Chapter 9 #2
The honest answer is simple. I'm here because my bed is cold without you in it and the ceiling stopped being interesting three hours ago.
I'm here because the taste of you is fading from my tongue and that's unacceptable.
I'm here because every hallway in this building leads to your door whether I want it to or not, and tonight I stopped pretending I wanted it to lead anywhere else.
"I couldn't sleep."
Her other eyebrow rises to meet the first. "The Bratva Beast gets insomnia and his cure is my bedroom doorway? Most people try warm milk."
"Most people don't have you down the hall."
The words come out before I can filter them. Her mouth opens on a sharp inhale, a flicker of surprise crossing her features.
She recovers fast, the surprise dissolving back into that infuriating smirk, but the flush climbing her throat gives her away.
"Careful, Kon. That sounded dangerously close to a compliment."
"Take it however you want."
"I usually do." She swings her legs off the bed and sits on the edge, her bare feet dangling above the floor, the t-shirt riding higher on her thighs. "So the Beast can't sleep and warm milk won't cut it. What's the plan? Stand in my doorway looking broody until sunrise?"
"That was the backup option."
She runs her fingers through her dark hair, pushing it back from her face, and the movement pulls the t-shirt taut across her breasts in a way she either doesn't notice or absolutely does.
"Well, I've been staring at the same paragraph for an hour and my brain won't shut off, so at least we can be insomniacs together. "
I rub at the beard covering my chin. "What are you working on?"
Glittering blue eyes meet mine. "Mm. Nice try." A knowing smile curves her mouth. "That's a question, and you said you weren't here for those."
I push off the doorframe and take one step into the room. Carpet cushions my steps as I slowly make my way closer. "You're impossible."
"And yet here you are. At my door. At midnight." She tilts her head, studying me with those sharp blue eyes. "You could have paced the hallway. Could have hit the heavy bag. Could have drunk your way through that silver flask. But you came here."
"Da."
"Why?"
"I came because I wanted to."
Being honest with her is easy. Her expression shifts, the sardonic armor flickering, and underneath it I catch a flash of vulnerability so raw it makes my ribs ache. She blinks and it's gone, shuttered behind those blue eyes, but it's there. It's always there.
"That's not part of the deal." Her voice drops, the words barely above a whisper. The playfulness drains from her face, replaced by a rawness she can't quite hide. Her fingers grip the edge of the mattress, knuckles pressing white against the sheets.
I stop a foot away from her. Close enough that the warmth of her bare legs radiates against mine. Close enough to count the freckles scattered across her nose in the moonlight.
"No." My voice comes out low, rough, the accent thickening around the single syllable. "It's not."
"Then what is it?" She stands, and the t-shirt falls against her thighs, and the distance between us shrinks to something dangerous.
Her chin lifts, those blue eyes searching mine with an intensity that strips the air from my lungs.
"Because if this is just about sex, you know the terms. One secret per encounter.
We don't need midnight visits for that."
"This isn't about the deal. And it's not about sex."
"Then what, Kon?" Her voice cracks on my name, the fracture so small most people would miss it, but I hear it the way I hear everything about this woman. With my whole body. "Why are you standing in my room at midnight looking at me like that?"
"Like what?"
"Like I'm the only thing in this building you can't figure out."
The truth presses against my ribs, hot and sharp.
Because she is. Because every equation I've solved, every enemy I've decoded, every locked room I've broken into, none of it prepared me for a woman who sleeps in my shirts and argues about encryption and makes me laugh for the first time in decades.
"Because you scare me." The admission scrapes out of my throat raw and unfinished. "And nothing scares me."
She goes still. Completely, utterly still, the way prey freezes when it realizes the predator isn't hunting.
Her eyes search my face, that journalist's gaze stripping me layer by layer, looking for the lie, the angle, the hidden motive she's been trained to find in every powerful man who's ever spoken to her.
She doesn't find one. I watch the realization cross her features, the subtle widening of her eyes, the way her lips press together and then release on a shaky breath.
"You mean that." Not a question. A reckoning.
"Da."
"The most dangerous man in Chicago just told me I scare him." A breath of laughter escapes her, fragile and disbelieving. "And he doesn't even have a speech prepared."
"I don't make speeches."
