24. Chapter 24
Nikolay
The latch clicked behind us with a softness that did not match the violence of the day, and for one suspended moment I could only stand there and look at the room that had held so many traces of her before it ever held me.
Her books lined the shelves in uneven loyalties—some upright, some stacked, some opened and face-down in ways that would have offended me in anyone else and charmed me beyond reason in her.
The desk sat near the lamp with its warm pool of amber light, and there lay the linen-wrapped first edition I had given her.
To Kill a Mockingbird. A peace offering once.
A confession, though I had not been honest enough then to call it one.
Now honesty stood between us with nowhere left to hide.
Maddie turned from the door and looked at me.
Her hair had been loosed at some point after dinner, chestnut waves falling around her shoulders in lived-in disarray.
The bruise on her cheek had faded to the last shadow of what it had been.
Her mouth had healed thanks to her wolf healing.
Her eyes were not bruised at all. Those were clear.
Warm. Frightened, perhaps, in the way anyone might be frightened by joy after nearly being denied it. But clear.
Mine, said the bond with a possessive tenderness that no longer felt like a threat.
I breathed her in and felt my restraint tighten to a painful thing.
Warm whiskey. Woman. Wolf. Something wild and sweet beneath it all that belonged only to her body and now lived inside my blood as intimately as my own breath.
I had smelled fear on her, ritual smoke on her, another man’s violence on her.
Standing in her room now and finding only her again very nearly unmanned me.
She took one step closer, then another.
“I dreamed of this,” she said.
Her voice came soft, a little rough from sleep deprivation and crying and everything the day had demanded of her. Even so, I would have known that voice in a cathedral full of prayer.
I swallowed. “Did you?”
She nodded. “The other night at that damned compound.” She worried her lip. “I dreamed I found my way to you. Or maybe you found your way to me. I’m not sure which. Dreams are kind of sloppy with logistics.”
A laugh almost escaped me. It caught in my chest instead.
She kept moving until only a breath remained between us. “I remember trying to tell you things. Important things. Things I was too chicken to say while awake.” Her gaze searched my face as if she still required permission. “I told you how much I loved you.”
Something in me gave way so quietly I think only the Goddess heard it.
I lifted my hand to her throat first, because that was where terror had lived this evening, where my own mouth had nearly lost itself to blood and fury in the clearing.
My fingers found the soft line of her pulse.
Steady now. Alive. Maddie leaned into the touch with a trust I had done nothing to deserve until tonight.
“I did not deserve those words when you first felt them,” I said.
“Maybe not,” she whispered. “Still felt them.”
My thumb moved under her jaw. “And now?”
She held my gaze with a courage that humbled me. “Now I’m done pretending I don’t.”
I bowed my head, unable for one absurd second to bear the mercy of being loved by her so plainly.
My nose found the curve of her neck. Heat lived there.
Her scent struck me harder at that close distance, and a low sound escaped my chest before I had the vanity to conceal it.
My hands went to the buttons of her blouse—simple work, quiet work, though nothing in me felt quiet.
I undid the first button. Then the next.
Her breath caught.
“I thought,” she said, then stopped when my mouth brushed the place just below her ear.
I closed my eyes. “Tell me.”
“I thought if I ever got you alone again, I’d say it better than this.”
“Better than the truth?” I pressed another kiss to the side of her throat, then another, my fingers continuing their patient descent. “I should like to hear how.”
A small shiver went through her. “You are entirely too good at distracting a woman.”
“I have had centuries of practice.”
“That is not as reassuring as you think.”
It almost made me smile. Instead, I opened another button and another until the fabric parted enough for my knuckles to brush warm skin. Her pulse jumped under my mouth. So did mine.
“In the dream,” she managed, “I got to you, and I told you I loved you, and you looked at me like—”
My mouth found the hollow where her neck met her shoulder. Her words broke.
“Like what, moya dusha?” I murmured against her skin.
She made a helpless little sound. “Like I mattered.”
I stilled.
Then I drew back just enough to look at her.
Every defense I had ever prized felt filthy in that moment.
Not useless. Worse than useless. Cruel. To make a woman like this wonder whether she mattered.
