Chapter 9 #3
I trail my mouth down her body. Throat, collarbone, the swell of her breast. I close my lips around one peaked nipple and her back arches off the mattress, her fingers threading through my hair, tugging the leather cord loose until my dark hair falls around us both.
"Kon." My name again, breathy and broken, pulled from her chest on a moan.
Lower. My mouth traces the curve of her ribs, my teeth graze the jut of her hipbone. I learn the places that make her gasp and catalog every shiver and sigh that falls from her lips.
When I settle between her thighs and press my mouth against her center, she cries out and her hips lift off the mattress.
I grip her thighs, spreading her wider, and feast on her with a patience I've never shown any woman.
My tongue drags through her folds, slow and deliberate, circling the swollen bud at her apex.
"Oh God." Her fingers fist in my hair. Her thighs tremble against my ears. "Kon, please, I can't..."
"You can." I seal my lips around her clit and suck gently. "And you will enjoy every minute of it."
She comes against my mouth with a sob, her body bowing off the bed. I work her through every wave, gentling my touch as the aftershocks roll through her, until she collapses into the sheets.
I rise over her and shed my remaining clothes. She watches me through heavy-lidded eyes, her gaze dragging down my chest, my stomach, lower. Her lips part and her tongue wets her bottom lip.
"Come here." She reaches for me, her voice thick with want. "I need you closer."
I settle between her soft thighs and press the head of my cock at her entrance. Fuck, she’s so damn gorgeous and drenched. Her sweet pussy is swollen, the heat of her searing against my sensitive head.
"Slow this time," she whispers. "I want to feel all of you."
"Relax, malyshka. You’ll get every inch of me. Every fucking throbbing inch." I press forward. Slow. So slow it borders on torture. Her body opens for me, her walls stretching to accommodate my width, and the wet heat grips me in tight pulses that make my arms shake.
She sighs softly and I can feel my balls swelling with the need to release. Not yet. God not yet, but when I do, there’s no way this woman–my woman–will walk away from this encounter not pregnant. Just the idea of her swollen with my child makes my cock harder.
I have no idea if she’s on the pill. Neither of us has discussed it. That needs to change. If she is, she can toss it. This woman will be the mother of my children. Fuck it. I don’t care if her father is sitting at the top of my shit list. I want her and I’m not letting her go.
That talk can come later. Right now I’m going to worship my little flame and make her come for me.
I push all the way inside her tight channel.
The sound she makes when I'm fully seated is new.
A low, trembling moan that vibrates through her chest and into mine.
She wraps around me, legs hooked behind my back, arms circling my shoulders, and the sensation of being held by this woman, truly held, closes my throat.
I move. Slow, deep strokes that drag against every nerve ending. I watch her face, every flicker of pleasure, the way her brow furrows and her lips part and her eyes struggle to stay open.
"Look at me." My voice comes out raw with all the emotions swelling in my chest. "Don't close your eyes."
Her eyes lock on mine. Blue on black. The walls between us crumble with every thrust, every shared breath.
"You feel incredible." Her voice breaks on the last word. Her nails trace down my back, not in violence but in desperation. "Every time, Kon. Every time it feels..."
"I know." I drop my forehead to hers. Our breath mingles in the narrow space between us. "Ya znayu, огонёк," I murmur, kissing her cheek.
I angle my hips and find the spot inside her that makes her keen, grinding against it with every measured thrust. Her back arches, her breasts pressing against my chest, her nipples dragging against my skin.
"Don't stop." Her hands grip my shoulders, fingers digging into muscle. "Please don't stop."
"Never." And I mean it with every damn fiber of my being.
Her orgasm builds slowly this time, rolling through her body in visible waves, her skin flushing from chest to cheeks, her walls tightening around me in escalating pulses.
When she breaks, she breaks quietly. A long, shuddering exhale.
My name breathed against my lips. Her body clenching around me so tight the pleasure borders on pain.
I follow her over. Bury myself to the hilt and let go, my release spilling into her in hot, pulsing waves. I press my face into the curve of her neck and groan against her skin, tasting salt, breathing her in.
We lie tangled together, chests heaving, heartbeats finding each other through sweat-dampened skin.
"That was different," she murmurs against my shoulder.
"Da."
"Different good or different complicated?"
Damn. I could live in this moment forever. "Both," I admit because she has no idea I’m not letting her go. Her wish never said anything about keeping her. But the heart wants what it wants and in this case my heart, body, and soul crave this woman.
She laughs, a soft, sleepy sound that vibrates through my chest. "You and your one-word answers."
I run my hands through her hair, the silky strands falling over my chest. "You and your endless questions."
Her fingers trace lazy patterns through the barbed wire inked across my ribs. The silence between us is warm. Full.
"The roses in the tattoo," she says, her fingertip following a petal inked over my ribcage. "They grow through the wire."
"Da."
"Is that intentional?"
"Everything about them is intentional, yes."