"No. You make breakfasts and give one-word answers and look at me like..." She stops. Swallows. Her fingers twist together at her sides. "Never mind."
"Like what?"
She inhales deeply and then lets it out slow. "Like I matter." The words are barely audible. "Like I'm not just an asset or an obligation or a problem to be solved. Like I actually matter to you."
The confession strips the air from the room. Her jaw tightens the instant the words leave her mouth, her eyes widening slightly, regretting the honesty she just handed me.
"That is because you do." My voice is low. Rough. My accent bleeds through every syllable I utter in a way I can't control. "You matter," I say again because I like the way her lips part in awe. As if she's not used to people telling her the truth or how much she means to them.
"Don't say that." She steps back, putting distance between us, but the backs of her knees hit the mattress and she has nowhere to go. "Don't say things you can't take back, Kon."
Water glitters along the rim of her pretty eyes. Fuck. I've made her cry. I step into her personal space and tilt her head up to where our eyes connect.
"I don't say things I want to take back."
The tears don't fall. She holds them there, glittering on the edge, refusing to let them spill by sheer force of will.
My hand is still beneath her chin, my thumb resting against the hinge of her jaw, and I can feel the tremor running through her body, the vibration of a woman fighting the instinct to run from the very thing she needs.
She doesn't run.
Instead, she reaches up. Her fingertips find the scar that bisects my eyebrow and trace its length, feather-light, from the bridge of my nose to my temple. It's the first time she's touched me gently without the sharp edge of a woman using her body as currency.
The tremor in her fingers travels through my skin and settles behind my sternum.
"You scare me," she whispers. Her eyes are wide, the pupils blown dark, swallowing the blue until only a thin ring remains.
"Good."
"Not because of what you are." Her fingers trail down from the scar to my jaw, tracing the hard line of bone, the beard I haven't bothered to trim. Her thumb grazes the corner of my mouth and my lips part against her touch. "Because of what you make me feel."
"And what is that?"
She exhales, her breath warm against my chin. "Safe. You make me feel safe, and that terrifies me more than anything my uncle ever did."
The words crack open a space in my chest I didn't know existed. I bring my other hand up to cradle her face, holding her in both palms. Study her in the moonlight, every shadow, every sweet, delicate line. Even the slight tremor in her lower lip that she's trying to hide.
"You are safe." My accent thickens around the words, the Russian bleeding through, reshaping the vowels. "With me, you are always safe."
"Don't make promises you can't keep."
"I don't make promises I can't keep. That's why I make so few."
I lower my mouth to hers and brush my lips across hers once, barely a graze, the lightest pressure, testing.
Her breath hitches against my mouth. I come back a second time, lingering, my lower lip catching hers, pulling gently before releasing.
The third time, I kiss her fully, my mouth moving against hers with a tenderness that makes my own chest ache, tasting her slowly, deliberately, the way I'd drink good vodka, the way I'd savor the first warm day after a Russian winter.
No teeth. No battle for dominance. No punishment.
Just the slow, unhurried press of my lips learning hers as if this is the first time, as if every kiss before this one was just practice for the real thing.
She melts against me. Her hands flatten against my bare chest, palms pressing into the skin above my heart, and a sound escapes her throat. Not a gasp. Not a moan. A surrender.
I lift her. Her legs wrap around my waist, her arms circle my neck, and I carry her to the bed, lowering her onto the mattress with a care that would make my brothers question my sanity. The springs creak as I settle over her, bracing my weight on my forearms.
I take my time undressing her. Peel the t-shirt over her head slowly enough to watch goosebumps race across her skin. She's bare underneath, and the moonlight turns her body to silver and shadow.
"You're staring." Her voice catches, half-amused, half-breathless.
"I'm memorizing." I press my mouth to the hollow of her throat. "Every inch."
"That could take a while."
"I have time." I drag my lips across her collarbone, feeling the shiver that runs through her body. "For once, I have time."
"Kon." She cups my jaw, tilting my face up until our eyes meet. Hers are searching, uncertain, stripped of the bravado she wears during the day. "What are we doing?"
"I don't have a word for it."
"In English or Russian?"
"Either."
A shaky exhale. Her thumb brushes across my lower lip, then trails along the line of my jaw. "Then don't talk. Just... show me."