13. Nina
NINA
I expect him to leave.
That’s what men like Luka do, isn’t it? They arrive like storms, break the weather, leave the room unrecognizable, and then put their coats back on like nothing important happened.
So after, when the apartment is quiet and my sheets are twisted around our legs and his breathing has settled beside me, I wait for it.
The shift. The retreat. The return of Mr. Kazan.
He will sit up. He will check his phone. He will say something controlled and unbearable, something like, this cannot happen again, or you should sleep, or we will discuss this tomorrow, and then he will leave my apartment looking perfectly composed while I lie here naked, furious, and ruined.
Instead, Luka stays.
He’s on his back beside me, one arm folded carefully over his stomach, the injured shoulder angled away from the mattress.
His eyes are closed, but I know he’s not sleeping.
Luka Kazan probably sleeps like a weapons system, one part of his brain always awake, cataloguing threats, exits, weaknesses, me.
Especially me, apparently.
I turn my head on the pillow and look at him.
There’s a faint sheen of sweat along his throat. His hair’s messier than I’ve ever seen it. The mark from my slap has faded into a faint redness on his cheek. The bandage around his shoulder has pulled slightly loose at the edge.
My stomach sinks. “Your shoulder,” I say.
His eyes open. “Is still attached.”
“That’s your medical update?”
“It is accurate.”
“You probably reopened something.”
“I did not.”
“You can’t know that.”
“I would feel it.”
“You got shot and tried to argue that it wasn’t important.”
He looks at me for a long second. “You’re becoming repetitive.”
“I don’t want your blood on my bedsheets. They’re silk, for your kind information,” I tell him.
His mouth twitches.
I sit up, dragging the sheet with me, because being naked beside him is one thing when we’re actively losing our minds and another thing entirely when he’s watching me with that dark, steady expression. The sheet slips under my arms. His gaze drops once, then returns to my face.
“Don’t look smug,” I say.
“I’m not looking smug.”
“You always look smug.”
“That’s just my face.”
“Then your face has an ego problem.”
I climb out of bed before that smile can do anything worse to me and pull on the oversized sweater from the floor.
Just a sweater and shaky legs.
Luka watches me move around my own bedroom like he’s forgotten there are other things in the world worth seeing.
I go to the bathroom, dampen a clean cloth, find the small first-aid box I use for burns, headaches, and occasional shaving injuries, and return to the bed.
He’s still there.
Still naked from the waist up.
Still too large for my bed, my apartment, and every sensible boundary I have.
“Sit up,” I say.
“No.”
I pause. “No?”
“You are not a doctor.”
“And yet, tragically for both of us, I’m the only person here with basic concern for your wound.”
“It is fine.”
I hold up the cloth. “I swear to God, Luka, if you say fine one more time, I’ll call Doctor Mirov.”
His eyes narrow. “You don’t have his number.”
“I’m an executive assistant. I have everyone’s number.”
That shuts him up.
He sits up. Carefully.
Pain moves across his face quickly, hidden almost as soon as it appears, but I see it. I kneel beside him on the mattress and peel back the edge of the bandage.
Blood doesn’t come pouring out of it right away. But the skin around it is an angry, bruised yellowish purple, the stitches still too fresh for what we just did. A wave of guilt hits me.
“You shouldn’t have come here,” I say quietly.
His gaze is on my face. “Yes.”
“And you definitely shouldn’t have done that.”
“No.”
“And I shouldn’t have let you.”
“You did more than let me.”
My hand stills.
I look up. He looks back.
The air shifts again, slow and immediate, like a match finding the last bit of oxygen in a room.
“Don’t,” I warn.
“Don’t what?”
“Say things in that voice while I’m trying to medically supervise your bad decisions.”
“You’re cleaning the edge of a bandage with tap water.”
I make a face.
He breathes out something that’s almost a laugh.
I clean around the dressing as carefully as I can. His skin is warm under my fingers. Every time my knuckles brush his chest, his stomach tightens.
When I’m done, I smooth the bandage back down. “You should rest.”
“I am resting.”
“You’re sitting upright and judging my apartment.”
“I’m not judging your apartment.”
“You judged my bookshelf.”
“It’s unstable.”
“It has personality.”
“It has structural problems.”
“You have structural problems.”
He looks at me. “Several.”
I shake my head in disbelief, and toss the cloth toward the bedside table. It misses and lands on the floor.
Luka looks at it.
I point at him. “Not a word.”
“I said nothing.”
“You thought something.”
“Oh, I thought many things.”
I roll my eyes and reach across him for the cloth.
He catches my wrist.
I freeze.
