Chapter 30
IVAN
My body deflates like a balloon as the color slowly but steadily returns to her face.
The terror strangling my throat finally loosens, and for the first time since she started gasping, my chest eases.
I’ve never been that scared in my life. Not even eight years ago when I thought I was about to watch my brother bleed out under Viktor’s hand. That memory still wakes me some nights, but this—this was worse. She couldn’t breathe, and it felt like the air had been ripped from my own lungs with hers.
She shifts in my arms like she wants down, and I tighten my hold, not ready to let her go. My throat burns with words I can’t swallow, my heart still hammering from the terror of almost losing her—even though she’s right here, solid and real against me.
Her eyes lift to mine, surprised, her brows knitting like she doesn’t understand why I’m holding on so tightly.
“Just let me hold you,” I mutter, my voice raw, harsher than I mean it to be.
Her hand lifts, her palm gently cupping my face, and the touch knocks the breath out of me all over again. I lean into it like a man starving for contact, inhaling deeply for the first time since her panic attack began.
“Your brother is fine.” I don’t know that for sure, but I will make it true if it’s the last damn thing I do. And God help anyone who tries to stand in my way.
Her fingers twitch against my cheek, and hope, poignant and painful, blooms across her face. “Really?”
My chest tightens as I nod. “Yes.”
Earlier, I didn’t want to give her false hope, so I kept my mouth shut and tried to wiggle out of her deal on a technicality. But then she went pale right before my eyes. I never want to see her like that again. Never.
“At first, I thought he might have been taken by our enemies because we’ve had a few of our men go missing these past few weeks.” I briefly explain the situation to her, and she nods solemnly. “But I received new information from my investigator last night.”
I walk her through Luciano Fontana’s last moves before he disappeared.
After he went to see Aleksei and got turned down, he started behaving strangely.
He created a fake birth certificate, passport, social security number, and insurance papers.
Then he bought supplies—batteries, ropes, a first aid kit.
Survival stuff. He also borrowed money from a few of his friends.
Promised he would pay them back soon because he was about to come into a lot of cash.
Everything about it points to the same conclusion.
Things a man about to go on the run would do.
“I think he decided to go under the radar on his own to solve your problem with Sciarra.”
Melani’s brow furrows, and she sighs heavily.
“He’s always felt responsible for what happened to us on the ship,” she says.
I give her a questioning look, and she continues, her voice going distant with memory.
“After we got word about what Papa had done, we knew we had to run. My uncle helped us get into Valencia from Sicily secretly, and from there we snuck onto a cargo vessel headed to New Jersey. None of the crew members knew we were there—just one of the deck officers. But he made it clear he wouldn’t take responsibility if we were discovered. ”
“And you were discovered,” I realize. That was inevitable. The journey from Spain to New Jersey takes a week at least. Staying hidden that long would have been nearly impossible.
She nods grimly. “Luciano got violently seasick. We had to leave the container we were smuggled in over and over again. That’s how they found us.
” Her voice grows quieter. “The crew wasn’t pleased.
They threatened to throw us overboard, but Mamma stepped in.
She begged them to let us stay, and they asked what we could offer in exchange.
We had nothing, but one of them said we did have something. Me.”
I see red. My arms tighten around her as rage floods my system, imagining those bastards putting their hands on her, hurting her, violating her.
But then I remember what she told me last night, that she had only been with one man before me, and the fury eases enough for me to breathe again. “So what happened?”
“Mamma intervened. Offered herself instead.” She sniffles, and I glance down to see her eyes glossy with tears. “She suffered a lot on that voyage. And Luciano has blamed himself ever since.”
I adjust her in my arms and use my thumb to wipe away the tears tracking down her cheeks. “He’ll be fine.”
“I hope so,” she says. “I hope he really did run away on his own and is trying to let go of those demons. Because Mamma doesn’t blame him at all. And neither do I.”
She pats my shoulder, squirming a little in my hold, and I reluctantly lower her to her feet. For what feels like the first time since we came up here, she finally takes in her surroundings. “I didn’t realize this place had a rooftop.”
I raise a brow as I follow her line of sight, but let the sudden change of topic pass. “It’s private. Not known to the public.”
The sprawling space is pretty much empty except for the helicopter landing pad off to one side—useful for the times I need to leave the city urgently and can’t deal with the endless traffic below.
Sometime between stepping out of the elevator and talking, the sun has slipped behind an ominously dark cloud. I glance up at it with a small frown.
If it rains, traffic will be a nightmare. I still need to get Aleksei’s tonight, and it’s on the other side of town.
“Flowers would thrive up here,” Melani breathes, doing a slow spin that makes her dress flutter around her legs, and I push thoughts of traffic away to give her my full attention.
“Imagine having a little flower garden with some swings and benches. We could hold barbecues up here.” Her eyes light up with excitement, and she takes quick steps away from me, gesturing animatedly.
We. Does she even realize what she just said? We could hold barbecues. Not ‘you could’ or ‘one could’—but we. My chest tightens as I watch her chatter away, pointing at where she envisions the swings and benches and grill.
“We’ll need to set up a water system for the plants and a small sink for washing dishes and stuff so we don’t have to carry everything back into the suite.”
There it is again. We. Does she really see herself staying here forever like I do? It almost makes me reconsider her request for freedom. Almost.
“Nobody comes up here unless strictly necessary,” I point out. “So the flowers would die.”
“You could hire a gardener.” She tosses me a cross look.
“But if you don’t want to, you could opt for cacti and succulents.
