36. Sloane
SLOANE
I wake with heat already pooled low in my body and no idea what dragged me out of sleep. For several confused seconds, I lie still beneath the blanket, staring at the unfamiliar ceiling while my mind slowly catches up with where I am.
My body has apparently decided that months of fear, anger, loneliness and pregnancy have combined into one deeply inconvenient problem, because I’m suddenly so painfully aware of my own skin that even the sheet brushing over my legs feels like too much.
I close my eyes. This is ridiculous.
I’ve spent months without him. I can survive another morning.
Then I open my eyes again and realize Vadim is sitting in the chair beside the window. He has taken off his coat, his shirtsleeves are rolled to his forearms, and there’s something unfair about how composed he looks when I have apparently woken up prepared to make terrible decisions.
His attention shifts from whatever he has been reading on his phone. “You’re awake.”
I swallow. “Yes.”
His gaze moves over my face. “You slept six hours.”
That surprises me enough to briefly distract me. “Six?”
“You needed it.”
I push myself upright, and his eyes follow the movement with an intensity that makes the warmth under my skin spread immediately.
I know that look.
Worse, he knows I recognize it.
“You’ve been sitting there the whole time?” I ask.
“Mostly.”
“That’s creepy.”
“I have been called worse.”
“I know.”
His mouth shifts faintly.
The silence afterward should be awkward, but it isn’t. It becomes something else instead. I become aware that my hair is loose around my shoulders, that I’m wearing only the soft dress I had beneath my coat, that Vadim’s eyes keep returning to my mouth even though he’s pretending they don’t.
“Stop looking at me like that,” I say.
“Like what?”
“You know exactly like what.”
He puts his phone down.
That’s somehow worse.
“I’m not doing anything.”
“You don’t have to.”
His eyes darken.
I should stop.
I don’t.
He stands. The movement sends an immediate, irrational thrill through me, and I hate that my body reacts before my mind has decided whether this is a good idea.
Vadim comes to the edge of the bed and looks down at me.
I tilt my face up.
Neither of us speaks.
Then his fingers slide into my hair, and my breath catches.
“Tell me to stop,” he says.
I should.
Instead, I whisper, “You first.”
Something in his expression breaks, and his mouth comes down on mine.
The kiss is nothing like the one outside the hospital. There’s no shock this time, no startled relief, no uncertainty about whether we’re actually touching after months apart.
This one starts hungry.
My hands find his shirt before I have time to think, gripping the fabric and dragging him closer while he kisses me with a restraint that’s already failing.
His palm settles against the side of my neck, his thumb beneath my jaw, and the familiar control in the way he holds me makes my whole body tighten.
I remember this. I remember him.
Every part of me does.
He deepens the kiss and I make a helpless sound against his mouth, and that’s apparently enough to destroy what remains of his patience. He sits on the edge of the bed and pulls me toward him carefully, one arm around my back while his other hand moves over my side with maddening slowness.
My skin feels too sensitive everywhere. Pregnancy has changed things I didn’t expect, made every touch stronger, every reaction more immediate, and Vadim notices within seconds.
Of course he does.
He has always noticed too much.
His mouth leaves mine and moves along my jaw, then lower, and I tilt my head back before pride can stop me.
“Vadim.”
“I know.”
“You don’t know anything.”
His breath warms my skin. “I know you’re shaking.”
“I’m not.”
His hand tightens lightly at my waist. “You are. Are you in pain?”
“No.”
His hand hovers closer. “The baby?”
“Fine.” I swallow, my voice humiliatingly unsteady. “Just moving.”
He waits, because Vadim Chernovar, who has threatened men twice his size without blinking, is apparently afraid of touching my pregnant belly without permission.
I take his hand and place it over the swell. His palm is warm. Large. So careful that it makes my eyes sting. The baby moves again, a small firm press beneath his hand, and Vadim goes completely still. Every brutal thing in him seems to pause.
His thumb moves once, barely there.
“He knows you’re awake,” I whisper.
“She,” he says.
I look at him.
His eyes stay on my stomach. “She knows.”
I hate that my heart does something stupid and soft at that.
“You’re very sure.”
“I’m right about many things.”
Despite everything, a small breath of amusement leaves me. “That is the most annoying way you could have said that.”
His gaze lifts to mine. The amusement fades.
The air changes again.
His hand is still on my belly, but his eyes are on my mouth now. “You want something from me.”
I kiss him again just to shut him up.
