EPILOGUE
INESSA
Iwake to Yuri's mouth on my throat, his teeth scraping the sensitive skin where my pulse hammers beneath the surface.
My body arches toward him before my mind fully surfaces from sleep.
"You were dreaming," he murmurs against my collarbone.
His voice is heavy with sleep and hunger. "Calling my name."
"Was I?" My fingers find the thick hair at the nape of his neck, holding him closer.
The baby flutters inside me, responding to our movement, and Yuri's hand immediately covers the swell of my belly through the thin silk of my nightgown.
I'm not far along, but it was inevitable the way he devours my body every night.
"Always restless."
His palm spreads wide, possessive.
"Both of you."
His teeth continue their assault on my neck, but his hands are greedy, pulling me against his body so I can feel his hardness press into my thigh.
His bare skin under my touch is hot, and the tattoos that snake his arms and decorate his skin only outwardly display his nature and the personality inside of him.
I trace the winding body of the snake that coils on his shoulder.
"The serpent suits you," I tell him.
"You suit me better."
He kisses me, sucking my lip into his mouth as he slides his hand up my back and pulls my hair so my head is forced backward, giving him access to my neck.
When he pulls away, his eyes hold that look—the one that still makes my breath catch after six months of marriage.
Hunger mixed with tenderness, possession tempered by worship.
"Rosa made blini," he says, though neither of us moves to get up.
"She's been cooking since dawn, convinced you need to eat more."
Ever since Rosa learned there was a new Gravitch heir, she's been mothering me more than ever.
I'm thankful for her in my life.
I'm not sure what I'd do without someone to help guide me through all these hormones.
"I eat plenty."
My hand moves to cover his where it rests on my belly.
"The baby is healthy."
"Our baby."
He says it with the same reverence he uses when he tells me he loves me.
Everything important gets that tone from him—absolute focus, complete commitment.
It brings a smile to my face because I know how deadly this man is, how terrifying.
And yet he chooses to be tender with me, and it melts me every time.
"Our baby," I agree and feel the flutter of movement beneath our joined hands.
Two months ago, when the doctor confirmed what I suspected, Yuri didn't speak for a full ten minutes.
Then he lifted me onto his desk, pushed everything else aside, and made love to me like it was our wedding night all over again.
He's horrible at saying how he feels, but I'm learning to read him like a book, and when he's ready, he puts those things into words for me.
Now he tracks my every breath, monitors my sleep, and has Rosa report on everything I eat.
The attention would suffocate most women.
It intoxicates me.
His hovering is endearing, and I can only say that because the instant I tell him to back off, he does.
"I need to review the Milan contracts today," I say, but I'm in no hurry to leave the bed where we lie naked and tangled together.
It's warm, and the air in this room is chilled to a balmy temperature thanks to his air conditioning.
"They can wait."
"The Tokyo buyers arrive this afternoon."
"Dmitri can handle the initial meeting."
His dismissal of business responsibilities would've horrified me once.
Now I understand.
Some moments matter more than profit margins.
For him, this moment must matter more.
So I snuggle in closer to him, slide my hand beneath the blanket to wrap around his girth, and find him responsive to my touch.
"Do you regret forcing me to marry you instead of finding someone who chose you freely?"
My mind wanders to that topic too often to let it go, and I've asked this question before, but I love hearing his answer because it always ignites hunger in him for me.
Yuri's laugh is dark with amusement.
"You think you didn't choose me?"
"I think I had a gun pointed at my ribs."
"For the ceremony, yes."
His thumb traces circles on my belly.
"But you chose me every day after. When you could've run, you stayed. When you could've fought me, you fought beside me instead."
I remember the day I killed my mother—how Yuri stood behind me afterward, letting me process what I'd done.
When I finally turned to him, expecting judgment or disgust, I found only acceptance.
It was self-defense, and it wasn't supposed to be that way, but I can't undo the past.
I think that was the moment I realized why my father wanted me to marry into this family.
If not Yuri, Dominic would've done it for me.
I’ve changed, become a different woman than I was, and the person I was before would never have survived without Batya here.
"You made me stronger," I admit.
"I revealed what was already there."
"The same thing…" I continue stroking him, feeling his body pulse with desire for me.
These intimate moments are priceless to me.
It isn't just our bodies that are bared; it's our souls.
We're exposing our very hearts to one another and the fact that Yuri is willing to be so vulnerable with me means we will be strong together elsewhere.
I feel it in my gut.
"No."
His hand slides up to cup my breast, thumb brushing over the sensitive peak through silk.
"You had the capacity for strength from the beginning. You just needed someone to demand it from you."
Heat pools low in my belly, the familiar response to his touch magnified by pregnancy hormones.
