He tips his head back, the long column of his throat strained as he drives in and out of me again and again.
I fist the front of his shirt. I’m lowkey dying a little bit at the fact that this is the best sex I’ve ever had in my life and he didn’t even take off his shirt. “There, Mikhail. Right—Don’t stop.”
He looks down at me and for one fleeting second, I see him. The real him. The heat in his eyes. The fire burning beneath the surface.
The iceman has an inferno raging inside of him.
In a flash, it consumes us both.
I cry out as Mikhail roars, twitching out a release deep inside of me. Distantly, I recognize what he’s saying. The name he’s calling out again and again. My name.
Viviana.
We come down together, panting and slicked with sweat. Mikhail collapses on top of me, his heavy weight pressing me comfortably into the mattress. Then he rolls away, tucks himself back into his pants, and stares up at the ceiling.
I want to know if he’s thinking the same things I am, but I actually don’t know what I’m thinking. My mind is a mess.
Will Trofim come back for me?
Am I going to marry Mikhail?
If I do, will my father approve? I know far too well what happens when he doesn’t.
Questions and possibilities chase each other around my head, circling until the warmth has leached out of my limbs and I’m shivering and sore.
I look over and Mikhail is still next to me, his eyes closed. His breathing is deep and even… sleeping.
Fuck knows he earned a nap.
So have I—but what happens when we wake up?
I hear Mikhail’s voice in my head. You should leave while you still can.
Carefully, I slide off of the bed. Evidence of what we did is sticky between my legs, sliding down my inner thighs, as I tug on a pair of jeans.
There’s no time to clean up. No time to make myself presentable.
If I want to go, I have to go now.
So why do I stop in the doorway and look back?
Mikhail’s long legs are draped over the side of the bed. One hand is resting across his stomach. Regret pangs through me so painfully my breath catches.
This—this is the danger of Mikhail Novikov. There’s a reason he lurks on the edges. There’s a reason he shields himself with an icy, indifferent mask. He reveals nothing because all it takes is one tiny sliver of him… and you’re hooked.
I close my eyes before I turn away.
Then, without looking back, I slip into the hallway and run like hell.
4
MIKHAIL
I should feel like a piece of shit.
Not for fucking my brother’s girl—I would have gladly busted into the suite in the middle of Trofim’s wedding night and fucked his new bride first just to spite him.
But Viviana never belonged to him. Not in any way that mattered.