Page 190 of Ruthless Sin
“Yes.”
She is small. Her ribs have gone soft. Her hipbones have filled. She is warm and she is here and she is mine.
I start at her wrist. Three small marks on the inside of her right wrist. A city I was not in. A room I cannot undo. I kiss the marks. Her skin tastes faintly of soap. Tongue after each. She breathes in once.
I move to the inside of her left wrist. Two marks. Another city. Another room I was not in. I kiss both.
“Nico.”
I look up.
Her eyes are wet. She shakes her head once. Looks away.
I move up her arm. The crease of her elbow. The line of her shoulder. The collarbone. The chain at her throat. The dark place under her jaw where the violin lived. The pulse there.
Her hand comes to the back of my head. Holds me.
The small mark above her left eyebrow. The line is old. The first scar Alexei gave her.
I put my mouth there and I hold it there and I do not move. Under my lips her pulse is steady. She survived every room I was not in. Every one of them. And she is here, and I am going to spend the rest of my life making sure she never has to survive alone again.
“Hey, baby.” The words come out low and soft against her skin before I have decided to say them.
She goes still under me for one beat. Her fingers tighten in my hair.
I kiss it and move down.
The line below her ribs. A longer scar from a city I do not know. I kiss it. The hipbone on the left, a small raised mark. I kiss that too. The inside of her right thigh. The place I marked the night before the river. The mark has faded to a faint impression. It has done its work. I kiss the place. Slow. Tongue after.
“Bozhe.” God. Her hand tightens in my hair. “Don’t stop.”
The inside of her left thigh. A smaller scar. A city I was not in. I kiss it.
I move back up her body. Across her sternum. Salt-warm. Her skin smells of jasmine through the open window. I take the chain at her throat in my teeth for a breath and let it go. I kiss the chain and the place where it meets the locket-line that has been empty for years.
The new cut on her left thumb, small and still healing. The cut the folding knife took out of her thumb when she pulled the blade back from the Russian’s sleeve at Casa Lucia. The only mark her hands put on the world.
I kiss the cut last.
She makes a small sound. Then.
“That one tickles.”
I lift my mouth. She is looking at me with something warm and almost surprised in her face and I realize I have not seen her look like that before, like she did not know she was allowed to laugh in this bed.
I kiss her mouth.
“Vsya moya.” All mine.
“Da.” Her hands come to my face. “Vsya tvoya.” She pulls me down. “Now stop talking and?—”
I taste her. The salt of her hipbone. The inside of her thigh. Her pussy, wet and ready. She makes sounds against my hair, not small, not bitten off, real sounds, her voice fully in the room, and her hands find the back of my head and hold me and when she comes the first time she says my name, not whispered, said. Nico. Like she is certain of it.
She pulls me up by the shoulders.
“Come here,” she says. “I want you here.”
I move up her body and take her and she arches up to meet me and makes a sound that goes straight through me and says “yes, there, like that” against my jaw and I am not going to survive this woman, I am absolutely not going to survive her, and I do not care.
