Chapter 8 Mikhail #2
"I need someone to love me, too. I think you understand that better than anyone," she sobs.
"And I can't walk away from it. I can't walk away from him.
Or her. I tried. God, I tried to plan for it, to be smart, to treat it like a transaction, but I heard the heartbeat, and it's mine. It's in my body, and it's mine."
She shoves at my chest, pounding once, twice, weak and desperate.
"So you'll have to lock me up," she cries.
"Keep me prisoner. Chain me to the fucking wall.
But I'll never leave my child. Ever. You want me to stay and have your baby?
Fine. But if I stay, I'm staying as the mother. Not the surrogate. Not the ghost. Me."
I stare at her. Into her. This girl, who survived foster care, human auctions, and Dante Briggs. This girl who snuck out of a glass tower with nothing but a peacoat and a heartbeat. This girl who is looking at me as if I hold the rest of her life in my hands.
And then, relief breaks out of me as laughter before I can stop it. Startled. Wild. Almost mad.
Riley flinches back, confusion cutting through her tears. Her brows are furrowed, and she bites her lip. Unsure. Riley is never unsure. I laugh and press my lips to the frown lines, smoothing them out.
"Finally," I say like a fucking lunatic. "Fin-a-fucking-ly."
Riley tilts her head. She stares at me like I have lost my mind. Maybe I have.
"I knew it," I say, grabbing her face in both hands, forcing her to look at me. "I knew you wouldn't be able to do it. From the moment you left that test on the counter, I knew. You were never going to have my baby and leave. Never."
I press my forehead to hers, still laughing, the tears on my face mixing with the joy and the terror and the absolute, blinding relief.
"I have been waiting," I whisper, fierce and triumphant.
"Waiting for you to realize what I already knew.
You're not built for leaving, Riley. You're built to fight for what's yours. "
I pull back just enough to see her eyes, to watch the understanding bloom there.
"Baby Girl," I say, and the words are a vow.
"You and any children you have—yes, more than one, if you want them, we will fill every room in that tower—all of you will be mine.
As you are already mine. As you have been mine since you shoved that placard under my nose and dared me to look at you. "
I kiss her. Hard. Possessive. Triumphant. My teeth catch her lower lip, and she gasps into my mouth, her hands flying up to grip my shirt.
"You think I wanted a surrogate?" I growl against her lips. "I wanted you. You're the woman who spat in a man's face rather than beg. You see the monster and don't pretend he's a prince. You are my family."
I drag my mouth down her jaw, her throat, my hands tangling in the ruins of her braids.
"This was always where we were headed," I tell her, voice breaking. "Not a contract. Not a transaction. This. You, screaming at me. Me, desperate for you. Us, building something that doesn't die."
She is sobbing now, but they are different tears. Release. Recognition. "Mikhail," she chokes out.
"Tell me," I demand, lifting her, carrying her from the safe-house bedroom toward where our ride waits. "Tell me you're mine. Tell me you're staying. Tell me this baby has a mother who will never walk out the side door."
"I'm yours," she whispers, clutching me. "I'm staying. I'm yours."
***
The penthouse has never felt like home until I carry her across the threshold. She clings to me the whole way to our room.
The door slams. I set her down only long enough to strip away her ruined clothes. Until she's wearing nothing but bruises and defiance and the still-flat place where our child grows, and she has never been more beautiful.
I tear my own clothes off. Shirt. Holster. Trousers.
The anger is still there. It will always be there, the memory of almost losing her.
But beneath it is gratitude so vast it could drown me.
I grab her. Lift her. Press her back to the bed and kiss her with every ounce of fear, fury, and love I have kept locked in my chest since the day she walked into my warehouse.
She moans into my mouth, her legs wrapping around my waist, her heels locking at the small of my back. She is crying. I am shaking. Our tongues tangle. Neither of us slows down. This is not gentle.
This is fear leaving the body, the only way it knows how.
I drive into her in one deep stroke, watching her face the entire time. She cries out, nails scoring down my back. Marking me. I do not stop. I can't stop. I need to feel her alive. Warm. Here.
"You ran from me," I growl, thrusting into her, each word punctuated by the slap of skin. "Never again. Never fucking again."
"Never," she sobs, arching into me. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I was scared—"
"You don't get to be scared alone anymore." I grip her chin, forcing her eyes to mine as I drive deep. "You share it. With me. That's what family does."
"Yes," she gasps. "Yes. Family."
I bracket her head with my forearms, surrounding her with my body, the only shelter I know how to give, and I make love to her.
She meets me stroke for stroke. Her hips rise to meet mine, her hands tugging at my hair, her tears wetting the pillow beneath her.
Every stroke is a fight, an apology, and a promise, tangled in sheets and sweat and the salt of grief turned to joy.
"You are my Baby Girl," I rasp against her neck, feeling her tighten around me, so close. "My Riley. My fucking everything."
Her release tears through her with my name on her mouth. Her body locks down around mine, pulsing, milking, drawing out my own climax. I follow her with a broken sound I barely recognize, spilling inside her, marking her, claiming her in the most primal way I know.
We lie there, panting, wrecked. I am still inside her. I never want to leave.
She turns her head on the pillow. Her eyes are swollen but clear. She is here. She is mine.
"Mikhail," she whispers.
I brush the tangled hair from her forehead. Press a kiss to her temple. To her eyelids. To the bruise on her cheekbone that I will avenge a thousand times over in my dreams.
"Sleep," I say, stroking. "You're safe. You're in my home, where no one can touch you."
Her hand finds mine on the mattress. She laces our fingers together and places them over her stomach, where our future grows.
"Our home," she corrects softly.
I smile against her hair. "Ours."
The city continues. The monsters in the dark are dead or hiding. And in this bed, above the streets where she once starved, we'll build the only dynasty that matters. Together.