Page 37 of Reign
His hand flexes on my chest once—not quite a touch, and not quite a restraint. “You knew I wouldn’t stay gone once I had enough to follow.”
The truth of that statement moves through me viciously. “Yes,” I answer.
He nods once like that answer hurts and satisfies him in equal measure. Then his gaze drops to my mouth, and for one dangerous second, I think he’s going to kiss me again. I’m not sure if either of us will survive that with our remaining common sense intact.
Instead, he leans close enough for his forehead to brush mine once, brief and devastating, and his eyes close for one second. He whispers something low in Russian, and the only word I catch isinevitable.
When they open, there is something in them I haven’t seen directed at me in eight years and had almost convinced myself I’d invented in the first place. Not softness—Nikolaj was never simple enough for softness without teeth. But love lived in his face this way once, furious, doomed, and inseparable from violence. Seeing even the first flicker of it now almost stops my heart.
Then he pushes up and finally gets off me. The loss of his weight is immediate and offensive. I stay on the mat for a secondlonger than necessary, catching my breath, staring at the high black ceiling of the gym while my pulse takes inventory of all the ways my life has just changed without asking permission.
When I sit up, he’s already pulling his shirt back on, not buttoning it yet, tattoos, muscle, and scar still visible through the open front, in ways that should come with medical warnings.
“You break into my gym, assault me, and destabilize the entire foundation of my emotional life,” I tell him. “At minimum, you owe me a proper explanation next time.”
He snorts. “There’ll be a next time?”
I stand and look at him—at the man memory is returning to me piece by jagged piece, at the man who came back through violence, because apparently, we aren’t incapable of any other sort of entrance.
“There was always going to be a next time, Nikolaj,” I say.
He smiles, and the old and new versions of him line up so perfectly, I can barely breathe around seeing it. I watch as he buttons up his shirt because I am a sucker for punishment, then I watch him leave, with my heart sinking.
Nikolaj pauses at the door and looks back at me over his shoulder. “Your guards really are shit, by the way.”
I roll my eyes. “Get out.”
He grins. “Make me.”
That line strikes deep, and I feel the way my expression betrays me. Of course, that too survives the years. Of course we are still us in the worst, most beautiful ways.
“Next time,” I promise.
He nods at that, but I call him back before he can leave. My chest tightens around the next words, because I’m not sure I want to hear the answer. “Was this memory or instinct?”
He’s quiet long enough that I almost think he won’t answer when he turns his back on me and opens the door. “I’m starting to think there was never much of a difference.”
Then he leaves, and the gym feels emptier with his absence than it ever did before he came in.
I stand there in the quiet, breathing hard, lip split, throat still tingling from where his hand held it. Then I press the heel of my palm briefly against my eyes because the tears threaten again, and I have already sacrificed enough dignity for one afternoon.
His memories are coming back.
The sentence moves through me again and again, impossible and real.
And God help me, after everything, after all the ruin and silence and blood, I still want to be something he comes back for.
eleven
Nikolaj
Idreaminpiecesfirst…that’s how it always starts now. Not with sense or even with story, but fragments sharp enough to draw blood and useless enough to leave me furious when I wake.
But tonight the fragments don’t scatter, they settle.
The dream drags me down through smoke and half memory, through warm gold lamplight, the scent of sex, and the cologne Vincenzo always wore like he’d been born expensive. Then suddenly it stops being pieces and becomes one image clear enough to hurt.
Vincenzo is above me, head thrown back in pleasure, throat bared, dark hair falling loose around a face slack with lust. His breath catches on something that might be my name, and I feel the way the muscles in his stomach jump with the motion as he rides me.
