Page 180 of Ruthless Sin
Not the ghost. The man before the ghost. The man who looked at Mama the way I am looking at her right now and felt the world reorganize itself around one person and knew it with the certainty of a man who has survived everything, that this was the thing that could finally undo him. Not an enemy. Not a war. Her. Just her, breathing. Just her hand on the pillow. Just the fact of her existing in the same room.
That’s what it was, Papa.
Not weakness. This. Exactly this.
I reach over and brush a strand of hair off her face. Light. I do not wake her. Her mouth stays soft. Her breath stays even.
I am not going to be Papa. I am not going to hollow out. But I understand now why he did, and the understanding sits in my chest where the old lesson used to live, and it is lighter now than it was.
I lie on my back and look at the ceiling and I let myself want her without making it a problem.
That’s new.
Her thumb finds my jaw.
I turn my head. She is awake. Her eyes on mine in the dark, pale gray-green, fully present, no sleep left in them. She has been watching me the way I have been watching her.
Her thumb traces the line of my jaw. Slow.
She climbs into my lap without a word and my mouth finds the hollow of her throat.
I have been putting my mouth there for weeks. I put my teeth there now. Small. Careful. Enough to leave something she will see in the mirror before she dresses for the boat. Her breath goes sharp on the first bite. Her hand finds the back of my head.
The scar above her left eyebrow. The one Alexei gave her when she was twelve. I put my mouth there and I keep it there for a long count and I do not bite. Just my mouth. Just the warmth of it.
She goes very still.
Her fingers tighten in my hair.
The inside of her wrist over the pulse. The small place above her left hipbone. The faint scar I have never asked about and will not ask about because this is not for asking, this is for my mouth on every place that has ever been hurt, every place that carries the years before me, and I am not asking what happened there. I am just here. My mouth. On all of it.
She bites me back.
The hollow of my throat. The line of my collarbone. The place under my jaw I have not had a mouth on in years. The scar at my ribs, the left one, the one she traced with her thumb the first night in the dark. Her mouth is hot and her tongue moves between each bite and I let her. I let her put her marks on every place she wants them.
Let her mark me. All night. Every place she wants.
She moves on my lap. Her arms around my neck. Her forehead pressed to mine. Her eyes open on mine in the dark,not looking away, not flinching, and she says it on the third time with everything she has.
“Ya tvoya.” I am yours.
“Ya tvoya.” I am yours.
“Ya tvoya.” I am yours.
Three times. Like something that has been true longer than she has known it.
I hold her through the last one with my face in the side of her neck and my arms tight around her shoulders and my chest full and breaking at the same time, and I let it. I am done holding myself together in this room.
She is settled against my side. The room is quiet. The light at the edge of the curtain is still dark but it will not be dark much longer.
I speak into her hair. Quiet. Stripped down to nothing.
“I love you.”
A pause.
“Do you hear me?”
