Chapter Twenty-seven #2
She answered by kissing me, and I let her have that.
The moment her lips moved against mine, I pushed a finger inside her hole.
Her hips shifted immediately, angling toward me, adjusting her position with an instinct she probably didn’t realize she was showing.
She kissed me deeper, the heat moving through her and into me.
Her body gave itself over in increments, and the tension in her shoulders dissolved as I drove in and out.
She was starving. Her body broadcast it in every small movement, every quiet sound she stopped short of releasing. The problem was, so was I.
Her walls relaxed around my finger, and I added a second. A quiet moan left her before she caught it, her nails pressing into my shoulders. She kissed me with more capability than she let on, her mouth moving against mine with confidence.
I drove both fingers faster, and she broke the kiss, her moans climbing with each thrust until she stopped trying to manage them.
I pulled back and rubbed slow circles instead, watching her face shift into desperation.
Her hips chased my hand, and I inserted three fingers into her. She cried out my name.
Her hand moved across my chest, searching for purchase, and found the wound. She pressed into it. The pain cut through everything, and I thrust my fingers harder.
“Dmitri!” she called.
“Is that all you’ve got?”
“You’re bleeding,” she whispered, her eyes shutting from the pleasure.
“Show me your worst.”
Her body shook, and she collapsed forward onto my shoulder. “Dmitri, please.”
That was the best thing I’d heard in recent memory. Her walls clenched tight around my fingers, and I worked her through until she released. Her teeth found my neck and sank in as she muffled the sounds, her whole body shivering through it. I kept moving until the last of it left her.
“That’s how you earn it. Congratulations.” I pulled out and rubbed her until she stilled.
She straightened slowly, biting her lip, and pulled herself back together piece by piece. Her eyes fixed on my shoulder with renewed intensity, examining the wound while avoiding my face.
I brought my fingers to my mouth to taste her. She finally looked up to watch, and when she understood what she was looking at, disbelief gave way to resignation. She shook her head and turned her attention back to my shoulder.
When she finished, she shifted to get down, and I helped her off the sink. She went straight for my pocket, retrieved her panties, and dressed quickly. She turned to the sink to wash her hands while I buttoned up, watching her in the mirror.
“Stay by my side tonight,” I said, moving behind her to straighten the back of her dress. I ran my fingers along the fabric and then through her hair, setting it back into place. “Don’t trust anyone in that room.”
She met my eyes in the mirror briefly and said nothing.
We stepped out where my two men waited in the hallway, watching. I dismissed them, and they peeled away without a word, folding back into the event while Inna and I moved down the corridor toward the main hall.
She walked beside me in silence, her gaze fixed forward. Her expression settled back into the neutrality she wore in rooms full of strangers. I had grown familiar with that face.
Then something shifted in an instant. I caught it. Her face opened, the neutrality dissolving all at once, replaced by the kind of expression a person can’t fake. Her eyes lit before her smile did, and when the smile came, it was bright and real, unlike any version I knew.
“Romeo?” The name left her mouth with warmth.
I followed her gaze and found Roman. I sighed. Right. I almost forgot he was here. But why was he smiling? The smile was not directed at me. His eyes were on Inna with easy recognition. He looked at her as if he knew her well enough to be glad about it.
“Grace?” he called.
Grace. That was Inna’s middle name, which meant he knew her before tonight, well enough for the middle name to be the one that stuck.
I was still processing the geometry when Inna crossed the distance between them and threw herself into his arms. I stood still there, watching, waiting for the moment to be a joke.
It wasn’t. Roman wrapped both arms around her and pulled her in.
His hands settled against her bare back, fingers pressing in.
A dark feeling rose through my chest that I recognized immediately and found entirely out of place.
I moved before the decision had fully formed. I gripped Roman’s arm and pulled him off her.
Inna blinked back into the room as if she’d momentarily forgotten where she was. “Oh, sorry, Dmitri, this is Romeo. Romeo, this is Dmitri.”
Romeo. I nearly laughed at that. My eyes stayed on Roman while my hand found Inna’s waist and drew her into my side. The smirk on his face said everything he was too composed to put into words.
“Come with me.” I kept my voice level as I moved, drawing Inna away from him. I needed to know how she knew that man, and more urgently, I needed to understand what made her face look so bright when she saw him.
In all the time I have been with her, she has never looked at anyone the way she looked at Roman.