Page 72 of Reign
I let him have it, then I pull back to look at him pointedly. “Bathroom.”
He makes a face like this is a personal attack. “Five minutes.”
“No.”
“Three.”
“Nikolaj.”
He huffs, offended by the use of his full name in that tone, and finally loosens his arms. “Fine.”
“Thank you.”
“I’m not happy about it.”
“I know.”
I kiss him quickly, while he’s still pouting about releasing me, and his hand immediately jumps back to my hip like he wants to change his mind. I laugh against his mouth and escape before he can.
The bathroom is flooded with soft morning light from the frosted windows, all white stone and chrome and obscene hotel wealth. I close the door behind me, lean against it for a second, and just breathe.
The mirror is an unkind friend.
It gives me everything at once, the second I step beneath the light. My hair is wrecked, my mouth swollen, and my throat and chest are marked in ways no concealer on earth could hide if I needed to leave in the same clothes as last night.
There are bruises, fingerprint-dark at my hips, along with bite marks across my shoulder, the side of my throat, the inside of one thigh, and lower, there’s the sort of evidence that would make a lesser man blush.
I just smile because that’s what they are: evidence. Not of carelessness, but of claim. A king laid hands on me last night and made it very clear to my body who I belong to.
I should probably be horrified at how obvious it all is. Instead, I look at myself and feel something close to pride.
I spent eight years loving a ghost and woke up this morning with the real man’s mouth all over my skin. If I have to spend the rest of today finding strategic collars and pretending I don’t know why every step feels a little different, so be it.
I touch one of the bruises on my throat and smile.
“You smug bastard,” I murmur to the empty room, meaning him and meaning myself.
The rest takes longer than it should because I keep catching sight of another mark and remembering exactly how it got there. By the time I finish and splash cool water over my face, I’ve got my expression mostly under control, though there is only so much a man can do when he looks this thoroughly claimed.
I open the bathroom door, grab my boxers from the floor, and call out, “Nikolaj?”
“In the kitchen,” he calls back immediately.
His low voice carries through the suite with ease, and there’s something so domestic about it that I have to stop for half a second in the corridor just to absorb the absurdity. Then I follow it.
He’s standing at the kitchen counter with his back half-turned to me, making coffee like he does this every morning and has for years. He’s pulled on a pair of dark lounge pants at some point, thankfully or tragically depending on which part of my brain gets the vote, but he’s still shirtless.
The light pouring in from the tall windows hits him cleanly here, and for a second, I just stand in the doorway and look.
He was gorgeous when we were younger, all feral grace and sharp arrogance, leaner then, all speed and coiled force.
Now he’s massive. That’s the first thing my body always registers before the rest has time to catch up. Broad shoulders, heavy muscle, narrow waist, the black ink of his tattoos climbing all the way to his neck and over his hands and forearms inpatterns I know by touch now or at least intend to know far better.
His hair is a little darker than it was in youth, not enough to lose that striking platinum impression, but enough to make him look less angelic and more dangerous, which on him is saying something.
His eyes, when he glances toward the machine and not at me, are that same impossible ice blue, only older now, harder at the edges and somehow more dangerous because I know exactly what softness they’re capable of.
My lover, I think, and the word lands with enough force to make me almost dizzy.
