Chapter 19
MARI
He lays me back on his mattress, and I don’t even try to argue with him.
There’s no fight left in me when it comes to him.
I don’t know if it’s the pregnancy hormones or the way he was so tender last night, but I need him more than I’ve ever needed anyone in my life.
The second he walked in the door, looking a little windswept, I hoped this was where we’d end up.
My hands are already in his hair, my knees parting to bracket his hips, and the world narrows to the heat between us and the weight of his body braced over mine. He checks my face like he’s reading a report. There’s a question in his gaze that doesn’t need to be asked out loud. I nod in answer.
He strips away my clothes slowly, with purpose, while he covers me with long, languid kisses. There is no rush to this, no push-and-pull for control. I’ve never seen him so unguarded and attentive.
Sex with Lev has been good. It’s been outstanding, in fact.
But it’s also been methodical and precise.
He knows what he’s doing, and he’s rightly confident in his skills.
Tonight, though, it’s as if all that precision has gone out the window.
He’s patient, taking his time, exploring every inch of me, pausing whenever a particularly eager sound escapes me.
I lose myself in the pleasure of it, in his warm mouth exploring my bare body, in his hands touching, squeezing, groping, and learning. When he slips his fingers inside my slick folds, I nearly come undone on the spot. My body is so keyed up, so finely attuned to his every movement.
It’s unbearable. It’s torture. It’s heaven.
“Lev,” I moan. “Please.”
My words become nonsense, aching cries of ecstasy as his fingers pump in and out of me.
Then his mouth joins his hand, and I’m falling apart in the most exquisite orgasm I’ve ever felt in my life.
It starts slowly, building in my core like molten lava, before it crashes over me and leaves my entire body lax.
“Mari?” Lev asks, my name almost a moan. “Are you okay?”
I can only nod and grab at his hair, pulling him up to me so I can kiss those sinful lips and taste the evidence of my desire on his tongue.
I moan again into his mouth, wrapping my legs around his waist. I feel his cock press against me, and I can’t help but grind into him. I need more of him, all of him.
Annoyingly, he’s still completely clothed, but his dick is straining so hard against his pants I can’t imagine he’s comfortable.
“Take off your clothes,” I say, the command making me feel almost drunk on power.
“Who’s running the show here?” he asks with a wicked smile.
“Please, for the love of everything good in this world, take off your clothes,” I say, pretending to beg.
He pulls back, slowly stripping away each layer, never breaking eye contact with me. His eyes flame with unmistakable passion as his hands move to his pants, removing the last barriers between us.
“Tell me what you want,” he says, his voice husky.
“Come here,” I say, reaching for him, beckoning him to me. He’s back, on top of me, all around me, touching and teasing every part of me he can reach.
He lines himself up with my entrance and presses inside me slowly, steady and careful, the way he hasn’t been before.
My breath stutters. His does too.
“Okay?” he asks, his voice rough.
“Yes,” I say, pulling him closer. “Don’t stop.”
He moves with control, but it isn’t cold.
He sets a pace that lets me breathe and feel every delicious inch of him.
One of his hands laces with mine and pins it above my head on the pillow.
The other steadies my hip. He watches my face for any sign of change, any trace of pleasure or pain.
Every time my breath hitches, he adjusts the angle, the depth, the rhythm until I’m melting into the bed.
I hook my leg around his waist and pull him even deeper. He lets out a loud, exultant moan. I tighten around him and his jaw locks, but he doesn’t lose the rhythm. He keeps me right there and waits for me to climb. It’s new and patient and adoring.
“Tell me,” he gasps. “What you need.”
“You,” I say, because it’s the only word I can find.
His mouth claims mine again, and I open for him. He kisses me sloppily, deeply, breathlessly. His fingers squeeze my hand, and the crush of it lands in my chest. I’m his and he’s mine and nothing outside the door gets a say.
I roll my hips as he thrusts inside me. Heat begins its slow crawl again from my stomach to my throat. He feels it too, and slows just enough to draw it out. The pull tightens and tightens. He doesn’t rush me.
He murmurs my name, low and sure, and the sound tips me over the edge. I come hard, clinging to him, breathing his name against his mouth. He holds on for just a moment longer, then follows with a rough exhale before burying his face in my neck.
We stay like that for a long time. His weight keeps me grounded.
My heart slows against his chest. The room goes quiet except for the soft shift of sheets and our breathing.
He rolls to his side and pulls me with him so I’m tucked against him, my leg over his.
