Page 70 of Wicked Mafia Beast
"Say it again."
"I want to stay. I want you. No conditions or contract keeping me here. I am here because I chose to be here."
He kisses me. Deep and slow and devastating, his mouth moving against mine with a reverence that makes my knees buckle. I grip the front of his henley, pulling him closer, tasting the broth he sampled and the coffee from this morning and underneath, the dark warmth that is purely him.
We don't make it to dinner. We barely make it to the bedroom. But for the first time, there's no war in it. No battle for dominance. No score being kept.
Just two people choosing each other.
He undresses me slowly, peeling each layer away with hands that tremble against my skin, a tremor so slight most people would miss it. I don't miss it. I catalog it, file it, hold it close.The Bratva Beast trembles when he touches me without armor between us.
We fall into his sheets, dark as ink and impossibly soft, and he maps my body with his mouth the way he always does, thorough and focused, but the urgency is gone. In its place is a patience that borders on worship, his lips tracing the curve of my collarbone, the hollow of my throat, the swell of my breast with an attention that makes me feel seen in ways I've spent my entire life avoiding.
When he slides inside me, I wrap around him and pull him closer, erasing every last inch of distance. We move together, foreheads pressed, breath shared, eyes locked. And when I come apart, it's quiet and shaking and the most honest thing I've ever done.
Afterward, tangled in his sheets, my cheek against the roses inked over his heart, I trace the barbed wire tattoo that wraps around his arm. My fingertip follows the raised lines of scar tissue hidden beneath the ink, the ridges and valleys of old pain mapped in permanent pigment.
"Tell me about this." My voice is a murmur against his chest.
His breathing doesn't change. His heartbeat stays steady beneath my ear. But his arm tightens around me, pulling me closer, tucking me against his body with a protectiveness that has nothing to do with threats and everything to do with what he's about to share.
"Tomorrow."
"Promise?"
"Promise."
I close my eyes and let his heartbeat fill my ears. For the first time since this started, I don't tell myself it means nothing.
Because it does. It means everything.
I surface from sleep in the deep hours of the night, the room dark except for the pale strip of moonlight slicing through the curtains. I'm still in his arms, still pressed against the solid warmth of his chest, still breathing in the cedar-and-smoke scent that has become my definition of safety.
His eyes are open. Watching me in the darkness.
"What?" I whisper.
"Nothing." His hand finds mine beneath the sheets. His fingers lace through mine, calloused pads against my smooth skin, and he squeezes gently. "Go back to sleep, ??????."
Little flame. I'm starting to understand what that means. Not a raging inferno. Not a destructive blaze. A small, persistent light burning in a place that was dark for too long.
I close my eyes. His thumb traces circles on the back of my hand.
For the first time in years, safety isn't a concept. It's the weight of his arm across my waist. The steady drum of his pulse against my back. The warmth of his breath in my hair.
Tomorrow, I'll have to figure out what that means. Tonight, I just let myself have it.
Thirteen
Onyx
Ican't sleep.
It's not the nightmares this time. Those have faded since I started sleeping in Kon's arms, replaced by a quiet that used to terrify me and now feels dangerously close to peace. Tonight it's the scars. The ridged lines of damaged tissue beneath the barbed wire ink on his arms, his chest, his ribs. The way his heartbeat stayed steady when I asked him to tell me about them, even as his arm tightened around me.Tomorrow. Promise.
Tomorrow. He promised. And I believe him because this man, this infuriating, dangerous, impossibly tender man, doesn't make promises he can't keep. He told me that himself. It's why he makes so few.
But my brain won't shut off. The journalist never truly sleeps, even when the woman is exhausted. So I slip out of bed, careful not to wake him, and pad barefoot through The Foundry in nothing but his t-shirt, letting the quiet settle over me.
