30. NIKOLAI
I lay sprawled on the edge of the bed, listening to the shower run as Andie cleans herself up.
As much as I tried to coax her to let me join her in the shower, she insisted that she needed a hot second to herself to get her shit together after the ravaging I just gave her, and I guess I have to respect that. At least, for now.
I’m half-dressed, jacket and tie forgotten on the floor beside me, shirt unbuttoned, and slacks dumped by the side of the bed where I couldn’t get them off fast enough as soon as I got her up to the bedroom.
It was damn near a miracle that I kept my hands off of her for as long as I did, to be honest.
The moment I saw her in that dress, I felt that now-familiar stir of lust that I can hardly control when I’m around her.
Though, judging by the way she looks at me, I’d guess that she doesn’t mind one little bit.
And tonight has been…illuminating, to say the least.
Not just because of how fucking hot she looked, though that was certainly a part of it.
I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t a part of me that enjoyed seeing the way other men looked at her, knowing that, if they laid a hand on her, I would destroy them.
But I was impressed by her confidence and adaptability in any situation that she was dropped into.
She emerges from the shower a few minutes later, stepping out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel and a cloud of steam. Her damp hair is slicked back from her face, showing off her delicate features, and she grins as she strikes a playful pose for me.
“What do you think, next gala outfit?” she suggests, and I chuckle, reaching for her and pulling her onto the bed.
“No way,” I reply. “This is all for me. You hear?”
She slides down next to me on the bed and I drape an arm around her, pulling her against me, rubbing my thumb along the top of her arm and holding her there for just a moment.
Her eyes are closed, and I’m sure she must be exhausted from the evening that has just passed.
I can’t imagine how tough it all is on her, given that she’s pregnant on top of everything else.
I struggle enough putting on a game face in front of my peers without having to grow a whole new human inside of me, after all.
“You did well tonight,” I murmur into her hair.
“What do you mean?” she asks. “Didn’t make too much of a fool of myself?”
“No,” I reply. “Far from it. You were great. I don’t think there’s a person there who wouldn’t be happy to see you at the next one of those events, whenever they come about.”
“Well, probably just hoping to get on your good side,” she suggests, and I shake my head, leaning back so I can look at her.
“No, it’s more than that,” I tell her firmly. “I know these people well, Andie. I know what they value. What they respect. And the way they looked at you—I’m certain they liked you.”
She shrugs. “I guess I have practice, given that I’ve been organizing those kind of events for years.”
“You obviously do,” I agree. “You practically had them all wrapped around your little finger.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t go that far,” she replies, her cheeks flushing slightly, but there’s a huge grin on her face that tells me she wants me to go on.
“You can never take credit for it,” I remark, sweeping the hair away from her eyes so I can meet her gaze and show her how much I mean this. “But there’s not many people who could do what you do, Andie. Who could be dropped into just any situation and find a way to fit in.”
She softens slightly, fiddling with a loose thread on the bed. “I guess…I guess I didn’t really have any choice,” she remarks quietly.
I slip my hand down her back, pulling her a little closer. “You do now.”
She looks at me for a moment, a slight smile on her face. “Not when I married you,” she teases me gently.
I gaze at her intently, trying to make sense of whatever it is that’s going on inside her head. We’ve been married for months now, that ring on her finger now fitted to her as it always should have been. But the way she speaks, it’s almost as though there’s something else on her mind entirely.
“Would you do it again?” I ask her.
“Do what?”
“Marry me. If you had the choice.”
She pauses for a moment, considering. She gazes off into the distance, her teeth resting on her bottom lip.
And then, finally, she nods. “I would,” she replies, locking eyes with me once more, a certainty in her voice that seems to surprise even her.
“I mean, I…I could never have imagined that we would end up here. But if I could go back and tell myself everything that you’ve done for me, the way you made me feel, I would do it all over again.”
“Really?”
She nods again. “Really. You…you have no idea what it feels like, Niko, to have this certainty that nobody cares about you. To have been doing everything on your own for so long. Nobody in your corner, not even your family. And then, for someone like you to just walk in and take control like that,
to show me how serious you were about keeping me safe and providing for me…”
Her eyes soften. “Yeah. I’d choose that all over again. Every time.”
I lean down to kiss her, not entirely sure any other reaction would be enough to express what’s going on inside my head.
I can still remember the way she laughed when I told her that she would need to marry me, as though she assumed I must have been joking, because someone like me could never want someone like her.
But here, now, it means everything to me to know that she would choose it all over again.
“What about you?” she murmurs, cupping her hand on my jaw and gazing at me intently. “I mean, I know you had a whole other bride lined up, before what happened with us…”
“Are you kidding?” I snort. “Natalie—I hardly knew her. I was only going through with that wedding so I’d have a wife to show my father. I didn’t expect anything meaningful to come of it. And I know nothing would have, if it hadn’t been you I’d made my wife that day.”
I can see her eyes growing a little glossy as I speak, the emotion getting the best of her. I brush my thumb against her cheek, every touch a promise that I mean everything I’m saying right now.
“I wouldn’t have it any other way, Andie,” I swear to her. “I want you. Only you. For the rest of my life.”
She closes her eyes and leans her head against mine, and as she catches her breath, I can tell that this is overwhelming her—the sound of my words a balm on some deep wound that she has been carrying for so long.
I wish I could go back in time and save her from the hell that she went through before she met me, but then she would never have become the woman I fell in love with—the strong, intelligent, witty woman who knows her own mind and knows what she wants and knows that, above all, she wants me.
When she opens her eyes again, I can almost hear the words before she says them, but I make no move to rush her. When she’s ready, I will be here. Just the way I always intend to be.
“I…I love you, Nikolai.”
Those words, they’re like an incantation, a spell binding the two of us together.
I know that we’ve done all of this backward—falling in love after we got married—but if I had never taken her as my wife, I would never have had a chance to see her with clear eyes, to understand that she was a love I would have searched my whole life for if I hadn’t married her on that day.
“I love you too, Andie.”
For a moment, we just let those words percolate in the air between us, their sweet weight settling over the conversation.
It’s the first time we have said them to each other, but I know that they’re true.
I’m not sure I have ever loved anyone the way I love Andie, with the certainty of a future, the promise of a family, with the ring on her finger a reminder of the commitment that she has made to me that I know she will never break.
And then I kiss her again, wrapping my arms around her and holding her close. I can feel her pulse racing in her veins, and she smiles into the embrace, like she can feel it all too. The woman I love—my wife, the mother of my child, my partner. Everything I’ve been waiting for.
And everything that I didn’t know I was missing until the day I kissed her for the first time.