Page 114 of Nikolay

So I stood there, heart pounding, while the vampire prince I had wanted against my better judgment and resented against my will looked at me as if truth had become his only remaining luxury.

“I am sorry,” he said. “For every cold word. Every dismissive look. Every time I made my confusion into your wound because it was easier than facing what I felt.” His jaw tightened. “I am sorry for my disdain, and sorrier still because so much of it was theater for a weakness I was too proud to name. If I could go back, I would never have treated you that way. Not once.”

My throat burned.

He lifted one hand and brushed his knuckles lightly over my cheek. “You deserved honesty from me, and kindness, and I gave you neither when it mattered most.”

“Nikolay—”

“I fell in love with you anyway,” he said, and his mouth almost twisted at himself. “Or perhaps not, anyway. Perhaps because there has never been anyone remotely like you, and fate decided I deserved the lesson.”

I kissed him before he could finish whatever came next.

If the first kiss had been tender, this one was hungry in a way that made my knees soften. He caught me against him at once, hands sliding from my waist to the small of my back, holding me close while my mouth opened under his. I tasted the sharp trace of coffee, the deeper warmth of him, and all the old ache I had been carrying for weeks seemed to liquefy at once.

He backed me up one careful step until the backs of my knees met the mattress.

“Tell me to stop,” he murmured against my mouth.

I shook my head.

“Maddie.”

“Don’t you dare.”

That got the first real ghost of a smile from him, brief and wrecking.

Then his hands went to the buttons of my shirt.

He undid them slowly, eyes on mine for the first two, then dropping to watch his own fingers work. I could have died from that look alone. Not because it was crude. Because it wasn’t. He handled me the way a devout man might unwrap something sacred and long denied him.

When he opened the shirt and pushed it from my shoulders, cool air touched the skin he bared. His gaze moved over my bra, my stomach, the rise and fall of my breathing.

“Beautiful,” he said so quietly I almost thought I had imagined it.

I reached for his coat, impatient suddenly, and he let me drag it off him in graceless haste. It hit the floor. Then his tie. His shirt. Every new inch of skin made me greedier. Pale golden light from the curtained windows found the hard planes of his chest and stomach, the narrow line of dark hair leading down beneath his waistband. I put both hands on him because not touching him had become impossible.

He inhaled sharply when my palms spread over his chest.

“That,” he said, voice gone rough, “you may do again whenever you please.”

I almost laughed, but it came out as a shiver when his hands slid behind me and unclasped my bra. The straps fell from my shoulders. My breasts spilled free under his gaze, and instead of shame I felt only a strange, fierce pride at the way he looked at me—awed enough to make me bolder.

His palms closed over me, broad and warm.

I arched into his touch at once.

“Goddess,” he whispered.

His thumbs moved over my nipples until they tightened under him. The pleasure of it ran low and molten through me. He bent and took one breast in his mouth through the sound I made, sucking gently, then harder, while his hand kneaded the other with devastating patience. I threaded my fingers into his hair and held on. My head tipped back. The room had already gone distant around the edges.

He kissed his way downward after that.

Mouth to sternum. To the soft slope under my ribs. To my stomach, where he paused long enough to press one open-mouthed kiss just below my navel that felt more intimate than anything higher had. He looked up at me from there, one hand hooking into the waistband of my jeans.

“Yes?” he asked.

I was breathing too hard for elegant speech. “Please.”