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Sometime later, I wake to the feeling of a body behind mine. For a moment, I’m jolted into thinking that I’m back in Grisha’s apartment, that it’s him curled behind me, and then I smell the familiar scent of Levin’s cologne.
For a second, that makes me feel relieved. And then I remember everything else.
I sit up instantly, pulling away from him, and just that slight movement wakes him immediately. He sits up too, a hand on my back, and I flinch away from it.
“Lidiya–”
“Don’t say it like that. Like I’m the one in the wrong here. You said you’d keep me safe–”
“And I have, haven’t I? I married you to keep you safe.”
“From one man. But another might want to kill you too–and probably me, just to tie up the loose end of Grisha and what he knew that I might know now, too.”
Levin lets out a sigh. “I’ll deal with Vladimir, Lidiya. I just need time, to make sure I’m not walking into the wolf’s jaws when we go back to Moscow. Just a few days, and then we’ll go home. I swear it. And I know that you know nothing. That Grisha gave you very little, and that you don’t care about any of it. Iwillkeep you safe.”
I can hear the conviction in his voice. I know he believes it.
The question is whether or notIbelievehim.
“I never planned to feel the way I do about you.”
His voice comes through the darkness, low and quiet, sending a jolt of shock through me. The words are so much plainer than anything I would have expected from him, and I turn my head to look at him in the dim light of the room, feeling as if none of this can possibly be real.
“What do you mean?”
It’s a ridiculous question. I know what he means. In a way, I know we’ve always been headed in this direction, since that first afternoon I woke up in his hotel room with a throbbing head and a sharp tongue and fought with him until I tried to run and he stopped me, up against the hotel room door.
I’ve never known a man like Levin Volkov before. But I don’t need to have in order to know that a man like him doesn’t get pushback often. That a man like him isn’t stood up to, sassed, told where he can shove it. I’d done all that and more. And he’d given me as good as he’d gotten.
The sparks between us had been lit that very first day. If Levin had let me go, they’d have guttered out. Nothing more would have come of it. If he’d left, and had some other man from his syndicate come and force me into compliance, I would have had nothing left to do but hate him.
But that isn’t what happened. And every moment since then has led to this, to sitting in a bedroom on a private jet bound for Tokyo, newlywed and words hanging between us that I know are going in a direction I should have seen coming, and yet somehow never did.
“I never planned to fall in love with anyone,” Levin says quietly. “I never planned to marry. That’s not the life I’ve led. But I’m falling in love with you, Lidiya Petrovna. And I want this marriage to be real.”
The silence hangs between us again, heavy and full of uncertainty.
“I can’t promise to be a good husband. I can’t promise to leave the Syndicate. Nothing is that simple, not for me. But Lidiya–I can try. I can try to make you happy. To love you the way you deserve. And everything else–”
I breathe in. I don’t know, until my mouth opens, exactly what words are going to come out. When they do, they surprise even me.
“It’s Lidiya Volkov now, isn’t it?”
I’m in his arms before I can breathe another word, both of us tumbled back on the bed, his hands in my hair, pulling it free of the pins that had held it up for the dinner party and then again for our impromptu wedding. His mouth finds mine, hot and hard and desperate, his tongue tangling with mine as I moan his name and it gets lost in the kiss–as lost as I am.
His hand is sliding down my hip, fisting in the silk of my skirt, dragging it up so that he can push my thighs apart. He rolls onto his back, pulling me astride him with one hand still in my hair, never breaking the kiss as his fingers find their way between my thighs, slipping beneath the delicate lace of my panties as he grabs them in his fist.
They’re gone in an instant, ripped away, his fingers searching again between my soft folds, finding me already wet and aching for him. Levin groans into my mouth as his fingers slide against my clit, my hips bucking against his hand, mine already searching for his belt as I devour his mouth with the same frantic urgency.
It’s not a traditional wedding night. But in its own strange way, it’s more romantic than anything I ever imagined for myself. As the plane hurtles through the night sky, carrying us to a place I’ve never been, to a hideout that I hadn’t expected we’d need, Levin and I hide within our own private shelter of each other.
His mouth never leaves mine for an instant. Neither of us are willing to take the time to undress, and so he pushes my skirt aside as I fumble with his zipper, hand feverishly reaching for his cock as I arch my hips up, wanting him inside of me. It’s been three days–four–and that’s too long. Too long since I felt the hot, hard stretch of him as he fills me up, since I heard him groan with pleasure as I tighten around him, since I felt his fingers stroking my clit in that perfect rhythm as my flesh goes taut.
“You’re so fucking beautiful,” Levin breathes against my lips, his hand leaving my hair to cup my breast through the silk as my hips start to move, sliding down his cock inch by inch as I take him inside of me. I can’t speak, the pleasure too intense as he fills me, and I moan as I sink down that last bit, his cock as deeply inside of me as he can go as his fingers pinch and roll my nipple with the same strokes that he’s using on my clit.
I’m seconds away from coming for the first time. My entire body is trembling, fluttering along the length of his cock, and I hear him groan again as his hand drops from my breast to my hip, pulling me down hard as he starts to thrust upwards, as if he wants to go deeper still.
“Levin!” I cry out his name as he slams into me, his fingers sliding over my clit, slippery with my arousal, and I can feel my thighs starting to shake. Nothing has ever felt so good, so overwhelmingly,shatteringlyperfect, and my hand grabs for his shirt, bunching it as the other grips the pillow behind his head as I feel myself come apart.
