Chapter 12
KATIE
Artur’s erection stays pressed against my ass as his breathing pretends he intends to sleep.
His white shirt has ridden above my thighs; one hand rests under mine at my waist and covers most of my stomach, while the other lies somewhere behind his head. Heat gathers under the blanket despite the cool air moving through the vent.
I could let the dark hide the question until morning.
“Why did you offer to send me away?”
His chest expands against my back. “You had the right to leave.”
“That didn’t answer me.” I turn inside the circle of his arm until we face each other. “You killed Sergei rather than let him keep one hand on me. Today you stood outside Velvet Fortune and offered me another name in another city.”
Yellow light from the security panel reaches one side of Artur’s face. His gray eyes stay on mine. “Choice means very little if I never permit you to use it.”
The narrow mattress gives us nowhere to retreat without making the movement obvious.
One of Artur’s bare feet rests against my ankle under the blanket, and warmth travels through that small point of contact until my body begins measuring the distance to the rest of him.
His heat has soaked into the shirt I’m wearing, mixing cedar soap with the lingering smoke in my clothes.
The bed smells like the two lives I chose to put in one dresser: his guarded and expensive, mine singed around the edges, both breathing under the same sheet.
The answer quiets every clever reply I might have used to protect myself.
“You didn’t want me to go.”
“No.”
He gives me the answer without softening it.
I touch the open collar of his shirt where it lies against my chest. “Would you have let me?”
His mouth tightens before he answers. “I’d have put you in the car myself. Then I’d have spent the war hating every mile between us.”
Artur doesn’t soften the answer or offer reassurance he can’t guarantee. I believe him because he gives me the ugly shape of what he would have done, then waits for me to decide what it means.
I slide my hand over his bare chest, and dark hair catches against my palm, coarse where the shirt left him open. His heartbeat stays steady under it, though the hard length against my thigh betrays the control elsewhere.
“You turned away from me at the fight,” I say.
The muscles under my hand tense.
“I apologized in the car for trying to hurt you with Sergei. I meant it.” My fingers move lower, following the line of hair toward his stomach. “You never told me what it did to you.”
“You understood why you regretted it.”
“I want the rest.”
Artur studies me in the low light, his attention moving over my face as if he expects to find a safer question hidden there.
“Seeing you with him hurt,” he says at last. “Before I was angry, I believed you had looked at me clearly and decided you wanted an easier man.”
The confession is quieter than the gunshot was.
I remember Artur turning toward the neutral captain, his expression empty as I laughed beside Sergei. At the time, I mistook that emptiness for indifference. Now I can see what it cost him to leave me standing there.
“What made him easier?”
“He could smile at you without considering which exit his body needed to cover. His skin looked unmarked above the collar. He didn’t carry a dead brother into the room.” Artur’s fingers tighten slightly at my waist. “He looked like a man who could give you a life without armored glass.”
With one fingertip, I trace the pale line beside Artur’s temple.
Near his hair, the scar is narrow before widening toward the brow, a visible imperfection above eyes that have spent the week searching every room for danger.
No mark I can touch reveals his grief; instead, I see it in the extra guard at each door and the reinforced glass, then again when his face empties at Misha’s name.
An easier man might arrive without those shadows, but he would also lack Artur’s brutal honesty or the hands that cover me during gunfire. He might never possess the strength to offer an escape that could humiliate him.
“Sergei looked at me and saw a way to humiliate you.”
“I know that now.”
“Even before he grabbed me, I was already coming back to you.”
Artur’s gaze drops to my mouth. “You took too long.”
The words should irritate me; instead, the rough edge in them heats my blood.
“You ignored me.”
“I was trying not to drag you away in front of every man Pasha invited.”
“That would have ruined my apology.”
His hand slides from my waist to my hip under the shirt. “Your apology still requires work.”
The answer carries enough arrogance to make me smile, but I hear the restraint under it. He won’t use sex to collect a debt I don’t owe. If this happens, I have to cross the distance myself.
I take his right hand.
I press Artur’s palm over the wrist Sergei grabbed. His fingers close by instinct, then loosen so quickly that his hand barely touches me.
“He put his hand here after I told him to let go,” I say. “I’m putting yours here because I want it.”
Artur’s breathing changes.