They’re pretty resilient and—” She reaches the railing mid-sentence and trails off, gasping at the view of the city below.
“Wow, this is so beautiful, Vanya.” She glances back at me with a sucker-punch of a grin that knocks the breath out of my lungs.
“Very beautiful,” I agree, and she laughs.
“You’re not even looking at the view.”
“I’m looking at the best view.” The only view that matters.
I close the distance between us and color rushes into her cheeks, a soft blush that deepens into a pretty shade of red that makes my cock stir. I now know that blush extends all the way down to the tops of her delicious tits. The memory makes my mouth water.
A sudden bolt splits the sky, bright enough to bleach the air white for a half-second. As it fades, deep rumbling thunder rolls in, carried on a freezing gust of wind. Melani shivers. “We should go inside.”
Instead, I step into her space and spin her around so she’s facing the railing and the glittering city below. My chest settles against her back, her spine fitting perfectly against me, and I lower my face to the curve of her neck.
“Cold?” I mutter against her skin. “I’ll warm you.”
I grip the railing on one side and wrap my other arm around her waist, pulling her firmly against me until she can feel my hardening cock.
She mumbles something incomprehensible under her breath but leans into me anyway, letting her head fall back onto my shoulder, giving me more, and I take it, breathing her in, biting down until she gasps.
“Vanya!” she laughs, squirming when I wedge my knee between her legs and nudge them apart. “We’re outside. Anyone could see us.”
“Shhh.” I grind against her ass, already straining in my pants.
“The storm drove everyone inside. No one sees you but me. No one ever will,” I promise, moving the hand on the railing to palm her beautiful tit while the other slips beneath the hem of her dress.
I could kiss her for making access so easy by wearing what I left out for her.
I squeeze through the thin fabric, my thumb brushing over her nipple until it stiffens under my touch. She jerks when I tug at it, her back arching into me. My other hand gathers her dress and pushes it up her thighs until I have her bare to the elements.
When my fingers find her, a groan rips from my chest, and my cock throbs painfully at the feel of her already wet for me. I slide through her folds slowly at first, teasing, applying just enough pressure to make her hips chase my hand.
She tries to stifle the sound building in her throat, but when I press harder, circling her clit, a whimper escapes.
“Fuck… that’s it,” I growl against her neck, sucking hard until I know I’ll leave a mark. “Let me hear you.”
My finger slides inside her, and I savor the way her walls grip me, drawing me deeper.
I curl it slowly, pumping once, twice, before adding another.
She writhes against me as I stretch her, my thumb still working her clit in steady, relentless circles.
She starts to lose control, moaning my name over and over, her voice getting progressively louder.
I feel her tightening, her whole body trembling against mine, but I keep pushing, curling, rubbing, driving her higher while ignoring my straining cock leaking in my pants.
I don’t let up on her until she’s unraveling in my arms. She breaks hard, screaming my name into the gathering storm as her head falls back to my shoulder.
The sound tears through me just as another jagged lightning bolt splits the sky, chased by deep, violent thunder that rattles my bones.
Her cunt clamps down on my fingers, wet and pulsing, and the sensation steals the air from my lungs. Feeling her come undone on my hand is almost more than I can bear.
For one charged moment, the air crackles with so much electricity I swear I might actually get electrocuted. Then the sky opens. Rain crashes down in a sudden, brutal sheet, soaking my shirt in seconds. But my entire focus remains locked on her. On us. This moment.
I step back just long enough to wrench my belt open. My zipper follows, and I drag my aching cock out, groaning at the relief. Without wasting another second, I grip her hip, line myself up at her entrance, then drive into her in one sharp thrust.
“Fuck,” I hiss as the heat of her closes around me, burning through the icy rain. I bury myself to the hilt, my chest heaving against her back.
Lightning explodes across the sky, and I move with it, pounding into her as relentlessly as the rain is falling, my hips slamming against her ass.
She cries out with every thrust, her voice raw and broken, mixing with the storm’s fury.
I grab her breast again, rougher this time, fingers digging possessively, thumb rubbing over her nipple through the soaked fabric of her dress.
With my other hand, I lock onto her hip, dragging her back into me, making her take all of me.
The elevator suddenly chimes, and she goes rigid, panic flashing through her body. But I don’t stop. I can’t. Baring my teeth, I roar over the rain towards the elevator in dark Russian, “Get lost if you don’t want to lose your fucking eyes!”
The elevator doors slide shut, taking with them whoever it was, and just like that, we’re alone again. Melani melts back against me, her cunt clenching around my cock so tightly I see stars.
“Look at me,” I snarl in her ear, biting her lobe as my pace turns punishing.
“You feel what you do to me? You hear yourself? You’re mine.
” I should stop all this possessive talk.
It’s starting to get to me even when we’re not fucking, working its way into my thoughts during meetings, in the car, every goddamn moment of the day.
But I can’t help it. Every fiber of my being comes alive and screams mine whenever she’s near.
She claws at my forearm, her cries climbing higher, sharper, more desperate. She’s coming apart again, her cunt gripping me like a vise, milking me. Her scream rips free, louder than the thunder rolling overhead.
“That’s it, Milani,” I growl as I slam deep one final time, groaning her name against her wet skin as I explode inside her, pulsing until there’s nothing left inside me.
Rain continues to hammer down on us, and the thunder keeps rolling. But inside the chaos, I feel nothing but profound, impossible peace. I hold her crushed against me, my cock still buried inside her, my mouth pressed to her rain-soaked hair as I breathe her in like air itself.
I’ll never let her go.