She turns her head and meets my gaze, her eyes full of questions and curiosity. And also compassion. "Will you tell me why? Someday? It doesn’t have to be now."
I press my lips to her hair. "Someday."
"I'll hold you to that." She shifts against me, her cheek finding the flat plane of my chest, settling over my heartbeat. Her fingers continue tracing, following the lines of wire down to my hip, then back up to the cluster of roses over my heart. "Do the others have tattoos like this?"
"My brothers? Da. Each of us has our own marks. Different stories. The only one we share is the viper. It’s the mark of our brotherhood." I raise my right hand and gesture to the head of the viper settled over the back of my hand and its body hidden among the roses and wire.
She traces the head as she asks, "But you all carry the same pain underneath? Is that what ties you together?"
I tighten my arm around her.
"You see too much, огонёк."
"Occupational hazard." Her voice is getting drowsy, the words softening at the edges. "Kon?"
"Mm."
"I lied. Every time I said this doesn't change anything. Every time I walked away and pretended it didn't matter."
My chest goes still. "I know."
"Of course you do." A sleepy exhale against my skin. "Infuriating man."
"I should go." The words slip out on a drowsy exhale, barely formed, the kind of truth that only surfaces when the body is too tired to guard the mouth.
She's not talking about the bed. Her fingers curl against my chest, gripping the ink over my heart.
"This whole thing, Kon. The Foundry. The deal. You. I should leave before..."
She trails off, but I hear the rest in the way her voice fractures. Before I can't anymore. Before leaving you destroys me the way staying destroyed my mother.
"Stay."
"That's not..." Her fingers still against my ribs. "That's not smart. None of this is smart."
"I know. Stay anyway."
A beat. Two. Her body softens against mine, the last of the tension draining from her muscles, and her breathing deepens. Her palm presses flat over my heartbeat, warm and steady, holding on even as sleep pulls her under.
I lie awake long after her breathing evens out. The moonlight moves across the ceiling in slow, silver arcs. Her weight against my side is slight, but the gravity of it pins me to this bed more effectively than chains.
Her face in sleep is different. Younger. The sharp edges soften, the sardonic armor dissolves, and underneath is just a woman. Exhausted. Brave. More alone than anyone I've ever known.
I trace the curve of her spine with one finger, following the ridge of bone from the nape of her neck to the small of her back. She shivers but doesn't wake. Her lips part on a soft exhale and she burrows closer, pressing her face deeper into my chest.
The words rise in my throat before I can stop them. Too soon. Too dangerous. Too real.
I say them anyway.
"Я тебя люблю." I love you.
The words leave my lips and the darkness swallows them whole, burying my confession beneath the hum of brick walls and the silver wash of moonlight and the steady rise and fall of her breathing.
She doesn't stir. Doesn't hear the truth I just handed to the night because I'm not brave enough to hand it to her.
Not yet.
But the truth settles into my bones with the weight of certainty.
I press my lips to the top of her head and close my eyes.
I'm in trouble. So much trouble.
Dawn creeps through the windows in pale gold. She stirs against my chest, her body tensing as consciousness returns, registering unfamiliar warmth and the solid wall of muscle beneath her cheek.
Her eyes open. Find mine.
For one breath, she doesn't run. For one breath, she looks at me with those blue eyes, unguarded and searching, and the rawness in her expression strips me down to the foundation.
Then the armor slides back into place. I watch it happen in real time, the softening of her brow replaced by careful neutrality, the vulnerability shuttering behind the journalist's gaze.
"This doesn't change anything." Her voice is steady.
Almost convincing. She gestures between us, at the tangled sheets and the indent her body left beside mine and the whole damn night that just rewrote every rule she's tried to enforce since the day I brought her here.
"Last night. Staying. It doesn't change the deal or the arrangement or what this is. "
I tuck a strand of dark hair behind her ear. Let my thumb trace the line of her jaw.
"If that's what you need to believe."
"It's what I know." But her voice wavers on the last word, the crack so small only someone watching for it would catch it.
"You're a terrible liar, Onyx."
"And you're a terrible influence." She pulls back, putting distance between us, and the loss of her warmth against my skin hits sharper than any blade. "I can't afford to feel this. Not here. Not with you."
"Why not?"
"Because feelings make you stupid. And stupid gets you killed." She swings her legs off the bed, finds my t-shirt on the floor. "I learned that from watching my mother."
The mention of her mother tightens the air. She pulls the t-shirt over her head, the collar catching on her chin before she tugs it free.
"Your mother was killed by feelings?"
"My mother was killed by trusting the wrong man." She pauses at the bathroom door, one hand on the frame, her fingers curling against the wood. Her back is to me but I can read the tension in her shoulders, the rigid line of her spine.
She doesn't look back.
But she doesn't close the door behind her, either.
I stare at the ceiling as she turns on the shower. I press my palm flat against the mattress where her warmth still lingers. Bring it to my face and breathe in the ghost of our mingled scents.
Everything has already changed. She knows it. I know it.
She’s mine.