I wipe my chin with the back of my hand. My jaw aches. My throat is raw. My eyes are swollen from crying.
And I feel powerful. Alive. Fucking wrecked in the best way.
“Where the fuck did that come from, baby?” he rasps, chest heaving, grinning tiredly.
I giggle and bury my face in his chest. I don’t have an answer. Because I didn’t know I had it in me either.
11
Nikolai
Zara’s curled up against my chest, her breathing finally steady. Her fingers trace lazy patterns across my skin, and when I look down at her, her dark eyes aren’t guarded anymore.
“You okay?” I ask, brushing her messy hair back from her face.
She nods against my chest with a tired smile. “More than okay.”
The way she says it makes something loosen in my chest. For the first time since this whole mess started, she doesn’t look like she’s planning her escape.
“Thank you,” she whispers. “For today. For standing up for me.”
“Always,” I tell her. “No one fucks with my family.”
She blinks at that, pressing closer. “Is that what I am? Your family?”
“What do you think?”
Instead of answering, she lifts her head and kisses me. Soft, sweet, not like the desperate hunger from before.
We stay like that for a while, just touching and talking quietly.
“You don’t have to be alone anymore,” I say against her hair.
“I know.” Her voice is so quiet that I almost miss it. “I’m starting to understand that.”
12
Nikolai
Every morning I wake up with my wife curled up next to me. Her soft ass pressed to my cock, my arm around her waist. I breathe her in: cocoa butter, warmth, and something underneath that’s justZara. My wife. In my bed. In my house.
But one night, she wakes me with screams. Raw, terrified, ripped from somewhere deep inside her. I’m on her before my eyes are fully open, pulling my girl against my chest, one hand in her hair, the other locked around her body.
“Hey. Hey. You’re okay. I’m here.”
She’s shaking. Sobbing. Her fingers clutching my shirt like she’s drowning.
“The alley,” she gasps. “I keep seeing it. The blood. His face when you…”
“Look at me.” I grab her chin, tilting her face up. Her eyes are wild, tears streaming down her pretty face. “Look at me, Zara.” When she does, I tell her, “No one is gonna hurt you. Notthe cops, not some ghost, not a fucking soul on this planet. You know why?”
She shakes her head.
“Because they’d have to get through me. And baby, no one gets through me.”
She lets out a sound that’s half laugh, half sob. “That’s the most reassuring or the most terrifying thing anyone’s ever said to me.”
I smile and kiss her forehead.
