Chapter 7 #2
Nikolai’s breathing changed. His eyes moved over me slowly, and the look on his face nearly destroyed what little confidence I had left. Not rushed. Not careless. Like he was taking in every inch of exposed skin with dangerous concentration.
My entire body burned beneath his stare.
Suddenly, I became aware of everything. The cool air against damp skin.
The water still sliding slowly down my shoulders.
The way his fingers tightened slightly at my throat like seeing me like this physically affected him.
It did something reckless to my heartbeat.
I should’ve covered myself. Should’ve made some sarcastic comment to break the tension before I combusted on the spot. However, I stood there frozen beneath the weight of his gaze while heat spread lower, hotter, making my thoughts blur around the edges .
Nikolai looked at me like a man standing at the edge of something violent.
“Emerald,” he said quietly.
The roughness in his voice made my stomach tighten.
I swallowed hard. His eyes tracked the movement instantly.
The expression that crossed his face nearly melted my spine.
This was unfair. Entirely unfair. How was I supposed to survive a man who looked at me like that?
Like he wanted to ruin me and worship me at the exact same time.
My breathing turned shallow when his free hand slid against my waist, fingers spreading slowly over bare skin.
The contrast between his cold rings and the warmth of his touch sent a shiver through me hard enough for him to notice immediately.
A startled sound escaped me as Nikolai scooped me up effortlessly, one arm sliding beneath my legs while the other hand moved protectively against the back of my neck.
The movement knocked the breath from my lungs. Not because of the strength behind it. Though honestly, that too; but because of how easily he held me. Like I weighed nothing. Like he’d been thinking about doing this for a while.
My hands grabbed his shoulders automatically while his eyes locked onto mine again, make my pulse completely lose rhythm. I could feel his heartbeat beneath my palm. Fast. Too fast for someone like him.
Nikolai lowered his head slowly before his lips found mine again. This kiss felt different. Still intense, still consuming, but somehow deeper now, heavier with everything neither of us hadn’t said out loud.
My fingers slid into the dark hair at the back of his neck while his mouth moved against mine with enough restraint to somehow feel even more dangerous than before.
He was trying very hard not to lose control completely. Which only made things worse, because the idea of Nikolai losing control over me? Yeah. That thought alone nearly ruined me.
He dumped me onto the bed with urgency, the covers cool against my damp skin. He loomed over me, a storm contained in the form of a man, one knee sinking onto the mattress beside my hip. His breath was hot on my neck. His smell was intoxicating and should be illegal.
“You play dangerous games, Emerald.” His voice was a low rasp, a sound that vibrated straight though my core.
“I don’t play games,” I breathed, my bravado thinning, cracking under the sheer weight of his presence.
His gaze held mine for a long moment. Long enough to see right through every ounce of false confidence I was trying to cling to.
“You're shaking.”
Heat flooded my face. “I'm not.”
One dark brow lifted. “You've never done this before. ”
It wasn't a question. “Does it matter?”
Something dangerous flashed across his expression.
“It should. I don't want your first memory of this to be me losing control.”
The admission hit harder than any threat could have.
“Maybe that's exactly how I want to remember it.”
“You have no idea what you're asking for.”
The words should have sounded like a warning. Instead, they felt like a challenge.
“Maybe I do.”
Something dark flickered across his expression.
“No.” His voice dropped lower. “Because if I stop holding back, there won't be anything careful about it.”
I swallowed hard but refused to look away. “Then stop holding back.”
His mouth crashed down on mine. It wasn’t a kiss, it was a claim.
All teeth and possessive hunger, a language without words that said mine.
My hands flew up, tangling in his hair, pulling him closer.
I bit his lower lip. He growled, the sound feral, and wrenched his head back, looking down at me with eyes that were pure black fire .
He dragged his mouth down my throat, over my pounding pulse, lower.
His tongue flicked a hardened nipple, the latched onto it, sucking hard until I cried out, my back arching off the bed.
Every nerve was alive, singing for him. He moved down, his hands pushing my thighs apart with an unceremonious urgency.
His gaze locked on mine. “Look at me.”
I did. I watched as he lowered his head between my legs.
The first hot stroke of his tongue was a lightning bolt.
I gasped, my fingers clutching at the sheets.
He didn’t tease. He devoured. His tongue plunged inside me, then swept up in a firm, relentless rhythm that shattered my thoughts.
Pleasure, sharp and almost unbearable, coiled tight in my stomach.
The air left my lungs in shaky bursts; I couldn’t catch it, couldn’t breathe.
The world narrowed to the wet, insistent heat of his mouth and the dark intent in his eyes watching me come undone.
Just as the coil was about to snap, he pulled away.
I whimpered at the loss. He moved back up my body, his weight settling over me.
I felt the hard press of him through his pants against my thigh.
With two fingers, he touched me, sliding easily through the slickness he’d drawn from me.
He pushed inside, curling them, and I moaned, my hips lifting off the bed to meet the slow, deliberate thrust.
He withdrew his fingers, holding them before my eyes. Then he put them in his own mouth, his dark gaze never leaving mine as he tasted me. A raw, obscene gesture that have shamed me. It didn’t. It burned me alive .
“All that sass,” Nikolai whispered, his voice thick with gravel. “And you taste like surrender.”
He fumbled with his belt, his usual grace gone. There was a frantic edge to him now, a crack in the ice. He shoved his pants down just enough. He was hard, thick, pressing against my entrance. No preamble. No gentle asking.
“This is what you want,” he said, a question and an accusation all in one.
It was. God, it was.
He thrust into me one deep, tearing stroke. I cried out, my nails scoring his back. He went still, buried to the hilt, his body trembling with the effort of that stillness.
For a brief moment, there was nothing but the sound of our ragged breathing and the feeling of him inside me, a connection so profound it felt fatal.
His forehead dropped to mine. In his eyes, I saw the same shock I felt—the startling, terrifying realization that this was different.
This wasn’t a game. This was a point of no return.
Then he moved. It was a brutal, driving rhythm.
Each thrust was a punctuation in a sentence we’d been writing since the moment we met.
Possessive. Consuming. My legs locked around his hips, pulling him deeper.
The headboard knocked a steady, frantic beat against the wall.
He muffled my moans with his mouth, swallowing the sounds of my breaking.
His control was gone, incinerated. He chanted my name against my skin, a ragged prayer. “Emerald. Emerald. ”
The coil inside me, wound so tight, finally shattered.
Pleasure erupted, white-hot and blinding, ripping through me in waves that felt endless.
I clenched around him, and with a final, deep groan that was ripped from his soul, he followed me over.
He spilled into me, his body collapsing atop mine, heavy and spent.
Silence pooled in the room, broken only by the ragged symphony of our breath. The warm vanilla scent of my room was gone, obliterated by the salt of sweat and the musky, intimate truth of what we’d done.
He didn’t pull away. He shifted his weight slightly, but kept his face buried in the damp crook of my neck.
His breath stirred my hair. My own hands traced slow, dazed circles on the sweat-slick skin of his shoulders.
The flicking lamp finally steadied, casting a golden glow over the wreckage of us.
This changed everything. I felt it in the silence afterward; in the way he held me like letting go wasn’t an option anymore.
He knew it. I knew it. The cold, controlled man who spent every second holding himself together had finally lost that battle in my bed, and somehow, I was just as ruined for him.
Still sarcastic. Still stubborn. Still fully capable of driving him insane.
But lying there wrapped in his arms, sore and breathless with his hands still all over me, I knew one terrifying thing for certain.
I was his.