Page 42 of Belong to Me
"You don't know what you want."
"I've known since I was sixteen."
His whole body went still.
She heard it. The catch, the fracture. And she pressed into it because she was brave and terrified and this was the closest she'd ever gotten to the truth.
"I came back for you," she whispered. "Not for the gap year. Not for Monaco. For you. And you can call me young and you can call me reckless and you can tell me I'm remembering incorrectly, but don't you dare tell me I don't know what I want, because I have wanted you for two years, Alexei, and I am so tired of pretending I didn't."
The sound he made was barely human.
His hands were on her. Both of them. One on her waist, one in her hair. He pulled her against him and buried his face in her neck, and for one second, she felt the full weight of Alexei Almazov without his armor. The ragged pull of his lungs against her skin. His body tight as a wire. His fingers gripping her waist like she was the only solid thing in the room.
"I can't do this." The words were a groan against her throat.
"You already are."
His hand slid from her waist to the small of her back. The press of his palm through the thin cotton of her sundress sent a bolt of heat up her spine, and she arched into him before she could stop herself, and the sound that came out of her, small, startled, hungry, made his grip tighten.
"Mia." A warning.
"Don't stop."
"This isn't—"
"Don't. Stop."
His mouth found the curve of her neck. Not a kiss. A surrender. His lips dragged up the column of her throat, slow and open and ruinous, and she couldn't think, could only feel the heat of his mouth and the grip of his hands and his body trembling against hers, actually trembling, like the control was costing him everything he had.
She gripped the front of his shirt. Her knees were gone. The kitchen counter was pressing into her back and she didn't remember moving but none of it mattered because his mouth was on her cheek now, tracing the line of it, and his chest was heaving, and she was making sounds she'd never made before, soft, broken things that she would've been embarrassed about if she'd had any brain cells left to spare.
His hand slid up her side. His thumb grazed the curve of her through the sundress, and the world went white.
"Oh—" She gasped. Her head fell back. Her hands flew to his shoulders, gripping hard enough to leave marks, and the tremor that ran through her entire body was visible.
He froze.
She felt it. The second of hesitation, the war playing out in the rigid set of his shoulders. He was going to pull back. He was going to stop, just as he'd stopped last night, just as he always stopped.
"Please." Her voice cracked. "Alexei, please—"
His hand closed over her.
The sound that came out of her wasn't a word. It was something raw and undone and desperate, and his teeth clenched at the sound of it, and his eyes when she met them were black.
"Tell me to stop." His voice was gravel. "Tell me to stop and I will."
"No."
His thumb moved. A slow, ruinous circle through the cotton, and she bit her lip so hard she tasted copper, and her hips pressed forward into his without her permission, and the groan that tore from his chest was the most honest sound she'd ever heard from him.
"I didn't—" He pressed his forehead against hers. His voice was wrecked. "I didn't plan this."
"I know."
"This changes everything."
"I know."