He responds instantly. His hand cups the back of my neck, careful with my swollen belly, and he kisses me deeper, hotter, with the kind of hunger that makes me forget the bed, the hospital, the entire ruined night behind us.
He makes a low sound against my mouth, half warning, half surrender.
“Sloane.”
“I woke up wanting you,” I breathe, and the honesty of it should embarrass me, but it doesn’t. Not when his eyes flash. Not when his hand slides up my ribs over my thin dress and stops just beneath my breast.
His thumb brushes the underside of me through the fabric.
My whole body arches.
“Vadim.”
“I know,” he says again, but this time his voice is almost cruel with restraint.
He looks at the door, then back at me. “This is madness.”
He pushes the blanket down only enough to reach me, then adjusts the pillow behind my back, helping me turn slightly onto my side so I’m comfortable, so my belly is supported, so nothing pulls. It should feel clinical. It doesn’t.
It feels intimate enough to make me tremble.
“Tell me if this is too much,” he murmurs.
Then he lowers his mouth to my breast through the thin material.
The first warm pull of his lips over my nipple makes pleasure streak down my spine and settle low in my hips. I gasp, fingers clutching his shoulder, and he stops at once.
I almost glare at him. “Don’t stop.”
His mouth curves faintly against my skin. “Demanding woman.”
“You like me demanding.”
Then his mouth closes over me again. This time he’s even gentler.
He sucks my nipple with slow, careful pressure, tongue circling the swollen peak until my toes curl under the blanket.
His hand cups my other breast, thumb stroking, not rough, not hurried, just steady enough to make the ache between my legs turn unbearable.
My breasts feel too full, too tender, and every pass of his tongue sends pleasure through me so intensely I have to press my lips together to keep quiet.
“Vadim,” I breathe.
He lifts his head at once. “Pain?”
“No.” My face burns. “More.”
His eyes hold mine for a beat, and then he bends again, giving me more without making it hard, without making me ask twice.
His mouth moves from one breast to the other, sucking lightly, then deeper when my fingers tighten in his shirt.
He listens to every breath I take. He learns the exact pressure that makes me shiver and the exact place that makes my hips rock helplessly toward him.
When his hand slides down my side, he pauses at my stomach, palm spreading there with a kind of reverence that makes something inside me go dangerously quiet.
“We’re in a hospital,” I remind him, though my fingers are tightening in his hair like I will physically prevent him from stopping.
His mouth leaves my nipple only long enough for him to murmur, “Then be quiet.”
I hate him a little for how much that helps.
He shifts closer, careful of my belly, one knee braced on the floor between my feet. His hand slides over my stomach again, warm through the fabric of my dress, and the baby moves beneath his palm as if she recognizes him. Vadim freezes.
The change in him is instant. His mouth lifts from me, his fingers splaying wide, his face going utterly still. “She kicked,” he says.
I look down at his hand on me, then at his face, and something in my chest softens so sharply it almost hurts. “She does that.”
His thumb moves once over the place where she shifted. “She should sleep.”
“She’s your daughter,” I say before I can stop myself. “She probably has opinions.”
His eyes lift to mine.
For a second, there’s no danger in him. No Pakhan. No man who keeps enemies in the ground and secrets in his blood. Just Vadim, looking at me from between my knees with his mouth still damp from my breast and his hand on our daughter.
Then his expression changes again.
Not colder. Hungrier.
“You are trying to distract me,” he says.
“I’m trying to remind you we’re not alone.”
“We are alone enough.”
“That’s not a thing.”
“It is right now,” he murmurs.
Before I can argue, he lowers his mouth to my other breast, and the words dissolve in my throat.
He pushes the top of my dress down with almost painful restraint, not tearing, not rushing, not treating my body like something he can simply take because I’ve already let him have it before. He watches my face as he exposes me, and the attention makes my skin flush hotter than his mouth did.
Then he licks me. A slow, wet stroke over the aching peak.
My back arches, awkward with the weight of my belly, and he immediately shifts his arm behind me, supporting me before I even have to ask.
That nearly breaks me. The fact that he knows.
The fact that he’s so careful now, so attuned to the smallest change in my body, as if my discomfort is a language he has forced himself to learn.
“You’re too gentle,” I whisper.
His mouth pauses against my breast. “Do you want me less gentle?”
The question slides through me, dark and tempting, but the truth rises before pride can interfere.
“No,” I admit.
His eyes soften. Only a little.
Only enough to ruin me.
“Good.”