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“It’s not your fault, Paige,” he snarls fiercely. “Her death wasn’t your fucking fault.”
But I have so much more information than he does. I know the truth. I’ve lived with it for all these years.
“Yes, it was,” I say through my sobs. “It was.”
“I know what it’s like to have blood on your hands, Paige. Trust me, you are faultless.”
I meet his eyes, realizing that I don’t have the lion’s share of pain here. “Misha—”
“It was meant to be a straightforward mission,” he tells me. “Go in, secure the deal, and get back out again. But the Ivanov Bratva crashed the party. What was supposed to be a clean deal ended up in an all-out gun fight. My brother’s orders were clear: stay by his side and cover him. But I thought I knew better. I had a clean shot at Petyr, and I was greedy for it. So I moved. I left my position and exposed my brother. While I was concentrating on Petyr, Petyr was focused on Maksim.”
Now, Misha is holding onto me as tightly as I’m holding onto him.
“If I’d followed orders, if I’d maintained my position by Maksim’s right side—”
“Don’t,” I say softly, cupping his face with the palm of my hand. “Don’t do that, Misha.”
“It’s too late, Paige. I’ve gone there over and over again in my head. The result is always the same. I could have prevented his death. I was arrogant and pigheaded. I thought I knew better.That’sguilt.”
I don’t know what to say to him. I know that telling him to release the guilt is impossible. I’m carrying around the same kind. The kind that can break your heart if you let it run wild.
“No one knows,” he says softly. “No one except Konstantin.”
It makes more sense now—why he seems to want to avoid his family. It’s not that he doesn’t want to be around them; he just can’t look them in the eye.
He doesn’t know how to say he all but killed his own brother.
It’s a common theme because I don’t know what to say, either. I don’t have the words to make it all better. So I hold him. I lean in close and let my breath mingle with his. I give him as much of my warmth as I can.
When we finally pull back enough to see each other’s faces, I realize that there’s a part of me that feels a little lighter. I wonder if he’s feeling the same. His eyes don’t look quite so dark and tortured.
We exposed a little more of our souls to one another tonight. We lightened our loads, and I’m not ready to give that up.
I’m supposed to be protecting my heart, but it’s too late for that. It’s been shattered and pieced together too many times to count. So what’s one more heartbreak? Especially when it will be Misha holding the pieces.
I let my fingers slide over his lips. I trace their shape while he observes me, his hand falling to my hip. I lean up on my tiptoes and touch my lips to his. It’s a tentative kiss—scared and unsure, but delirious with need.
His hand slips around the back of my neck and he pulls me deeper into the kiss. Just like that, I lose all sense of where I am. All I feel are his arms around me, his heart beating hard against mine. I breathe and it’s nothing but the rich, earthy scent he carries with him wherever he goes.
It smells like home.
I have a strange sense of déjà vu as he strips me down to my bra and panties with slow, tender gestures. I know how the scene plays out from here on out.
He had me poised over a balcony similar to this one a few months ago. Heat spreads like wildfire across my body when I remember the moment he pressed his tongue to my clit and my life changed forever.
But as close as this moment is to that one… everything feels different.
It’sdeeper, somehow. Lust burns through me, but I’m scorched by the millions of other little emotions that have needled their way into my soul since I met him.
I can see his beauty, his strength, his power. But I also recognize his pain, his vulnerability, his wounds.
I feel this powerful sense of possessiveness, too. I may not own his heart the way he owns mine, but no other woman can claim that Misha Orlov is her husband.
Only I own that right.
As he backs me into the balcony railing, I push off his chest and look him in the eyes. They’re clouded with lust, obliterated under a haze of want and passion.
I get down on my knees and unzip him. His cock presses against my lips before I slip it hungrily into my mouth. I suck him off slowly, letting the heat from my pussy build to an almost unbearable level.
