She studied his face, searching for doubt.
Then she shook her head, almost laughing through the emotion.“Nikolai ...you have to know there isn’t really a choice.”
He went still.
“I love you,” she said simply.“Where you go, I go.I don’t have anywhere else I want to be.And I don’t want a future that isn’t with you in it.”
Something inside his chest broke open.
He rested his forehead against hers.“Then hear me.You are not following me.You are choosing me.Every day.And I will never take that choice away from you.Not now.Not ever.”
Her breath shuddered.
He pulled her closer, the kiss that followed fierce, claiming, full of everything they had both survived to reach this moment.
She was not coming because he had decided.
She was coming because she had chosen him.
And that was everything.
****
“Nikolai.”
His name left Eliza’s mouth like a promise and a dare at the same time, the room already warm with the closeness of them.She was on top of him, the world narrowed to breath and skin and the way they kept finding each other’s mouths between laughter and need.And the way he felt within her, hot and hard.
“Say it again,” he said, a rough edge in his voice that made her pulse stutter.
“Nikolai.”
He smiled against her throat.“You only ever use my full name, and not Kol.Why is that?”
“Do you really want to have this conversation right now?”she teased as she changed up the way she moved.
Rather than the slow and steady rise and fall, she began to flick her hips against him, taking him harder and faster within her.
“I’m trying not to lose my fucking mind,” he groaned.“I want this to last, so I need the distraction.”
She laughed, breathless, and let her hands slide along his shoulders.“I use your full name because no one else does.When I say it, I want you to know it's me, and that you mean everything to me.”
His eyes darkened, his fingers gripping her hips, his own lifting from the mattress in a frantic rhythm.“I hear you,Lvitsa.”
She moved with him, with them, the rhythm building, their voices tangling with groans and cries of bliss and the kind of murmured words that only made sense when you were this close.The room seemed to tilt as the moment swelled, every nerve alive with the certainty of being wanted and safe in the same heartbeat.
“Nikolai,” she said again, this time not teasing at all.
His breath broke.“Eliza.”
The rest was heat and surrender, and the way two people could meet in the same instant and know they would not let go.When it finally crested, she cried his full name to the room, and he answered with hers, the sound of it a vow more than a shout.Eliza collapsed against him, laughing a little, shaking a lot, held everywhere by the man who had chosen her as surely as she had chosen him.
They stayed like that for a long moment, their breathing finding the same quiet.
This bed was theirs now—high and wide in the master suite of the Florida Keys house that had already begun to feel like a sanctuary.The windows were reinforced.The perimeter was layered with cameras, sensors, and redundancies.The dock below was lit and watched.He had told her about the work crews, the hardened doors, the hidden systems, the plans that made this place more than a home.
“Impenetrable,” he had said.
Eliza traced the line of his jaw.“You really did it.”
