Chapter 32
MILA
He says it back.
“Together.”
His forehead is still against mine. Neither of us moves. His hands are still at his sides and the want in them reaches me from here, the discipline of a man holding himself in place when everything in him wants to reach, and my pulse is in my throat and the room is very quiet.
I take his hand.
I walk him to the bed.
He sits on the edge when I stop in front of him and I step between his knees and his hands go to my hips, light, careful, the way he always touches me, asking with the pressure, and I look at his face.
The bruised eyebrow, still yellow-green at the edges.
The gray under his eyes. The mouth that has been set in a line for days and is not set in a line right now.
I put both my hands on his chest and push. Slow. Deliberate.
He goes back onto the bed without resistance.
On his back, his face turned up to mine, watching me climb onto the mattress and then onto him, my knees either side of his thighs.
He does not grab. He does not pull. His hands are open at his sides and he is watching my face the way he watches everything, like he is memorizing it, like he does not trust himself to look away.
I start with his shirt.
Each button slow. His eyes follow my hands.
The shirt opens and I push it off his shoulders and he moves his arms only enough to let me take it.
I drop it off the bed. He is bare from the waist up.
The tape at his ribs, white against the olive skin, the edges lifting slightly where Giada put it days ago.
The scar at his shoulder I have never asked about.
The line of dark hair from his sternum down.
Heat moves through me so sharply I have to breathe through it.
I reach for the waist of his pants. He lifts his hips the inch I need.
I take his pants off, his underwear, drop them off the bed beside the shirt.
He is naked under me and hard and looking at my face and I am still in my dress and the chain at my throat and the want in me is something I have been carrying since the first night in this house that is finally allowed to be put down.
I lift the dress over my head. Unhook my bra. Drop both on the floor.
I am on him in nothing but the chain.
He looks at my face. Not my body. My face. His jaw is tight and his hands are open at his sides and his voice comes out low and wrecked.
“Mila.”
Just that. My name like it costs him something to hold it in his mouth.
I am wet before I reach for him. I take his cock in my left hand, he is hard and hot and his breath goes sharp through his nose the second I touch him, and I lower myself onto him.
Slow. An inch. His teeth go into his lower lip.
Another inch. His hand goes to my waist, light, not pulling, just resting there.
I take the rest of him and sit. He fills me completely, the stretch and the heat and the fullness of it, and my breath comes out ragged and my thighs are shaking slightly and it is not pain, it is not anything like pain, it is the opposite of everything that came before this and my eyes go wet and I blink it back.
I look at his face. His eyes are on mine and they are the ones underneath everything else he shows the room and he is giving them to me and only me right now and my chest aches with the cost of that.
“Ty moy.” You’re mine.
His face breaks open. The breath comes out wrong, through his mouth, ragged. He closes his eyes for half a second. Opens them.
“Ya tvoy.” I’m yours.
A pause. One beat.
“Vsegda byl.” Always was.
Then, only then, after I have said it and he has answered:
“Ty moya.” You’re mine.
I lean down. My mouth finds his. He tastes like salt and the grief that just left this room and underneath that, him, just him, the way he has always tasted. I begin to move.
I roll my hips slowly, pulling back and pressing forward, and the friction of it goes through me like heat through water, low and deep and sharp at the same time, and the sound I make against his mouth is small and broken and entirely involuntary.
Once. Twice.
A sound low in his throat, half-groan, and his hand on my hip tightens.
I move again. The chain swings between us. His mouth is on mine and his hands are on my hips and he is everywhere and I want to stay here, exactly here, for the rest of my life.
Then his hands change.
I feel it before I see it, the shift in his hands, the grip going from careful to certain, the breath changing from held to released. He is not asking with his hands anymore. He is telling.
He sits up with me still on him, one arm around my back, and rolls us in one motion.
I am on my back beneath him and he is braced above me on his forearms, his weight between my thighs, his cock still inside me, and his face is an inch from mine.
He breathes once, hard, the tape pulling at his ribs, the effort of it visible in his jaw, and he does not stop.
His eyes do not leave mine.
“My turn.” Voice rough. Low. A sound I have not heard from him before. “I’ve been watching you for days and I have been patient and tonight I am done being patient. Do you understand me?”
My breath comes out in a rush. My hands go to his back, to the scars I have not asked about, and I pull him down.
He moves.
Not careful. Not gentle. Deep and deliberate, the kind of stroke that knocks the air out of me, and a sound tears out of my throat before I can stop it.
“That’s it.” Through his teeth, watching my face. “Give me that. Give me every sound.”
He moves again. I arch up into him.
“You have no idea—” He stops. His jaw goes tight. He drives into me and finishes the sentence against my mouth. “You have no idea what you do to me. What you’ve been doing to me. Lying awake every night three doors down.”
His mouth goes to my throat. The place under my jaw where the violin used to live. Hot and wet and careful in a way the rest of him is not being right now.
“Every time you looked at me like you were deciding whether I was worth it.” His hand slides between us, his thumb finding my clit, and I gasp so sharply it is almost a word. “I am going to spend the rest of my life proving I am worth it.”
The pressure builds low and sharp and I am going to come and I want to hold it, want to stay in this, want to keep him talking in this broken, honest English in my ear.
“Look at me,” he says. “Don’t close your eyes. Look at me when you come.”
I look at him.
The orgasm breaks through me and he holds my gaze through every second of it, his thumb on my clit and his cock inside me and his eyes on my eyes, and the sound I make is everything that has been in my throat since the first night in this house, finally let out, full-throated and real and mine.
He keeps moving. His mouth at my collarbone, my sternum, the chain hot against his lips.
“One more.” Against my skin. “One more, and then I’m going to—”
His voice breaks. He drives into me harder and the edge climbs again already.
“Christ, you feel—you feel like—”
He doesn’t finish the sentence. He presses his forehead to mine instead.
The same press from earlier tonight, from the door in the dark.
His eyes are closed and he is shaking slightly and his ribs are pulling with every breath and I run my hands down his back over the three scars and I hold him there.
“I’ve got you,” I say. English. All I have right now.
He comes inside me with my name in his mouth. Soft. A different pitch than I have heard before.
“Milochka.”
I do not flinch. I let him say it. I hold him tighter.
He drops his weight onto me, careful with his ribs, forehead in the crook of my neck. His breath against my throat, uneven, slowing. He shakes for three breaths. Then he settles.
I run my left hand down his back. The three scars under my palm, the skin smooth over them now, old damage. He breathes against my throat and I breathe against his hair and the room is quiet and the chain is warm between us and Yelena’s canvas faces out across the room.
I know she is there. I let her be there.
She trusted him with the most important thing she had. She was right.
He lifts off me slowly, careful, and lies beside me, pulling me into his side. My head on his chest. His arm around my shoulders. His hand warm on my stomach. The tape at his ribs under my cheek, the slight roughness of it, and beneath that his heartbeat, steady and slowing.
I won’t bury you again.
I close my eyes.
I sleep.