Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 73372 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 367(@200wpm)___ 293(@250wpm)___ 245(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73372 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 367(@200wpm)___ 293(@250wpm)___ 245(@300wpm)
"Again," she breathed.
His teeth grazed the same spot. Her hips bucked against him, and the contact, the friction of her body against his through the thin fabric of the dress, tore a groan from his chest that she felt in her spine.
His hands were on her thighs. Sliding higher. Under the dress, over her hips, and his fingers hooked the waistband of her underwear and her whole body went rigid with anticipation.
"Look at me." His voice was gravel.
She did. His eyes were black. The composure was gone, the walls were gone, and underneath was a man who wanted her so badly his hands were trembling against her skin.
No. Not trembling. His hands were still. Deliberate. Moving with a control that made the trembling from before irrelevant, because this wasn't the shaking of a man fighting himself. This was the sure grip of a man who had stopped fighting.
He drew her underwear down. Slow. She lifted her hips to help, and the intimacy of the cooperation, the two of them working together toward the thing they'd been circling for days, made her chest ache.
The fabric dropped to the floor. Biscuit sniffed it. She would have been mortified if she'd had any brain cells to spare, but she didn't, because Alexei's hands were on her bare thighs and his thumbs were tracing circles on the inside of her knees and his eyes hadn't left hers.
"You're sure." Not a question. A confirmation.
"I've been sure since—"
"I need to hear it."
"Yes." Her voice cracked. "Alexei, yes."
His hands slid up. Along the inside of her thighs, slow, torturous, and everywhere he touched, her skin erupted, and her hips were moving without her permission, pressing toward him, begging for something she'd never had and wanted so badly the wanting was a physical ache.
He stepped closer. His body between her thighs, and she could feel him, hard against her, and the knowledge of what was about to happen sent a bolt of heat through her so intense she couldn't see.
His forehead dropped to hers. His breathing was wrecked. His hands were on her hips, gripping hard enough to bruise, and she could feel the war in him, the last thread of something holding against the weight of everything pulling it down.
"Mia." Her name in his mouth was broken glass. "If we do this—"
"I know what this is." Her hands found his face. Both palms. The same way she'd held him last night, the reversal that had undone him. "I know what I'm giving you. I've known since I got on the plane."
A sound tore from his throat. Raw. Animal. His hands moved to his belt, and the clink of the buckle was the loudest thing she'd ever heard, and her pulse was so violent she could feel it in her wrists, her throat, the place between her thighs where the ache had become unbearable.
He pressed against her. Close. Closer. The heat of him against the most intimate part of her, separated by nothing, and the sensation was so foreign and so overwhelming that a cry escaped her and her nails dug into his shoulders and her whole body arched toward him.
One motion. That was all it would take. She could feel it, the edge of it, the threshold, and he was right there, and she wanted him there, wanted him so badly her body was shaking and her voice was making sounds that weren't words—
He stopped.
His whole body went rigid. His hands locked on her hips. His forehead was pressed against hers and his eyes were squeezed shut and the sound that came from his chest was the sound of a man fighting the strongest instinct he had.
"No—" She gripped his shoulders. "Don't stop, don't you dare—"
"Mia." His voice was destroyed. "Listen to me."
"I don't want to listen, I want you to—"
"Listen."
The word hit like a command. Not cold. Not the Alexei who gave orders to casino floors and security teams. This was the other voice, the one she'd heard when he whispered her name into her hair, the one that cost him everything to use.
She went still. His eyes opened. And the thing in them wasn't hesitation. Wasn't regret. Wasn't the retreating composure of a man who was about to call this a mistake.
It was something she'd never seen in him before.
Fear. And underneath the fear, something so vast and so unguarded that her breath caught.
"Tell me something," he whispered. His hands were shaking now. The stillness was gone. "The gap year. The clinic. Coming back."
"What about it?"
"Was any of it true? Or was it all for me?"
"Both." She put her hands on his chest. His heart was slamming against her palms. "I came back because of you. But I stayed because of the work. Because I like it. Because it's mine. I came back for you, Alexei. I told you that the first night. I haven't changed my mind."