Page 182 of Marrying the Savage

She doesn’t look at me. “I said I’m fine.”

“You also lied.”

Her jaw tightens, but she keeps her eyes on the window. “Then you should be used to it.”

Mikhail remains silent in the front seat. The driver stares at the road with the discipline of a man who values his employment and his life.

I lean closer. “Look at me.”

“No.” The answer is immediate, flat, and exhausted.

It should make me angry.

It does, but not in the way I expect. This anger has fear underneath it, and guilt under that, and something worse beneath both. I have spent three days imagining every version of what could have happened to her, and now she’s sitting beside me alive, wearing my coat, refusing to look at me because if she does, one of us will have to admit the damage is not only on her throat.

“Sofia,” I say again, lower this time.

She turns then, not because I asked, but because she wants to make a point. “What?”

Her eyes are bright with temper and shock she has not fully processed. Her mouth is pale from being pressed into a hard line. She looks ready to fight, but the hand in her lap is trembling.

That breaks what is left of my restraint.

I move before I can talk myself out of it. I catch her by the waist and pull her across the seat onto my lap. She gasps, one hand flying to my shoulder, the other bracing against my chest as if she means to shove me away. I give her the space to do it. I keep my hands at her waist, not trapping her wrists, not holding her throat, not closing any escape she needs to feel open.

For one second, she stares at me, furious and breathless. “Damir.”

It’s supposed to be a warning. It sounds too much like relief.

I kiss her. There is nothing calm about it. I don’t make it gentle because neither of us is gentle in that moment. I kiss her like I have been looking for her for three days with nothing but bad footage and worse possibilities in my head. I kiss her like I’m angry she ran, angry she was taken, angry she was afraid, angry at myself most of all because some part of her believed leaving me was safer than staying.

She goes stiff for half a second. Then she kisses me back.

Her hand slides from my chest to the back of my neck, fingers gripping hard enough to hurt. Her mouth opens under mine, hot and desperate, and the sound she makes is small but not weak. It comes from somewhere she has been keeping locked since I walked into the club and found her with another man’s arm around her.

I pull her closer. She comes willingly.

Her knees shift on either side of my thighs, and my coat falls open around her. She tastes like fear, anger, and the water she must have had at the club, and beneath all that she tastes like Sofia, familiar enough that the relief hits me harder than desire. My hand spreads over her back, feeling the shape of her spine, the tension in her body, the proof that she is here.

Alive. In my arms.

Kissing me like she hates me and missed me and has no intention of admitting either.

She bites my lower lip. Not hard enough to draw blood. Hard enough to remind me who I am holding.

I groan against her mouth and deepen the kiss. Her fingers tighten in my hair, and she shifts on my lap, the movement making my body react instantly. I don’t chase that. Not now. Not when her throat is marked and her breathing still catches when my hand moves too high.

I keep my palm at her back. I keep the other at her waist.

At first, it’s anger. Need. Three days of fear breaking out in the only language we seem to understand without turning it into a war.

Then it slows. Her mouth moves over mine with less fight and more hunger, and I feel the moment she stops kissing me to prove something and starts kissing me because she wants to. Her body settles against mine. Her hand on my shoulder stops pushing. Her fingers curl into my coat instead.

When Sofia finally pulls away, it’s only by an inch. Her breathing is uneven again, but this time I know the cause. Her forehead almost touches mine. Her lips are swollen. Her eyes open slowly, and when they meet mine, the fight in them is still there, but it’s not alone anymore.

Something passes between us.

I don’t name it. Neither does she.