To take her bright, brave heart and answer it with caution sharpened into arrogance.
I had done that. I would regret it until the grave took whatever remained of me.
“You matter so much to me,” I said quietly, “that I have behaved like a coward in the face of it.”
Her eyes grew softer, not triumphant. Maddie, in one of the countless ways she was better than I deserved, looked at my confession as though it wounded her on my behalf.
“In the dream,” she said again, voice unsteady now for a different reason, “I kissed you immediately.”
My hand tightened gently on her waist. “Did you?”
She nodded.
“Show me.”
She went very still.
I watched her wet her lips. Watched the courage gather again. Her hands rose, one settling lightly against my chest as if to steady herself against the breadth of me. Then she came up onto her toes and pressed her mouth to mine.
Soft. Tentative. Barely a question, and yet somehow more intimate than anything greedier could have been. It was the kiss of a woman offering truth without ornament. No game. No performance. Only Maddie.
I cupped her jaw at once and deepened it before I could stop myself.
My other hand slid into her hair, fingers threading through chestnut silk as I angled her face and took the kiss properly.
Her lips parted under mine with a breath that felt like surrender and victory both.
I kissed her the way I should have kissed her the first time I knew.
Thoroughly. Reverently. With all my restraint bent toward worship rather than avoidance.
She tasted faintly of tea and wine and the last sweetness of dessert from downstairs. Underneath that she tasted like herself, and I was lost quickly enough to know I had never truly been found before.
When I finally drew back, it was only far enough to look at her.
Her pupils had widened. Her mouth was pink from my attention. Her blouse hung open now, loosened beneath my hands, and desire had written itself over her face in a way so honest it threatened what remained of my self-command.
I finished what I had started.
Slowly, because anything faster would have insulted the moment. I eased the blouse from her shoulders and let it slide down her arms. Her lace bra came next. My knuckles skimmed the soft under swell of her breast on their way. She trembled. So did I, though I suspect less visibly.
I kissed her again while my hands found the fastening of her trousers.
She made a small sound against my mouth when I opened them, not protesting, only startled by how quickly wanting could become action once truth had been admitted.
I dropped to one knee before her, not from calculation but instinct, and looked up.
Her breath caught hard at that.
“Easy,” I murmured.
“You keep sayin’ things like that,” she whispered, “and then doing the opposite to my heart.”
I smiled despite the ache in my body. “Your heart seems formidable.”
“It is not feeling formidable right now.”
“No?” I slid the fabric down over her hips, then lower. “What is it feeling?”
“Like if you keep lookin’ at me like that, I might die happy and embarrass us both.”
A laugh escaped me then, low and wrecked by hunger. I helped her step free of her socks and trousers and the small scrap of lace beneath them, then rose again in one smooth motion until she stood bare in the lamplight before me.
I forgot speech.
She was curved exactly where I had wanted her curved, soft exactly where I had imagined softness might undo me, strong through thigh and hip and belly in a way that made beauty seem too weak a word for her.
Lamplight gilded her skin. Her breasts rose and fell with the quickness of her breathing.
Her hair spilled over one shoulder like a dark, living thing.
She should have looked vulnerable standing naked before a man of my size, but there was courage in the way she held herself, chin lifted, gaze fixed on mine, as if she would endure being seen even if it frightened her.
I stepped close and laid my hands on her waist.
Not possession. Recognition.
My palms moved over the flare of her hips, then upward along the generous line of her ribs.
She shivered when I cupped the soft weight of her breasts, not squeezing, merely learning.
I think my face must have given away everything in me then, because Maddie’s expression changed. Some last uncertainty eased.
“What?” she whispered.
I looked at her as if looking could make amends for every hour I had wasted. “I am trying to understand how I survived this long without losing my mind.”
A flush rose slowly over her chest.
I bent and kissed the top of one breast, through my own disbelief. Then the other. Her fingers found my shoulders. Held.
When I straightened, I said, “Undress me.”
Her eyes widened.
“If you do not,” I added, and the truth of it roughened my voice, “I shall ruin my clothing in a manner unworthy of my upbringing.”
That drew a breathless laugh from her. “Now that I would pay to see.”
“You may yet, if you continue to delay.”