His hand drifts to my stomach and rests there, barely a touch.
It’s not an accident. It makes my throat tight.
“That was new,” I whisper against his chest.
He studies the ceiling for a beat, then looks at me. His walls are still up, but a brick shifts.
“I don’t let people in,” he says. “You know that.”
I nod.
“I don’t love easily,” he adds quietly, like it costs him. “I don’t get attached. It’s safer that way. For everyone.”
“I know that,” I tell him honestly, stroking the skin on his pecs. “I don’t expect you to—”
“I had a wife,” he says, cutting me off.
Whatever I was going to say dies on my tongue. I wasn’t remotely expecting this confession. I can’t even imagine him with a wife. In an instant, I have to recalibrate absolutely everything I knew about him.
“We were young,” he continues. “Before any of this was as big as it is now. I thought I could keep the business in one box and her in another. I couldn’t.
People noticed that she mattered to me. They used it.
She died because of me. That’s the simple truth.
The softer version is I did everything I could and it wasn’t enough. ” He shakes his head once.
I lie there, processing his words. It’s a heavy confession. There is nothing I can do or say to make this better. My heart begins to ache for him so deeply that the tears start falling of their own accord.
“I’m sorry,” I say. It feels small and insignificant in the face of what he’s just admitted.
He nods like he doesn’t need the words but hears them anyway.
“Since then, I don’t give anyone leverage. Not friends. Not women. Not even my own people. The only person who gets to slow me down is Yuri, and that’s because he’d shoot me in the leg if it kept me from walking into something worse.”
A corner of my mouth lifts. “I absolutely believe that.”
“I don’t talk about her,” he continues. “I don’t like to talk about any of it. But Yuri said something today, and it reminded me that some things are worth fighting for.”
“What did he say?” I can’t help but ask, looking up at him, running my fingers through his hair.
“He said that I’m in love with you,” he admits boldly, without a hint of insecurity.
The room tilts a little. Suddenly I feel like I’m in a parallel universe with a different Lev saying this to a different Mari. Maybe they have it more together than the two of us do.
“I don’t say words I can’t protect,” he goes on, before I can say anything.
“I don’t know what I am with you yet, but I know I need you here.
I know I need you safe. I know the idea of you leaving burns through my head in the worst way.
And I know you’re carrying my child, and that changes every rule I thought I’d die following. ”
I swallow. My hand covers his where it still rests low on my stomach.
“I was ready to run,” I admit, because if he’s going to be honest, I have to be, too. “I had a plan. It wasn’t a good one. But I had one.”
He nods once. No surprise. “I know.”
“Of course you do.” I sigh. “You’ve got half the city watching me order lunch.”
“Look at me,” he says.
I do. His face is open in a way I haven’t seen before. There isn’t softness there, exactly, but there is clarity and conviction.
“I can’t promise you a version of life that looks normal,” he says. “I can promise I’ll put you and the baby first. Even when it pulls at the way I run things. Especially then.”
“You said you don’t say words you can’t protect,” I say.
“I meant it,” he says.
I lift our joined hands and rest them over my heart. “Okay,” I say.
“Okay,” he repeats, like he’s trying the word on in this new room we’ve made between us.
We lie there, quiet, until the quiet turns warm again. He doesn’t push. He lets me move first. I shift closer, and he understands. His hand slides down my spine, slow, and settles at my hip. He kisses me again, without rush or edge, and I open for him. When he rolls me under, I go willingly.
He takes his time. He checks in with every change. His mouth trails the line of my throat, then my collarbone, then lower, reverently. When his hands come back to my stomach, his touch gentles further, and the gentleness lights me up from the inside.
We move together. He keeps listening. I keep answering. The heat builds again, and he keeps me right on the line until I’m whispering pleas into his mouth. He gives it to me when I ask, not a second before, and I break apart in his arms. He follows, breath shuddering against my cheek.
Afterward, he stays. He pulls the sheet over us and tucks me in against his chest, holding me in place. His hand is back where it always goes. To our future. The wild, terrifying shape of it that I’m still trying to accept.
As his breath starts to change and his body begins to relax, I start to consider what life would be like with him.
It’s a future I hadn’t once let myself imagine before this moment.
I put my hand on my stomach and think about our little baby inside.
In a few months, he or she will be here, demanding every second of my attention, and I realize that I already love them so much.
And I love the idea of being with Lev. Maybe I do love him. It wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world to have this man caring for me, falling asleep next to me, raising our child.
That’s the thought that eventually lulls me into my own slumber.