Page 67 of Belong to Me
"I'm going to steal your heart," she repeated. "And you're going to let me. And it's going to be the best thing that ever happened to you. And I know you can't say it yet, and I don't need you to, but I need you to know that I'm here. And I'm staying. And you don't get to close any more doors."
His arm tightened around her. His throat was closed. The words she wanted, the three words, the ones she'd told him he'd have to say someday, were pressing against his ribs like something alive, and he couldn't release them yet, couldn't open that door yet, because the last time he'd opened a door it had cost him everything he'd ever built and the next time he opened one it would cost him more.
But he could hold her. He could pull her against his chest and bury his face in her hair and feel her heartbeat against his, and the silence was not empty, and the arms around her were not shaking.
She settled against him. Her breathing slowed. Her hand stayed on his chest, over his heart, and her fingers curled against his skin, and the curl was unconscious and possessive and entirely Mia.
His eyes closed.
Not a decision. Not a surrender. His eyes simply closed, the way a door closes when there's no one left pushing against it, and the darkness behind his eyelids was warm, and her breathing was even, and the weight of her on his chest was the only anchor he needed, and for the first time in twenty-two years, Alexei Almazov slept.
Not the surface sleep of a man who kept one ear on the encrypted phone and one hand near the edge of the bed. Notthe strategic rest of a man who rationed his unconsciousness the way he rationed everything else. He slept the way she slept: completely. Defenselessly. With his face in her hair and his arms around her and his heartbeat slowing to match hers.
Her phone buzzed on the nightstand.
The sound pulled him up from somewhere deep. Deeper than he'd been in years. He surfaced with the disorientation of a man who had forgotten what real sleep felt like, and the room was dark, and the city lights were dimmer, and the woman on his chest was stirring.
She reached for the phone without opening her eyes, the way she reached for everything, instinctively, with the absolute confidence of a woman who expected the world to hand her what she needed.
She squinted at the screen. The light of it painted her face blue.
"Hm."
"What?"
"Morgan." She smiled, sleepy and warm. "He says congratulations on the wedding."
The name hit Alexei like a bullet.
Morgan. Blond. Blue-eyed. First name only. Leaning against her desk. Making her laugh. Playing roulette in his casino. Coming to appointments at the clinic where Mia worked. And now texting her. On her wedding night. With her phone number, which she gave to everyone because that was who she was, open and trusting and warm, and the warmth was going to—
"That's sweet of him," Mia murmured. She typed a quick reply, put the phone down, and pressed her face back into his chest. "He's a nice guy. You'd like him."
She was asleep in thirty seconds.
Alexei was not.
The sleep was gone. Shattered by a name on a screen, replaced by the cold machinery of the man he'd been for twenty-two years, and the twenty-two-year machine was awake now, fully awake, running calculations behind his eyes while his wife breathed against his chest.
Morgan.
He didn't move. He didn't reach for her phone. He didn't wake her. He lay there with his arms around her and his eyes on the ceiling and the four-month clock hammering in his chest, and the name was in the room now, in the bed, in the space between his heartbeat and hers, and she didn't know what it meant and he couldn't tell her and the holding was no longer just love.
It was a wall.
Chapter 7
ALEXEI
Her mug was in the sink before his.
Alexei stood in the kitchen at six in the morning and let the fact of it settle. The matte black mug, which was his, was still in the cabinet. The white one, which she'd claimed on her second day and which held what she called coffee and what he called warm milk with a memory of caffeine, was already in the sink. Rinsed. Which meant she'd been up. Made her drink. Consumed it. And left the evidence before he'd even crossed the hallway.
In two years of living in his penthouse, Mia Robertson had never beaten him to the kitchen. Not once. She slept like a person who considered mornings a personal affront, and the idea of her awake before six was so foreign to his understanding of her that he stood there for a full ten seconds recalibrating.
His mouth moved.
Not a twitch. Not the involuntary micro-expression she catalogued on her spreadsheet. An actual, sustained movement of his lips that, if anyone had been present to witness it, would have been classified as a smile.