I shift against him, feeling his body respond immediately as his hips push harder against my stroking hand.
"We should get up," I say in a hollow tone, but I don't mean it.
"Should we?"
His mouth finds that spot behind my ear that makes me gasp.
"I can think of better ways to spend the morning."
"Rosa will wonder where we are."
"Rosa knows exactly where we are and what we're doing."
His teeth graze my earlobe.
"The entire compound knows."
The thought sends another wave of heat through my system.
Let them know.
Let them hear how thoroughly their Pakhan claims his wife, how completely she surrenders to him.
I know how scandalous it seems to many of them, that I am half his age and yet so thoroughly his.
I don't care.
I am my beloved's and he is mine, and I won't apologize for what I want and who I am any longer.
Yuri rolls me beneath him, careful of my belly, his weight supported on his forearms.
In this light, with his hair falling across his forehead and his eyes dark with lust, he looks younger.
Not the man who terrifies enemies and commands absolute loyalty, but simply the man who loves me.
"I dreamed about you last night," I tell him, my hands sliding down the hard planes of his back as I spread my knees and let him settle against my pelvis.
"What did you dream?"
"We were old. Gray-haired and wrinkled, sitting in the garden while our children played at our feet."
"Children? Plural?"
"Three of them. Two boys and a girl."
I can see them clearly even now—dark-haired children with Yuri's eyes and my stubborn chin.
"The girl was the youngest, and the most dangerous."
Yuri's smile is feral.
"She would have to be, to survive in our world."
Our world…
A year ago, I thought of it as his world, my father's world—a place of violence and power that I was forced to live in.
Now I understand it's ours because we make it ours.
We're partners and equals, and he makes me understand more every day.
"She'll be beautiful," I continue, lost in the vision.
"Beautiful and deadly, with men lining up to court her and you threatening to kill every one of them."
"I will kill every one of them."
"Even if she loves one?"
"Especially then."
His hand moves to my throat, fingers gentle but possessive around the column of my neck.
"No one will be good enough for our daughter."
"You weren't good enough for me, according to most people."
"Most people don't matter."
"No," I agree, pulling him down for another kiss.
"They don't."
His lips greedily crush my mouth as his hand applies soft pressure to my neck.
My nails rake across his skin as his hips grind into me.
It's so close to being perfect, but then if it were, how would he ever improve upon it?
And he does, every day.
Every moment with him is better than the last.
"I used to imagine what it would feel like to be loved," I say when his lips pull away from mine to nibble my ear again.
"And?"
"I thought it would be gentle and safe."
I laugh softly.
"I never imagined it would feel like drowning and flying at the same time."
"Is that what this feels like?"
"Yes."
I lift my head to meet his gaze.
"Terrifying and exhilarating and absolutely necessary."
His expression grows serious.
"I never expected to love again. After Yelena died, I thought that part of me was buried with her."
He rarely speaks of her.
I think he tries to respect me in that, but I don’t mind.
I'm not in competition with the ghost of his dead wife.
"Do you think she would approve?" I ask.
"She would understand."
His hand moves to cradle my face.
"She knew what our world demands, how rare it is to find someone strong enough to stand beside you instead of behind you."
We both know it's true.
In the wreckage of our separate losses—his son, my father, my carefully planned future—we discovered something neither of us expected.
And now we're better for it.
The partnership we're forming, an alliance between my family's legacy and his empire, will control all of St. Petersburg in under five years, and perhaps all of Russia one day.
The sound of voices in the garden draws our attention to the window.
Oleg's deep rumble mixes with Alexei's lighter tone as they discuss security rotations.
Normal sounds of our protected world, as familiar now as breathing.
"I should check the overnight reports," Yuri says, though still he makes no move to leave the bed.
"And I should review the production schedules."
I settle more comfortably against him.
"In a few minutes."
"A few minutes," he agrees as his lips cover my mouth again.
This time, the heat is searing and his body more demanding.
I yield to him as he fills me and his teeth nip at my skin near my pulse point.
"I love you," I tell him, and it's a promise renewed with each sunrise.
"And I love you."
He turns his head to capture my mouth again.
"My wife. My queen. The mother of my children."
I laugh against his lips.
"Just this one child for now."
"For now."
His smile holds promises that make my pulse quicken.
"But not forever."
"You'll keep me barefoot and pregnant?"
I say playfully as his hips begin rolling against mine.
"So long as your body continues to do to me what it's doing to me now, you can kiss your feminine figure goodbye," he growls and snatches my wrists, pinning them over my head.
I gasp and snicker and then give myself to him fully.
He can take it all because all that I am, and all that I have, and all that I will be, are his forever.