He follows right after with a guttural groan, burying himself to the hilt. I feel the hot, thick pulse of him inside me and the sensation pushes me into another small, trembling aftershock.
He collapses over me, careful not to crush me, his face buried in my neck, breathing hard. We stay like that while we try to catch our breath, hearts pounding together, his cock still buried deep inside me, softening slowly as we catch our breath.
When he finally pulls out I wince at the emptiness and the deep, satisfied soreness between my legs. He notices immediately, kisses my forehead, and slips away for a moment, returning with a warm, damp cloth. He cleans me gently,reverently, like I'm something fragile and precious. Then he pulls me into his arms, tucking me against his chest.
"You okay?" he asks again, stroking my hair back from my face, his voice soft with concern and satisfaction.
"Better than okay," I say, smiling against his skin. "A little sore. But… I liked it. A lot. I liked begging for you."
He chuckles, the sound warm and deeply satisfied, and presses a kiss to the top of my head. "Good. Because I'm nowhere near done with you, Alivia Beckett. Not even close."
My phone buzzes on the nightstand, and some old, well-worn instinct in me reaches for it before I can stop myself, the way you check a wound to see if it's still bleeding.
Three texts from Cole.
Morning. Congratulations, I guess. Heard it went well.
My stomach drops before I even reach the second one.
I need you to find out how fast the Mostovoi’s move on these things. People are asking questions and I need an answer by Monday.
This is good for both of us, Liv. Don't make it complicated.
I read it twice, then a third time, hoping the words will somehow soften on repeat exposure. They don't. If anything, the second reading makes it worse, because I notice the thing I missed the first time, that there isn't a single word in any of it asking how I am. Not one question about the dinner, the man, the night, the entire upheaval of my life that happened without my consent twelve hours ago. Just a deadline.Monday.
"What is it?" Volody asks against my hair.
"It's nothing,” I say with a sigh as I lay my phone back on the nightstand. Volody must have put it there after I fell asleep.
"Liv." His voice gentles, but there's an edge underneath it now, something sharpening. "We agreed on honest last night. I'd like to keep that going into the daylight hours, if it's not too much to ask."
I hand him the phone without quite deciding to, the same way I did the night before, like some part of me has already learned that handing him the worst of it doesn't make things heavier, it makes them lighter.
He reads it in silence. I watch his jaw work, watch the easy, sleep-loose warmth drain slowly out of his face, replaced by something still and careful, the way a man gets right before he decides not to be careful anymore.
"By Monday," he repeats, flat.
"That's Cole. Always thinking three steps ahead, usually for himself." I try to make it sound light and fail completely, my voice cracking on the last word. "I used to think it was a good quality in him. Ambition. Drive. I told myself someday it would make him a good businessman."
"It's making him something," Volody says, "but I don't thinkgoodis the word I'd reach for."
"He wants to know how fast you move on these things." I say it out loud just to hear how absurd it sounds. "People are asking him questions. He needs an answer."
"What people?"
"I don't know." And that's the part that scares me most, saying it out loud. "I don't know who he owes, or what he's promised, or how deep this actually goes. I keep thinking I know my own brother, and then he sends something like this, and I realize I've been building an entire person out of memories that are years out of date."
Volody is quiet for a long moment, phone still in his hand, thumb moving absently over the screen like he's reading it again even though I know he isn't, he's thinking, working something out behind those dark eyes that have gone sharp and focused in a way I'm starting to recognize.
"Has he always been like this?" he asks. "Or is this new?"
"He was sweeter, before. Softer." I pull the sheet up around me, suddenly cold despite the sun pouring in. "After our parents died, I used to find him crying in his room and not know what to say, so I'd just sit with him until he fell asleep. I gave up a scholarship to stay close to home for him. I turned down a job in another city because he asked me to, in that quiet voice he used to have before he learned the other one, the one that sounds like he's always closing a deal." My throat tightens. "I don't know when the soft version of him went away. I just know that by the time I noticed, he'd already turned into someone else."
"That's not nothing, Liv. That's not a brother making a bad call under pressure. That's a pattern." Volody sets the phone down carefully, like it might go off in his hands. "I've known plenty of men who got desperate once and did something stupid. This doesn't read like that."
My chest goes tight, because some small, stubborn part of me has been holding onto the version of Cole I raised, the boy who used to fall asleep against my shoulder during thunderstorms, and I don't know how to reconcile that boy with the man writing deadlines about my own life like it's a quarterly filing.
"What aren't you saying," I ask, watching his face.
