LUKA #2
For one brief, dangerous second, I see another version of this room.
Nina here without injury. Nina waking in morning light, arguing about breakfast, leaving books open on the chair, putting her cold feet under my leg at night because she thinks being irritating is a form of affection.
Nina downstairs with my mother, in my kitchen, in the garden, in the long rooms that have always felt too large for one man and his rules.
The thought’s so clear that it frightens me. I step back.
Nina notices. “What?”
I say, “Nothing. Just rest for now.”
“That was an escape,” Nina says.
“Yes,” I say.
She is too tired to fight me properly, but her gaze lingers.
I leave before she can ask again.
In the hallway, I stand with one hand against the wall and force myself to remember who I am. I made vows long before Nina Hale grew into a woman who could undo me with one tired look from a hospital bed.
No marriage. No children.
No family of my own that could be used against me.
My mother is my one unmovable weakness, and even that has shaped every decision I have made since my father died. I built walls around her. Men around the walls. Money around the men. Fear around the money.
I know what love costs in my world.
I have watched men become careless for wives, foolish for sons, predictable for daughters. I have watched enemies discover the right name and turn powerful men into beggars by holding a threat against the people they loved.
I swore I would never give anyone that kind of handle on me.
I would not marry.
I would not have children.
I would not build a soft room inside myself and hand another person the key.
Then Nina came into my life.
I close my eyes.
This is how men make fatal mistakes.
Not because they don’t see the danger.
Because they see it and want anyway.
That night, I don’t go to my own room for more than an hour.
I sit in the study, read reports without absorbing them, speak to Pavel twice, receive no meaningful update on Misha, and send Sergei to sleep only after he refuses three times and my mother appears in the doorway with an expression that makes him leave immediately.
My mother doesn’t ask whether I’m all right.
She knows the answer.
“She will feel strange here.”
I say, “I know.”
“Don’t make the house feel like a cage.”
I look at her. “I’m trying.”
She shakes her head. “Try better.”
Then she leaves, because apparently everyone in this house has decided to raise me tonight.
Near midnight, I go to check on Nina.
The hallway outside her room is dim. One guard is stationed near the far staircase, out of sight from her door because I remembered my mother’s warning about cages. The house is quiet. Even the old floorboards seem to understand that Nina needs sleep.
I knock softly. No answer.
I wait. Then I hear movement inside.
Nina says, “Come in.”
I open the door.
She’s sitting up in bed, hair messy now, one of my mother’s sweaters wrapped around her shoulders, the bedside lamp on low. Her phone lies face down beside her. The untouched tea has gone cold.
I say, “You should be sleeping.”
Nina says, “That was the plan.”
I step inside and close the door behind me. “Headache?”
“A little.”
“Dizzy?”
Nina says, “No.”
“Nausea?”
Nina gives me a tired look. “Are you Mirov now?”
She snorts.
I come to the side of the bed. “What is wrong?”
She looks at the window instead of at me. “Every time I close my eyes, I see the apartment.”
I hate that answer.
I sit on the edge of the bed, leaving space between us. “You are safe here.”
Nina says, “I know.”
But knowing is not the same as feeling.
I understand that too.
She rubs her hand over her face carefully, avoiding the bruised place. “I’m tired, but I can’t get my body to believe it’s allowed to sleep.”
I look at her. At the tension in her shoulders. At the way her fingers keep gripping and releasing the blanket. At the exhausted stubbornness in her face.
I ask, “Do you trust me?”
She looks at me then. For a long second, she does not answer.
Then she says, “Yes.”
I move closer and touch her cheek with the back of my fingers. “Lie back.”
Her eyes flicker. “Luka.”
I say, “I’m going to help you relax.”
Nina says, “That sounds suspicious.”
I say, “It should.”
For the first time all night, her mouth curves faintly.
She lies back against the pillows, watching me with wary curiosity as I draw the blanket down to her knees.
She is wearing the soft sleep shorts my mother sent and an oversized shirt that slips off one shoulder.
The sight should be innocent. It is not, because she is Nina, because I have tasted her before, because even injured and exhausted she looks at me as if she knows exactly what my restraint is costing.
I pause. “If your head hurts more, you tell me.”
Nina says, “Okay.”
“If you feel dizzy, nauseous, or strange, you tell me immediately.”
Nina says, “Yes, Doctor Kazan.”
I say, “Don’t make me regret this.”
Nina whispers, “I think that’s usually my line.”
I slide my hand over her knee and up the outside of her thigh, slow enough that she can stop me, firm enough that her breath changes before I reach the hem of her shorts.
Her body responds even when the rest of her is tired, and I watch the tension in her face shift into something warmer, something more present.
I lower myself between her legs carefully, mindful of my shoulder and her head, and kiss the inside of her knee.
Nina’s fingers curl in the sheet.
I kiss higher, along the soft skin of her thigh, taking my time because I’m not doing this to rush her toward anything.
I want to quiet her mind. I want to give her body something better to hold than the memory of a dark apartment and a door left open.
I want her to feel my mouth and my hands and this bed, this room, this house, until sleep begins to seem possible again.
Nina says, “Luka.”
I look up. “Yes?”
She swallows. “You don’t have to.”
I say, “I know.”
Her eyes darken.
I hook my fingers into the waistband of her shorts and wait.
She lifts her hips slightly.
I draw the shorts down slowly and set them aside. She is bare underneath, and the sight of her open to me in the low lamplight almost breaks every disciplined thought I have left. I keep one hand on her thigh, grounding both of us, and lean down to kiss her through the first shiver.
She exhales shakily.
I use my mouth gently at first, pressing slow kisses over her, letting her settle into the feeling rather than taking too much too soon. Her thighs ease apart, and I slide my hands beneath them, holding her carefully, spreading her just enough to taste her properly.
She’s warm and wet against my tongue.
The first slow stroke makes her breath catch.
I do it again.