I kiss her. Hard. Possessive. Triumphant. My teeth catch her lower lip, and she gasps into my mouth, her hands flying up to grip my shirt.
"You think I wanted a surrogate?" I growl against her lips. "I wanted you. You're the woman who spat in a man's face rather than beg. You see the monster and don't pretend he's a prince. You are my family."
I drag my mouth down her jaw, her throat, my hands tangling in the ruins of her braids.
"This was always where we were headed," I tell her, voice breaking. "Not a contract. Not a transaction. This. You, screaming at me. Me, desperate for you. Us, building something that doesn't die."
She is sobbing now, but they are different tears. Release. Recognition. "Mikhail," she chokes out.
"Tell me," I demand, lifting her, carrying her from the safe-house bedroom toward where our ride waits. "Tell me you're mine. Tell me you're staying. Tell me this baby has a mother who will never walk out the side door."
"I'm yours," she whispers, clutching me. "I'm staying. I'm yours."
***
The penthouse has never felt like home until I carry her across the threshold. She clings to me the whole way to our room.
The door slams. I set her down only long enough to strip away her ruined clothes. Until she's wearing nothing but bruises and defiance and the still-flat place where our child grows, and she has never been more beautiful.
I tear my own clothes off. Shirt. Holster. Trousers.
The anger is still there. It will always be there, the memory of almost losing her. But beneath it is gratitude so vast it could drown me. I grab her. Lift her. Press her back to the bed and kiss her with every ounce of fear, fury, and love I have kept locked in my chest since the day she walked into my warehouse.
She moans into my mouth, her legs wrapping around my waist, her heels locking at the small of my back. She is crying. I am shaking. Our tongues tangle. Neither of us slows down. This is not gentle.
This is fear leaving the body, the only way it knows how.
I drive into her in one deep stroke, watching her face the entire time. She cries out, nails scoring down my back. Marking me. I do not stop. I can't stop. I need to feel her alive. Warm. Here.
"You ran from me," I growl, thrusting into her, each word punctuated by the slap of skin. "Never again. Never fucking again."
"Never," she sobs, arching into me. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I was scared—"
"You don't get to be scared alone anymore." I grip her chin, forcing her eyes to mine as I drive deep. "You share it. With me. That's what family does."
"Yes," she gasps. "Yes. Family."
I bracket her head with my forearms, surrounding her with my body, the only shelter I know how to give, and I make love to her. She meets me stroke for stroke. Her hips rise to meet mine, her hands tugging at my hair, her tears wetting the pillow beneath her. Every stroke is a fight, an apology, and a promise, tangled in sheets and sweat and the salt of grief turned to joy.
"You are my Baby Girl," I rasp against her neck, feeling her tighten around me, so close. "My Riley. My fucking everything."
Her release tears through her with my name on her mouth. Her body locks down around mine, pulsing, milking, drawing out my own climax. I follow her with a broken sound I barely recognize, spilling inside her, marking her, claiming her in the most primal way I know.
We lie there, panting, wrecked. I am still inside her. I never want to leave.
She turns her head on the pillow. Her eyes are swollen but clear. She is here. She is mine.
"Mikhail," she whispers.
I brush the tangled hair from her forehead. Press a kiss to her temple. To her eyelids. To the bruise on her cheekbone that I will avenge a thousand times over in my dreams.
"Sleep," I say, stroking. "You're safe. You're in my home, where no one can touch you."
Her hand finds mine on the mattress. She laces our fingers together and places them over her stomach, where our future grows.
"Our home," she corrects softly.
I smile against her hair. "Ours."
