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“I know.” Lorenzo shifts, moving so that he can kiss me lightly on the lips. “We don’t have to rush anything. Not even this.” His hand tightens a little on my hip, and I know what he means.
“At the club that night—” I swallow hard, looking up at him. “He didn’t—force me. But he threatened to. And he—while I danced—” I can’t bring myself to finish the statement, to blatantly say it out loud, but from the look on Lorenzo’s face, I don’t have to.
His expression is dark and cold. “If I could kill him again, I would,” he says finally. “Slower, this time.”
“He’s dead.” I touch Lorenzo’s bare chest, and feel a slight shiver go through him. I can tell that he wants me—it’s been too long for us both. “And he won’t hurt us anymore. Will anyone else?—”
Lorenzo shakes his head quickly. “Dante spoke with the pakhan. Egor acted without authorization. The treaty between the families holds for now.” His voice is quiet, slightly ominous when he says for now, but I understand that those are issues beyond this room, beyond what he or I can have any control over.”
“So we’re safe.” I let out a slow breath, and Lorenzo turns towards me, nodding. He reaches down, taking my hands in his.
“Yes. I meant it, Mila. I will always keep you safe. You and anyone who matters to you. They matter to me, too, now.”
My chest tightens. I move closer to him, leaning up, pulling one of my hands free to press it against his face. “I love you,” I whisper. “I’m glad I can say it now.”
“I am, too.” He kisses me again, gently, and when I arch into him, he lets out a low groan. “Mila?—”
“I want you.” I pull him closer, feeling the hard shape of his cock against my thigh, the eager way he moves against me even as he tries to give me the space to say no. “I want to feel like I’m yours.”
“You are. And I’m yours, too.” He rolls me onto my back, his hands already moving to tug my clothes away, pushing his soft sleep pants down. “God, Mila?—”
His cock nudges between my thighs, his hands smoothing over me. He groans low in his throat when he feels how wet I am, his knee gently moving my legs apart as the tip of his cock nudges inside of me. “Fuck, you feel so good?—”
It’s slow and sweet, in a way that I never knew sex could be. Lorenzo rocks against me, each glide of his cock long and slow, as if he wants me to feel every inch and to feel every inch of me in return. His mouth grazes over my lips, my jaw, my throat, my collarbones, down to my breasts as I arch and cry out, one hand over my mouth as I come around his thrusting cock, feeling myself pull him deeper as Lorenzo groans.
“I—” he lets out a shuddering breath, and I reach down to press my hand against the curve of his ass, urging him deeper.
“I’m on the pill,” I whisper. “I didn’t say anything before because I wasn’t sure I wanted you to—” I swallow hard, feeling my pulse beat in my throat. “I want you to, now.”
I lean up, pulling him down to me, my lips against his ear as he starts to move inside of me again. “Come inside of me,” I whisper. “Come for me.”
He shudders, his hand clutching the pillow next to my head, and I feel him throb as he thrusts deep inside of me, filling me with heat as I come around him for a second time.
—
A week turns into two, then three, and then a month. Lorenzo doesn’t want us to leave, and I don’t want to go, and to my surprise, neither does Niki. If I hadn’t already trusted Lorenzo so completely, Niki’s trust in him would have sealed it. Since the night Lorenzo came for dinner, Niki has taken a liking to him, and he seems to love staying in the apartment as well. I’m sure the huge television, the rooftop pool, and the general comforts surrounding us have a lot to do with it. Still, he’s as peaceful here as he ever was at home, and I see no reason to upend it all again for a new apartment when we’re happy.
Happy. I didn’t know it was possible to feel like this. The three of us fall into a rhythm almost without meaning to. Lorenzo refuses to let me pay him for anything, suggesting I save my half-salary from the ballet instead, and I can’t find a reason to force the issue. Staying with him, there’s nothing I can pay for short of leaving cash out where he can find it—there aren’t any bills that I can pay. For the first couple of weeks, he has groceries delivered. Then, in the third week, he casually pushes his phone towards me with the app open, telling me to choose what I want. His driver takes Niki and me to Niki’s therapy appointments, which I find out he’s covered in full on automatic draft when I try to pay for the next one we go to. And when I point out that this is very close to the arrangement that I tried to offer him in the first place, Lorenzo goes very quiet.
“If that’s how you feel,” he tells me, “then I will sleep down the hall and not touch you. This isn’t a bargain between us, Mila, or some kind of contract. I love you, and I want to take care of you. It begins and ends there.”
The truth is that I don’t know how to let someone take care of me. I never have. But I know he means it, and it’s the last time we have the conversation.
Instead, I try to learn how to enjoy it. To let myself, and Niki, be taken care of. I can see him slowly blossoming in the new environment—he still doesn’t speak, but by the time the first month has gone by, he starts writing messages to Lorenzo and me on a pad of paper. It’s the first time I’ve had a real conversation with my brother since the accident, and I burst into tears at the dinner table, reading it.
That night, I tell Lorenzo what happened. I tell him about the car crash, that they were coming to pick me up, and that Niki hasn’t spoken again since they pried him out. Lorenzo holds me while I cry, until I fall asleep on his chest. And in the morning, I wake up feeling lighter.
Darcy comes to visit, and while I can see it takes some time for her to forgive my secrecy, things ease between us as the weeks go on. When a month turns into two, and my cast is switched out for a soft boot, she comes over to help me with my physical therapy exercises. For a while, she’s tense around Lorenzo, but in time that eases, too.
Two and a half months after the accident, Lorenzo comes to bed to find me sitting there, staring off into the distance. He sits down on the edge of the bed, pausing as he looks at me.
“I can tell something is on your mind,” he says quietly. “You can tell me anything, you know.”
“I know.” I bite my lip. The past two and a half months have felt like a dream—like a beautiful, perfect dream, and I’m afraid that what I’m going to say will change that. That it will shatter the peace we have, and make it so that we can’t keep going on the way we are. But I also know I can’t keep it to myself.
“The doctor said I can start dancing again, lightly, in two weeks. I have to take it slowly, but I can start going back to practice. In another month, I could probably go back to work.” I let out a breath, looking at Lorenzo’s face, and he turns to look at me.
“How do you feel about that?” he asks quietly, and I sink my teeth deeper into my lower lip.
