His back is tense beneath his black shirt, shoulders drawn tight, and for one horrible second, I think he’s leaving. The old wound reacts before logic does, chest clamping down so hard I almost say his name too sharply.
But he doesn’t go to the door. He reaches into the inside pocket of his coat.
I sit up fully. “Nikolaj,” I say, my voice cautious now. “What are you doing?”
He pauses with his hand inside the coat, shoulders rising and falling once. Then he turns back. There’s something in his hand, but he keeps it closed in his fist.
My heart begins to pound.
He comes back to the bed slower than he left it, eyes never leaving mine. The fear is back now, but different. Panic, but not the kind from earlier when he thought I might send him away.
He climbs onto the bed and settles between my legs, not sexual, not teasing, no smugness anywhere in him. He kneels there with my thighs on either side of him and the closed fist held carefully near his chest.
“Nikolaj…?” I say again, softer this time.
“Don’t say my name like that yet,” he says, voice rough. “I need to get this out before I lose my fucking nerve.”
That alone stills me.
Nikolaj Dragovich has no shortage of nerve. He has walked into rooms full of men who wanted him dead and looked bored by their ambition. He has slit throats, taken empires, stared down fathers, brothers, kings, traitors, and ghosts. If he’s afraid now, it’s because this matters more than surviving any of them.
So, I shut my mouth.
He looks down briefly at the space between us, then back up. His eyes are too bright, too open, and it costs him visibly to keep them on me. Then I notice the tips of his ears have gone pink.
“I don’t have a clean speech,” he says, and there’s a weak, self-hating twist to his mouth. “I tried to make one in my head on the way here, and it sounded like shit. Too formal. Too much like something a man says when he wants to dress terror in expensive words. So, you’re getting this instead.”
My throat tightens, and my heart pounds so fast, I hear the gush in my ears.
He exhales and keeps going.
“I lost eight years, and you lived them. That’s the part I keep coming back to when I’m alone, and my head gets quiet enough to be cruel. I lost the memories, but you had to carry them. You carried the worst of me and the best of us with no one to hand it to. You built yourself into a King around a wound I didn’t even know I gave you. And then I came back into your life and made you wait again because I was too fucked up to hold all of it at once.”
I start to speak, but he lifts his free hand slightly, stopping me.
“Let me finish,” he says. “Please.”
Thatpleaseagain. Softer this time, but no less devastating.
I nod.
“I know you’re married. I know what the world sees when it looks at you. I know there’s a woman in this house with your name attached to hers by contract and politics and all the bullshit our families use to make cages look respectable. I know I don’t get to undo that by being jealous and dramatic and Russian about it.”
A helpless laugh catches in my throat despite everything.
His mouth flickers. “Don’t laugh. I’m being sincere, and it’s fucking awful.”
“I’m not laughing at you.”
“You are a little.”
“I adore you a little.”
That hits him hard enough that his eyes close briefly. When he opens them again, something in them has steadied.
“Good,” he says quietly. “Because I adore you completely.”
The words go through me like a blade warmed in fire. He looks at the hand still closed against his chest, then finally opens it.
