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"Alexei."

"Again." I drive into her, and the bench creaks beneath us. "Say it while I fuck you."

She does. She says it broken and breathless against my jaw while I hold her hips and thrust up into her from below, and each stroke hits the spot that makes her thighs clench and her nails dig into my shoulders. I can feel another orgasm building in her because she's tightening around me again, and the knowledge that I'm giving her a second one pushes me closer to my own edge.

"Come on my cock again." I grip her hair and pull her head back. "You wanted to be in charge, but your body listens to me now."

Her breath shatters. "I hate you."

"No, you don't." I grind deep and hold, pressing against her front wall in a slow circle. "You love this. You love sitting on me and taking every inch while I tell you exactly how good you feel."

She comes again with a cry that she buries in my shoulder, and her body clamps around me so tight that my vision goes dark. I wrap one arm around her waist and thrust up three more times before the climax tears through me, and I spill inside her with her name pressed between my teeth and my hand fisted in her hair.

We stay locked together. Her body trembles against mine, and my arms hold her in place while my breathing slowly returns. She rests her forehead against my shoulder, and I can feel her heartbeat hammering through her ribs into my chest.

Her hand lifts to the side of my face. Her thumb traces the line of my jaw, gentle now, and the softness in her touch makes my chest ache.

"You followed orders," she murmurs.

"Don't get used to it."

She makes a sound that might be a laugh, and I hold her against me while the last tremors fade from her legs.

I don't know how long we stay like that. Long enough for the sweat to cool on our skin and her breathing to match mine. My hand moves through her hair in slow strokes, and her fingers trace idle patterns across my chest.

She lifts off me eventually and reaches for a towel. I watch her move, cataloguing the marks I've left on her skin—the bruise forming on her hip where my hand gripped, the red line across the back of her neck where my fingers pulled her hair. She wraps the towel around herself and sits beside me on the bench, close enough that her shoulder presses against my arm.

My phone buzzes on the shelf where I left it. A secure alert from Yuri fills the screen.

CAPTAINS’ CHANNEL. WATCH NOW.

Another line appears beneath Yuri’s warning.

PULLED FROM THE ESTATE ARCHIVE ELEVEN MINUTES AGO. VALID CREDENTIAL.

I open the attached video.

The video opens on a black screen. My voice plays over it, taken from the radio traffic recorded during the breach.

“Keep Misha and Oksana inside, and seal the corridor.”

The video cuts to footage captured after the camera feeds returned. Our wounded guards are carried out while Vera holds Misha against her chest and I stand beside them.

Words appear across the black screen.

ORLOV DIVERTED VOLKOV MEN TO A WOMAN AND A HIDDEN HEIR WHILE THE COMMAND LEVEL STOOD OPEN.

THIS IS WHAT WEAKNESS COSTS.

25

ALEXEI

It has to end.

The estate goes into lockdown before I finish buttoning my shirt. Abramov’s guards escort Vera back to the inner family suite, where Misha and Oksana are already waiting. Elena and Cara bring Mikhail and Lev to the inner family suite, and every courtyard door locks. Guards close the internal passages one by one while Yuri searches for the credential used to enter the archive.

I enter the communications room with my shirt buttoned wrong and my hair uncombed.