Chapter Eighteen #2
Tamara did not flinch from the sudden, primal aggression. She utterly surrendered to it. She understood the agony driving him, and she welcomed it, opening her mouth to deepen the kiss, her fingernails biting fiercely into his broad shoulders.
Sasha carried her the few steps to the bed, following her down into the furs and tangled sheets. He was a man starving for air, and she was his oxygen.
He tore the dark shirt over his head, discarding it onto the floor, before his hands moved to the thin straps of her silk nightgown. He wasn't slow. He moved with a tearing, frantic urgency, pushing the fabric down her shoulders and stripping it away until there was absolutely nothing between them.
Every touch was a desperate, burning brand.
Sasha worshipped her body with a rough, primal demand, needing to anchor his soul to her skin.
His mouth trailed hot, open-mouthed kisses down the long column of her throat, moving to the slope of her shoulder and the curve of her collarbone.
He didn't hold back his passion. He sucked hard against her delicate skin, his teeth grazing her collarbone, deliberately leaving a dark, blooming bruise—a fierce, primitive mark of his undeniable claiming.
"Aleksandr," Tamara gasped, her back arching deeply into the mattress. The sheer, overwhelming friction and the commanding weight of his body short-circuited her senses.
She matched his feral intensity, giving back as good as she received. Her hands raked down the muscled expanse of his back, pulling him closer, her legs wrapping tightly around his hips. She wanted him to take all of his grief, his terror, and his rage, and bury it inside her.
When they finally came together, it was an explosive, breathtaking collision of grief and devotion.
Sasha moved with a deep, relentless, consuming rhythm.
He buried his face in the crook of her neck, his frame shuddering with the force of his physical and emotional release, whispering broken, desperate Russian vows against her skin.
Tamara held him tightly, whispering his name over and over again, anchoring him to the earth as they shattered together in the dark.
Hours later, the deep, freezing darkness of the Moscow night began to slowly give way to the pale, gray light of dawn.
Sasha lay on his back in the center of the bed, the fur comforters pulled up over his waist. Tamara was curled tightly against his side, her head resting on his chest, her arm draped across his torso. The fire had died out, but the heat radiating between them was intense.
Tamara shifted slightly, her cheek resting against the steady, powerful rhythm of his heartbeat.
Her skin felt sensitive, the blooming, dark bruises left by his desperate mouth a stark contrast to her pale porcelain skin.
She didn't try to hide them. In fact, she ran her fingertips lightly over the mark on her collarbone, a secret satisfaction settling over her.
The marks were not violence; they were proof that a man who commanded an empire loved her with a desperation that defied reason.
She knew, with certainty, that his arms were the safest place she would ever be in her entire life.
Sasha shifted his arm, his large hand coming up to gently stroke the dark waves of her hair. He was staring at the ceiling, the adrenaline finally bled from his system, leaving only the stark, undeniable truth of his existence.
"There is no penance on this earth enough to balance the scales for the things I have done," Sasha rasped into the quiet room, his voice a low, vibration.
Tamara lifted her head, resting her chin on his chest to look up at his face. "Aleksandr. Do not speak like that."
"It is the truth," Sasha murmured, his dark eyes shifting to meet her silver ones. The raw vulnerability in his expression was staggering. "I am a butcher, Tamara. I have walked in blood my entire life. Yet the universe handed me an angel."
He shifted, his hand moving to cup her delicate jaw, his thumb brushing fiercely over her cheek.
"I will construct a fortress of gold and iron around you," Sasha vowed, his voice thickening with a dark, uncompromising obsession.
"I will seal the doors and swallow the key.
I will not let you breathe the air outside these walls if it means risking you.
Call it madness. Call it a cage. But if you fall, Tamara, I will not rise.
I cannot survive another night like this. "
Tamara stared at the most lethal man in Russia, listening to him confess that she was his singular, fatal weakness.
She let out a sound that was half-sob, half-laugh. She was profoundly endeared, and simultaneously annoyed by his sheer, arrogant syndicate logic.
"You are an over-bearing tyrant," Tamara choked out, swiping a tear from her eye as her fingers pressed against his strong jaw. "But a cage? A king cannot rule from inside a vault, Aleksandr."
"Then my empire burns," Sasha answered immediately, without a fraction of hesitation. "I will rule nothing but the space you occupy. I am terrified, Tamara. The perimeter failed tonight."
Tamara pushed herself up slightly, bracing her hands flat against his chest. She looked down at him, her angelic features hardening with a quiet, undeniable strength that rivaled the fiercest Bratva lieutenant.
"The perimeter failed, but we did not," Tamara swore, her voice ringing with certainty. "I am not a porcelain doll to be locked away in the dark. I survived the streets; I will survive this. But my safety is tethered directly to yours."
She leaned down, pressing her forehead against his, her silver eyes locking onto his dark ones.
"You cannot throw yourself into the line of fire and expect me to remain whole," Tamara whispered, turning his own devotion back onto him. "If you break, I break. We survive this together, or not at all. If you want me to be safe... then you need to be safe."
Sasha stared at his wife, dismantled by the weight of her logic. He realized she was absolutely right. He was no longer just a weapon for the syndicate; he was the shield that kept her alive. If he fell, she fell.
A slow, devastatingly tender smile touched the corners of Sasha’s mouth. He reached up, pulling her down to capture her lips in a soft, fiercely intimate kiss.
"We survive together," Sasha promised against her mouth, wrapping both of his arms tightly around her delicate frame, at peace.