long enough to turn her onto her side, then fit myself behind her, lifting her leg for access. This angle is safer for the baby and lets me go deeper. I slide back inside, and she whimpers, still tender.
“One more,” I murmur against her ear, my hand spreading across her stomach. “Give me one more.”
I know her body now. Know exactly how to move to build her back up even when she thinks she’s done. Slow, deep rolls of my hips while my fingers find her clit again, swollen and sensitive. She tries to squirm away, but I hold her in place, relentless.
“Can’t! Arkady, I can’t—”
“You can.” I bite down on her shoulder. Not hard enough to bruise. Enough to ground her. “You will.”
And she does. Her second orgasm is quieter than the first but no less intense, rippling through her in waves that I feel around my cock.
That’s what breaks me. I bury myself deep and let go, spilling inside her with a groan I don’t bother muffling.
The release is physical but also something more—a purging of the tension I’ve carried since I watched my father’s convoy disappear down the driveway.
We stay locked together as the aftershocks fade, both breathing hard, slick with sweat. Eventually, I withdraw, and she makes a small noise, reaching back to grip my hip.
I pull her back against me, arranging us so her head rests on my bicep and my arm drapes across her stomach. Under my palm, something moves. A flutter, then a definite push.
I go still.
“Did you feel that?” Mirabel’s voice is soft.
“Da.” I press my palm firmer against her belly, and the baby kicks again. Stronger. A tiny foot or elbow announcing itself. “She’s awake.”
“She likes it when you touch me. Always gets active after we’re together.”
This is my daughter. This impossible, fragile life I helped create. Soon, she’ll be here. In my arms. Completely dependent on me to keep her alive.
Baby Aleks is asleep in the nursery two doors down, watched over by Fanny and the security detail stationed in that wing. Before long, Aleks will have a big sister. Two children who will grow up knowing their father chose them. Chose to build instead of destroy.
And they’ll all be safe. Every single one of them. Mirabel, Debra, Aleks, this daughter pressing against my palm.
I’ll make sure of it.
“What are you thinking?” Mirabel asks, her thumb stroking my knuckles.
She already knows. The woman in my arms is many things, but naive isn’t one of them. She knows what I am. What I’m capable of. What I’ll do to protect this family.
“I’m thinking that you and our children are the best thing I never knew I needed. And that I’d raze Moscow itself before I let anything happen to any of you.”
She’s quiet for a moment. Then: “That’s very romantic in a terrifying, slightly unhinged way.”
“It’s the only way I know how to be.”
“I know.” She turns her head to catch my mouth in a soft kiss. “And I love you anyway. Maybe because of it.”
“Ya tozhe tebya lyublyu,” I murmur against her lips. In Russian, because some things feel more real in my native language. More binding.
The baby kicks again. Our daughter. Already demanding attention.
“We need to pick a name,” Mirabel says through a yawn. “We can’t keep calling her ‘the baby’ forever.”
“Tomorrow.” I pull the sheet up around her shoulders. “Sleep now, zaychik.”
She mumbles something that might be agreement and goes boneless against me, her breathing evening out as exhaustion claims her. I hold her through the descent, my hand never leaving the place where our daughter rests.
Beyond the bulletproof glass, our team is vigilant, all systems primed to keep the wolf from the door.
For tonight, my family is safe.
Tomorrow I’ll start planning how to make that permanent.