His grip is light. He’s not stopping me. Not really. But the moment his fingers close around me, my entire body remembers what those hands felt like on my hips.
His thumb moves once over the inside of my wrist.
My breath turns shallow.
“Nina,” he says.
I hate how much he can do with my name.
I look at his mouth. Then his eyes. Then the bed beneath us, still messy, still warm.
“This is a bad idea,” I say.
“Yes.”
“You could tear your stitches.”
“Probably.”
“You are supposed to be recovering.”
“I have been recovering for two weeks.” His mouth curves faintly. “Come here.”
“No.” But I’m already moving.
That’s the humiliating part.
I let him pull me down beside him, slow enough that I can pretend I’m making choices like a dignified adult. He doesn’t climb over me this time. He turns onto his uninjured side with some care, facing me, his good arm sliding around my waist under the sweater.
The position is strange at first, being incredibly intimate.
We’re lying face to face, close enough that his breath touches my mouth, close enough I can feel the heat of his body without the violence of earlier.
His injured arm stays tucked carefully between us.
I shift closer before I can stop myself, and his hand moves down my back to the bare skin of my thigh where the sweater has ridden up.
His eyes darken. “You’re not wearing anything under this.”
“You noticed.”
“I’m injured, not dead.”
That makes me laugh.
He kisses me while I’m still smiling.
It is slower this time.
His mouth moves over mine with a patience that feels deliberate, one hand warm on my thigh, then my hip, drawing me closer until my body is pressed against his. I touch his face, careful of his shoulder, careful of the bruises, and kiss him back with a softness I don’t know how to defend.
He slides his hand between my legs.
I gasp against his mouth.
“Already?” he murmurs.
I bite his lower lip. “Don’t be so smug.”
“I was born that way.”
“Tragic for everyone.”
“Mostly for you.”
I would have answered, but his fingers move, slow and sure, and the words disappear.
He touches me like he has all night, like the apartment doesn’t exist, like the world outside my bedroom has been reduced to one warm bed and the sounds I make into his mouth. I reach between us and find him hard again. His breath catches when I wrap my hand around him.
He kisses me harder.
We move awkwardly for a moment, careful with his shoulder, adjusting sheets, limbs, the angle of our bodies. He reaches for another condom from his wallet on the bedside table and struggles enough that I take it from him.
“Give it to me,” I say.
His eyes hold mine.
I open the packet and roll it onto him slowly, watching his jaw tighten.
“Careful,” he says.
I look up. “Now you believe in caution?”
“Selectively.”
“Of course.”
He pulls me closer, lifting my thigh over his hip, and then he’s pressing into me again.
Sideways like this, facing each other, it feels different. Deeper in a way that makes me grip his good shoulder and bury my face near his throat as he pushes inside. My body is still tender from earlier, but ready for him, and the stretch makes me breathe out hard against his skin.
He stops once he’s fully inside me.
For a few seconds, neither of us moves.
His forehead rests against mine.
My hand is on his chest, feeling the beat of his heart under my palm.
“Okay?” he asks.
I nod. “Yes. I’m okay.”
“Good.”
Then he starts moving.
It’s not rough this time. It’s slow, controlled, almost lazy, his hips rolling into mine in strokes that make my toes curl under the sheet.
He keeps one hand on my ass, holding me close, guiding the angle.
I can feel every inch of him like this. Every push.
Every retreat. Every time his breath changes when I clench around him.
He kisses me between movements.
My mouth. My jaw. The corner of my lips when I turn my head to breathe.
I try to keep things light because if I let it become too serious, I’ll start thinking about what this means.
“So,” I say, breathless, “is this your version of bed rest?”
His mouth moves against my neck. “Doctor-approved.”
“Doctor Mirov would shoot you.”
“He’s a doctor.”
“He probably owns a gun. Everyone around you owns a gun.”
“Do you?”
“No.”
“We’ll fix that.”
I pull back enough to glare at him. “We absolutely will not.”
He thrusts a little deeper.
My glare fails.
His mouth curves. “We’ll discuss it later.”
“We will not.”
He kisses me again, swallowing whatever else I was going to say.
The rhythm stays slow, but my body starts to tighten anyway.
It’s impossible not to. He knows where to touch me now, knows how to tilt his hips, knows when to slow down and when to push deep enough that I forget the sentence I’m trying to form.
I’m close when the question rises before I can stop it.
The real one.
The one that has been waiting under everything.
I open my eyes and look at him. “So you’re not the father?”
He stills. Inside me.
His face changes immediately. “No,” he says. The single word comes calmly, but his hand tightens on my hip.
I swallow. “Then why’s she saying you are?”
“I don’t know.”
That’s not enough.