Page 165 of The Enforcer’s Pawn

"Goodnight, little mechanic," Dmitri says, and the nickname makes my throat tighten.

The house settles around us. Snow gathers beyond the windows, and every candle in the corridor has been lit by someone with more sentiment than sense. Mrs. Wentworth, probably. Lidiya. Elena.

Dmitri's hand stays on the small of my back as we climb the stairs, and his touch burns through the ivory wool like a brand.

We reach his door. Our door. The thought is still strange enough to make my breath catch.

He opens it, and the suite is warm, dim, lit by a fire already built in the grate. Someone has turned down the bed. Someone has left wine on the side table. Someone has thought of everything except how to prepare a woman for the moment her husband closes the door and looks at her like that.

Dmitri locks the door.

“Not hiding a second groom, are you?” I ask, because silence will swallow me whole.

He doesn’t smile. He crosses the room in four strides, takes my face in both hands, and kisses me.

It's different from every kiss before in that it's not angry or tinged with desperation. Slow, deep, thorough, he kisses me like he has the entire night and every intention of using it. His thumbs trace my jaw, and his tongue slides against mine until I forget where I end.

When he pulls back, I'm breathless. “Mrs. Antonov,” he says.

“Don't start.”

“Mrs. Dmitri Antonov.” His mouth finds my forehead, my temple, the corner of my eye. “Registered. Stamped. Legal.”

“God, you're insufferable.”

“You married me.” His lips brush my ear. “That makes you the insufferable one.”

I laugh, and it comes out shaky, because his hands are already sliding down my sides, finding the shape of me through the wool dress like he's memorizing geography he intends to claim.

“I’ve been thinking about this since the chapel,” he says against my neck.

“Thinking about what?” My voice is already thinner than I want it to be.

“Taking this off you.’ His fingers find the zipper at my back. “Slowly.”

The dress loosens. He peels it down my shoulders, my arms, my waist, until it pools at my feet. I stand before him in a slip and the thin band of lace beneath it, and his gaze moves over me like heat from an open flame.

“You are,” he says, “the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.”

“You need glasses.”

“I need you.” His hand cups my breast through the slip, thumb dragging across my nipple until it tightens and I inhale sharply. “I’ve needed you for years. I'm done pretending.”

He kisses my collarbone, then lower, sinking to his knees in front of me with enough control to make my legs weak. His hands grip my hips through the slip, and he looks up.

“I'm going to taste you now,” he says. “And you're going to stand there and take it.”

“That’s—”

His mouth finds the inside of my thigh, and the argument dies.

He pushes the slip up with both hands, slow enough that I feel every inch of fabric sliding over my skin. His lips follow the hem, tracing the crease where my thigh meets my hip, then lower. His breath is hot through the lace, and my hips tilt forward before I can stop them.

“Dmitri—”

“Yes?” His tongue drags a line through the fabric, and my hand flies to his shoulder.

“Oh, God.”