Page 82 of The Pakhan's Captive
The mention of our son makes his expression soften for a heartbeat. I don’t give him time to respond. I dip a cloth into the water and begin to clean the wound.
The tension in the room is suffocating. I am inches from him, my face level with his stomach. I can feel the heat radiating from his skin, the rhythmic rise and fall of his chest. Every time I dab at the blood, his abdominal muscles ripple and cord under my touch, a silent testament to the pain he’s refusing to voice.
“I’m sorry,” I mutter as he flinches when I apply the antiseptic.
“Don’t be,” he says. His hand reaches out, hovering over my shoulder before finally settling there. His thumb traces the line of my collarbone, a slow, heavy movement that sends a different kind of shiver through me. “I like your hands on me, Lena. Even when they’re trying to sting me.”
“Shut up, Razvan.”
I work in silence for the next twenty minutes. I re-stitch the tear with a needle and thread from the kit—my hands steadying as the adrenaline of the task takes over. I am focused, clinical, but the vulnerability of the moment is a weight on my chest. He is letting me do this. He is sitting here, bleeding and broken, and trusting me with a needle near his vital organs.
Me. The woman who told him she hated him yesterday.
When I finally tape the fresh bandage into place, I am exhausted. I sit back on my heels, wiping a stray smudge of his blood from my thumb.
“There,” I say, my voice trembling. “It’s clean. But you have to stay still. No Petrovs. No dragons with Theo. You stay in this bed.”
“Stay with me,” he says.
It wasn’t a command. It was a plea.
I look up at him. His eyes are dark, searching mine, stripped of all the Pakhan’s armor. He looks tired. He looks like a man who has been carrying the world on his shoulders and just wants to set it down for five minutes.
“I need to wash my hands,” I say, standing up quickly.
I retreat to the bathroom, scrubbing the blood from my skin with frantic motions. I stare at myself in the mirror. My hair is a mess, my eyes are wide, and my heart is screaming.Get out. Go to the guest room. Don’t go back in there.
But when I walk back into the bedroom, he’s already slid under the covers. He’s lying on his back, his eyes closed, his breathing heavy. I think he’s asleep, so I move toward the door, intending to flee.
“Lena.”
His voice is a low, pained ghost of a sound. He reaches out blindly across the bed, his hand searching for mine.
“Please. Just for an hour.”
The “Republic of Lena” crumbles into dust. I walk to the bed and slide back in, keeping as much distance as I can. But as soon as I’m settled, he moves. With a pained groan, he rolls onto his side and pulls me toward him.
He doesn’t try to initiate anything. He just tucks his head into the crook of my neck, his arm draping over my waist, pulling me flush against his heat. He moans against my skin—a sound of pure, desperate relief, as if my presence is the only thing stopping the pain.
“I needed this,” he mumbles, his breath hot against my ear. “I needed you.”
I should push him away. I should remind him of the blood on the floor of my father’s house. But in the quiet of the night, with his heart beating against my back and his arm holding me safe, the hatred feels like a heavy coat I’m tired of wearing.
I close my eyes, and for the first time in months, I don’t fight the pull.
The shift happens somewhere in the blue-gray light before dawn.
I don’t know who started it. Maybe it was the way I turned in his arms to check his bandage. Maybe it was the way his hand slid up my thigh, his touch questioning rather than demanding.
But suddenly, the air in the room isn’t just heavy with pain. It’s thick with a desperate, frantic hunger.
He kisses me, and it’s not the conquest of the hotel. It’s a slow, starving exploration. He tastes of iron and peppermint, and I find myself pulling him closer, my fingers tangling in his hair, my body arching into his despite the wound between us.
“Razvan, your side—” I gasp against his mouth.
“Fuck my side,” he growls.
He moves with a careful, deliberate grace, hovering over me so as not to put weight on his injury. He strips my nightgown away with trembling hands, his eyes devouring me in the pale light.