I guide his grip tighter until I feel the full circle of his fingers around my wrist, and my pulse beats against his palm. Fear flickers through me, brief and sharp, but his hand stays exactly where I placed it.
Around me, the bedroom refuses to disappear; through the ceiling grille, air continues to move, and under my legs the clean sheet stays cool.
Behind my closed eyes, Sergei’s face tries to rise.
Before the memory can finish, I open them and find Artur above me with his fingers waiting for my direction.
I move his hand once, testing the pressure, but the memory belongs to the man who hurt me. The decision belongs to me; my breath eases lower into my lungs as the old panic loses its grip on the touch.
“Katie.” My name comes out low.
“Hold me.”
His thumb moves over the inside of my wrist. “Tell me if the pressure hurts.”
“It doesn’t.”
As I lift our joined hands above my head and roll onto my back, the shirt falls open across my thighs. Artur follows without releasing me, his body moving over mine until one knee settles between my legs.
His weight reaches me slowly: warm chest hair brushes the thin cotton over my breasts as his erection presses along my inner thigh through the lounge pants. He watches every change in my face when he pins my wrist to the pillow.
“What do you want?” he asks.
“The promise you made when you fastened my gown.”
Artur’s eyes darken. “I promised to open the clasp with my teeth and put you over the bed.”
“The dress didn’t survive the evening. Neither did the plan. Boris’s call sent us to the construction fire before you could put me over anything.”
“You survived. I remember exactly what the fire interrupted.” His gaze moves down the white shirt. “I’ll make use of what you’re wearing.”
He bends to my wrist first.
His mouth closes over the place Sergei grabbed; the kiss is firm and warm. He turns my wrist under his lips, then presses his tongue once against the pulse there.
I shiver.
“Nobody owns this hand but you,” Artur says against my skin. “You decide where it touches and when it leaves.”
“Including yours.”
“Especially mine.”
My next breath enters more deeply, easing the pressure that has remained since the warehouse.
I free my other hand and catch the back of his neck. “Kiss me somewhere less philosophical.”
His mouth covers mine.
The force of the kiss presses my head into the pillow. He opens my mouth with his, keeping his grip around my wrist only as tight as I asked. I taste mint and the coffee he drank after we left Velvet Fortune.
I bite his lower lip, drawing a rough sound from Artur before he moves his knee higher between my thighs.
The pressure catches the damp cotton at my center. I roll my hips against him, dragging the shirt above my waist until my bare ass meets the sheet and cold air reaches skin already warm from his body.
Artur lifts his mouth. “You left your underwear in my drawer.”
“I wanted your shirt.”
His free hand moves under it, traveling over my stomach before closing around one breast. The weight fills his palm, bare skin hot against his hand. He rubs his thumb across my nipple until it hardens beneath him, then pinches the peak and makes my hips jerk.
He pulls the shirt higher instead of removing it, exposing my breasts with the collar still around my shoulders; white cotton bunches under my chin. My nipples tighten in the cool room, dark against skin faintly marked by his mouth.
Artur lowers his head and sucks one nipple between his lips.
Heat closes around the sensitive point; his tongue presses under it as his fingers hold the other breast, rolling that nipple in time with each pull of his mouth. I arch toward him, dragging his cock along the inside of my thigh until the hard shape hurts through his lounge pants.
I hook my fingers into his waistband, and Artur catches that hand, pins it beside the wrist he already holds, then uses his free hand to push the lounge pants down. His cock springs against his stomach, thick and fully hard, with a clear drop shining at the head.
Across one side of him, yellow light settles while the rest stays in shadow.
Dark hair spreads over his chest, then narrows down the firm planes of his stomach.
When he reaches for me, the scar below his right ribs pulls.
Through the darker trail under his navel, his cock rises so heavily that the head leans toward his abdomen.
I take my time looking because he gave me the right to choose. Artur holds still under the inspection, though his erection jumps when my attention reaches the wet opening.
I stroke him from base to tip, the skin moving hot over the solid length beneath it while his abdomen tightens as another drop gathers against my thumb.
“Condom,” he says.
The word brings back black foil creasing between his fingers, followed by the reckless decision that left him spilling inside me. One time, I told myself, as if arithmetic could make the choice safer.
Tonight the risk doesn’t feel distant.