Chapter Fourteen — Alexei #2
Something moved in her expression. Something I’d learned meant I’d said something that touched her inside.
“Siroc crossed a line,” I said. “The moment he put his hands on your life—before the poker room, before the surveillance, when he first decided you were something he could use—he crossed a line that has nothing to do with territorial encroachment or empire protection or any framing that would make this an operational matter.” I held her gaze.
“This is personal. What he did to you is personal. And I have not, in thirty-five years, allowed personal violations to go unaddressed.”
“You’re going to destroy him,” she said.
“I’m going to dismantle him,” I said. “That is more complete and considerably less visible than destroying.”
She looked at me with what looked like relief and fear at the same time. Then she nodded. Then she turned back to the railing.
“I was so afraid,” she said quietly. “For six years. Managing it—keeping it below the surface, not letting it become the main focus—but always there. Always… ” She pressed her hands flat on the railing. “I’m so tired of being afraid.”
I looked at the side of her face. The line of her jaw, the loose strand of hair that had come free from whatever she’d put it up in, the way the city light caught her soft and weary expression.
I reached out, not urgently but deliberately. My hand found the curve of her shoulder and turned her by degrees until she was facing me. She came easily, without the resistance that had characterized the early days.
She looked up at me.
“You don’t have to be afraid. That has changed.” I held her gaze. “You were managing it alone because there was no other available structure. The structure is different now.”
“You,” she said.
“Us,” I said.
The word had arrived in our vocabulary at some point and had stayed. I had started deploying it without deciding to and had noticed only in retrospect. It had happened naturally.
She looked at me for a long moment with the full, undivided attention of someone who had decided to see something clearly.
Then she reached up and put her hand against my jaw, and I stilled under it the way I had the first time she’d done it.
I kissed her with the intent I’d had since the library. It was not the accidental brush of the kitchen or the careful negotiation of the wedding night.
She made a sound against my mouth that undid about four layers of whatever remained of my professional composure in one efficient movement.
In a minute, her hands were in my jacket, and she was pressing forward fully, and I pulled her closer because that was the only available direction in my head, and the city below us was irrelevant.
This was not about escape. Not escape from the situation, not forgetting the threat, the complication, or the six years of patient operation.
This was the opposite of forgetting. This was us choosing something amid the complexity, of saying: This matters to us.
She pulled back far enough to breathe, her hands still in my jacket, her forehead almost against mine.
“You’re still doing it,” she said.
“What’s that?”
“Thinking, while everything else is happening. I can tell.”
“You can tell,” I repeated, tilting my head a fraction.
“Your jaw does something.” She touched it briefly again.
God, what those soft hands do to me.
I looked at her in the near-dark of the balcony with the city spread behind her like an argument for the kind of beauty that didn’t require your permission. “And what have you concluded? What does it tell you?”
“That you’re always handling something,” she said. Her voice was not critical. “And that it costs you more than you let on.” She held my gaze. “And that when you stop… younger. For about half a second.”
I blinked at her.
“Then it comes back. Like right now,” she said, her lips spreading into a grin. “And you’re you again.”
I claimed her lips in a slow, sloppy kiss, swallowing that beautiful grin of hers. Her lips went around my neck, and mine wrapped around her waist immediately.
And then I was moving, bringing her with me. The shawl was now on the floor on our way to the only chair in the balcony. I sat and moved her to straddle me. My tongue dominated the kiss as her fingers pulled the hairs at the back of my neck.
I involuntarily threw my head back as she started to move against my crotch, the clothing between us becoming an annoying impediment.
As we broke apart for air, I grabbed her hips, signaling for her to move up a bit. She unbuckled my belt as I lifted the full flare of her dress until my fingers touched the lace of her panties.
“You’re wet already,” I uttered, the realization making my dick harder.
“Surprise,” she whispered.
“Alexei,” she uttered when I tore the panties off her and tossed them to the floor.
“I fucking love that sound from your lips,” I confessed, sitting up to pull my trousers lower.
“It’s your name,” she pointed out, chuckling.
“Exactly the point,” I rushed.
I latched my lips onto her neck, making her let out a soft moan as I sucked and nibbled.
Releasing my hard length from its confines, I slid it against her moist slit.
“Oh, Alexei, don’t make me wait,” she moaned, her words coming out in a slurred rush.
I slid into her, and she held my shoulders like they were a lifeline as she started to move against me.
“Fuck,” I whispered, unable to think of anything beyond the magnificent sight of her chest heaving as she moved up and down.
I started to move, meeting her halfway.
Her nails dug into my shoulders as her core tightened around me.
“Alex…” she breathed.
“I know. Let go for me.”
Her body quaked and quivered as she came. I held her hips as I thrust up even as she unraveled. My movements became less rhythmic as I came.
The sheen of sweat on Isla’s face made her beauty more naked, more alluring to me.
I rested my forehead against hers.
“He’ll come for you again,” I said quietly. “And when he does, I will end him.”
A deep sigh was the response she gave me.
Siroc White believed he was winning.
He believed it because he had delivered a federal raid and a narrative. He believed it because men like Siroc measured winning by noise, and he had produced considerable noise.
I held her, and planned, and did not look away.