“I know what you deserved. Let me finish.”
I nod once, and he takes another breath. “I’ve been careful with my hands because half the time I want to grab you so hard you never leave my reach again, and the other half I’m afraid if I touch you too much, I’ll forget I’m still furious.”
The air between us shifts, but not into danger. Not exactly.
“I’ve watched you brace for me,” he says, and there is raw self-disgust in his voice now. “I’ve watched you go quiet when I’m too quiet. I’ve watched you apologize before I’ve even found the words to say what’s in my head. I hate it. I fucking hate that my pain has made you afraid of your own place beside me.”
My throat tightens. “Nikolaj…”
“No,” he says, softer now, and his free hand lifts slowly toward my face. “Listen, please.”
The touch is warm, steady, careful, as every touch has been for two weeks. But there’s something different inside it now; less question, more decision. His thumb moves once over my cheekbone, and I feel the exact second his resolve settles.
“Nothing you did tonight was wrong,” he says, then his gaze drops to my mouth, and he leans in slowly enough that I understand he’s giving me time, and that almost breaks me more than if he simply took what he wanted.
Nikolaj has always been a force. A storm. A blade with a pulse. Being chosen by him was once indistinguishable from being conquered, and I loved that too, in all the reckless ways youth mistakes intensity for proof.
But this is different. This is Nikolaj with his hands on my face and his anger still alive between us, choosing not to make the kiss another form of possession until I meet him there.
So, I do.
I rise slightly on my toes, close the last inch, and his mouth meets mine.
At first, I’m startled by the softness. That’s the honest truth. I’ve been waiting two weeks for this and dreading it just as much, because I didn’t know what would happen when we crossed this line again.
But his mouth is warm, and his hands are steady, and the kiss starts like a question neither of us has been brave enough to ask with words.
Can we still do this without bleeding?
I make a small sound against him as an answer, and his breath catches. That is what breaks the shock. My free hand lifts to his chest, fingers curling into the fabric of his shirt, and I kiss him back.
The moment I do, something in him trembles. He doesn’t deepen the kiss immediately, and somehow that restraint hurts more than hunger would have. He waits until I lean into him, until my mouth opens beneath his, until my grip on his shirt becomes less startled and more certain.
Then he steps closer, and the kiss turns deeper, not rough but full, his mouth moving over mine with the kind of aching care that makes my knees feel briefly untrustworthy.
I had forgotten and remembered this a thousand times.
The taste of him. The warmth. The slight scrape of his stubble. The way he kisses like he’s trying to say six things at once and refuses to trust any language but pressure, breath, and the angle of his hands.
I feel the old Nikolaj in it—the one who would have devoured first and considered consequence later—but I feel the new one too.
The one who has spent two weeks learning where the wounds are. The one who stops himself from taking too quickly. The one who chooses not to weaponize hunger because we are trying to build something desire can live inside instead of hide behind.
My fingers loosen from his shirt and slide up to his neck.
He makes a low sound into my mouth.
God, that sound.
It goes through me with such force I almost break the kiss just to breathe through it, but then his hand tightens at my face, thumb brushing beneath my eye, and I realize I’m crying again. Of course, I am. Apparently, this new life comes with poor emotional regulation and saltwater at inconvenient moments.
Nikolaj kisses the tear without pulling away fully, his mouth brushing the corner of my eye, then my cheek, then back to my lips with a softness so devastating I have to grip his neck harder to stay standing.
When the kiss finally breaks, neither of us goes far. His forehead leans against mine.
This time, I do not close up. I do not step behind my face. I stand there with his hand on my cheek and mine at his throat, and I let the silence be what it is: not punishment, or withdrawal, but space for words.
His eyes close briefly, and when he opens them again, they are glassy.
