Page 113 of Nikolay

“I had to know,” I said.

His expression changed minutely, wariness and hope colliding so hard they nearly looked like pain. “Know what?”

I laughed once, but there was no humor in it. Only nerves stretched thin enough to sing.

“You know what.”

“Maddie.”

“No.” I took one breath because if I did not do this now, I never would. “I know you’re my mate.”

He went utterly still.

I did not let myself stop.

“And if you’re going to reject me,” I said, each word hurting on the way out, “you need to do it now. Not with another sneer. Not with some cold little comment meant to shove me back where I belong. Just do it. Straight. Because I can’t keep carrying it around and pretending it isn’t carving me up.”

His face did something terrible then—not cruelty, not distance. The opposite. As if every hard thing he had ever said to me had reached back through time and struck him all at once.

“Maddie,” he said again, but this time my name sounded wrecked.

I lifted my chin because pride was all I had left if he said no. “I mean it.”

He looked at me for one long suspended second, amber eyes dark with things I could not sort quickly enough.

Then his hands rose.

He took my face between both palms with such care it almost undid me before he ever touched his mouth to mine. His fingers spread lightly behind my ears. The whole hold of him said precious in a way I had never once allowed myself to imagine from this man because imagining it had felt too dangerous to survive.

When he kissed me, the world narrowed so completely I forgot there had ever been a foyer.

His mouth was warm and firm and heartbreakingly gentle on the first contact, as though he were asking something and apologizing for the asking at the same time. I made a small, helpless sound and leaned into him on instinct older than caution. The kiss deepened by degrees, not rushed, not greedy, only certain. His lower lip moved against mine, then his upper, then the slightest angle of his head changed everything. I felt the restraint in him. Felt how tightly he held it. That made the tenderness worse. Better. Ruinous.

I clutched at the front of his coat.

He drew back just enough for breath, forehead nearly touching mine, eyes open on my face like he still couldn’t quite believe I was there.

“I would never reject you,” he said.

The words hit somewhere too deep for immediate reaction. I could only stare.

Something almost like anguish crossed his expression. Then he bent and lifted me clean off my feet.

“Nikolay—”

“I have wasted enough time.”

I should have laughed. Instead, I hooked my arms around his neck because being carried by him felt absurdly right, and because my whole body had gone weak in the aftermath of that first kiss. He moved through the house with long, urgent strides, up the staircase, down the corridor I knew too well by now. The estate blurred around us in dark wood and old carpet and morning shadow.

When he shouldered open my bedroom door and carried me inside, I had just enough breath left to think mine at the sight of him bringing me there.

He set me down carefully beside the bed, but did not let go at once. His hands remained at my waist. His gaze searched my face with unnerving seriousness.

“I owe you more than this,” he said. “More than any of this.”

I opened my mouth.

He shook his head once. “No. Let me say it.”