Page 6 of The Pakhan's Secret Babies
It is not a question. His voice is rougher now, edged with something raw.
I nod, cheeks burning. “Yes.”
He doesn’t move. Just watches me, jaw tight.
“We can stop,” he says, quite seriously. “Right now. No questions.”
My heart twists. This is the man who closes deals without blinking, who never hesitates. And he’s giving me an out, like it costs him nothing when I know it does.
I reach up, touch his face. “I don’t want to stop. I want this.”
He exhales through his nose.
“Then we go slow,” he says. “And you tell me if anything changes.”
He kisses me again, deeper and more possessive this time, and sinks in inch by careful inch, pausing every time I gasp, kissing the corner of my mouth, my jaw, whispering things that make me melt: “Breathe… that’s it… you’re doing so good…”
When he’s fully inside, he stills again and lets me feel the fullness, the burn easing into something else.
Then he moves.
Slow rolls at first, and watching my face for every flicker. When my nails dig into his shoulders, he picks up the rhythm, harder, but never rushed. His hand slips between us, thumb finding my clit, circling in time with his thrusts until I’m trembling, arching, pleading without words.
He flips us so I am on top. Hands on my hips, guiding but not forcing. “Ride me,” he says. “Show me.”
I do—tentative at first, then bolder, grinding down until sparks shoot behind my eyes.
He groans—low, wrecked—and his control frays. One hand slides up my waist, thumb brushing over the curve of my left hip. It lingers on the small, comma-shaped birthmark there—deep brown against pale skin. He traces it absently, then grips harder and thrusts up to meet me.
The angle changes. Hits deeper. I shatter—clenching around him, crying out his name—and he follows seconds later, hips snapping, burying himself as far as he can with a guttural sound that vibrates through both of us.
We stay like that until he rolls us again and pulls me against his chest. His arms band around my waist. His breathing evens out fast. Mine does not.
I lie there in the dark, his heartbeat steady under my cheek, the smell of sex and him everywhere, and feel the weight of everything settle.
I count his breaths until they go deep and even.
Twenty minutes. That’s all I give myself. Lying in the dark with his arm heavy across my waist and the smell of him everywhere and the full weight of what I have just done settling slowly over me like a second blanket.
It was worth it. I know it was worth it. I also know it was the single most reckless thing I have ever done in my adult life, and that tomorrow morning is going to be its own specific kind of terrible, and that I am going to have to be very, very good at pretending.
I am, as it happens, very good at pretending. Two years of practice.
I ease out from under his arm by degrees. Find my dress in the dark. My mask. My heels. I do all of it slowly and without sound, and I am very deliberate about not looking at him until I’m fully dressed and at the door.
Then I look.
He’s asleep on his back, one arm still curved in the shape of me, silver-haired and still, and he has no idea.
3
ROMAN
I reachfor her before I’m fully awake.
My hand finds cold sheets, and that is what opens my eyes.
The room is gray with early light that arrives before the city has properly committed to morning, and the bed beside me is empty in the way that tells me it has been empty for some time. No warmth. No sound from the bathroom. No movement anywhere in the room at all. I lie still for a moment, look at the ceiling, and do something I almost never do.
