Page 73 of Ivory Oath

I stroke his cheek, holding his face in my hand. “You deserve to feel happy, Mikhail. You don’t have to feel guilty for the life you had before me.”

He kisses the palm of my hand and my wrist. He works his way down my arm until he’s over me, his heat between my legs. “Sometimes, I feel like there wasn’t anything before you.”

I want to tell him that’s okay, but he presses his hips forward and the gentle slide of him inside of me steals my ability to speak. When our bodies are flush and he’s panting against my skin, I decide there’s nothing I could say that isn’t being said a thousand times better by the perfect way we fit together.

Mikhail lifts himself onto his elbows, his nose pressed to mine. He looks into my eyes as he slowly pumps into me. It’s like we both need the reminder that we’re here, together.

Despite everything, we found each other.

I lift my hips, meeting his thrust, and he bares his teeth. “I’ve never been so turned on in my fucking life.”

A wild laugh bursts out of me. “Me, neither.”

“Just the way it feels sliding into you makes me want to come.”

I scrape my nails over his hips, drawing him closer, deeper. “Do it. Please.”

He grits his teeth and pumps into me with obvious restraint. Each tender pull of him in and out is sending me into the stratosphere and all I want to do is come down. I claw my hands up his neck and into the sweaty hair curling at the base of his head. “We have all night, Mikhail. We can do this all night. Forever.”

The tight grip he’s kept on his self-control thus far snaps. His fingers sink into my hips and he lifts me off the bed as he drags me against him harder and harder.

He hits a new angle inside of me and I can’t hold back. He’s wringing the orgasm out of me and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.

I cry out, “I’m coming,” and my body clamps down and he stutters, driving deep inside of me before I feel him twitch. Warmth floods inside of me, swirling to my fingers and my toes. Making me dizzy, trembly, gone.

“Fuck, Viviana.” He collapses next to me, his arm slung over my heaving chest. He kisses my shoulder. “Have I told you I love you?”

I grin. “I think you just did.”

“You think? You think?!” He clicks his tongue and rolls over me, lifting me off the mattress and into his arms.

I squeal, clinging to him so he doesn’t drop me. “What are you doing?”

He bites my collarbone, a wicked gleam in his eyes. “Taking you downstairs to tell you again. And again. And again.”

Hours later, limp and breathless on the floor in front of the fireplace, I curl against Mikhail’s chest and fall asleep.

I’ve never felt more loved.

32

MIKHAIL

I’m kissing Viviana before I’m even conscious. The soft skin of her shoulder. The slope of her neck.

It might have something to do with the fact that I fell asleep kissing her. Since the second my brothers cleared out of here with Dante, every second spent not touching her feels like a waste of time.

She sighs and stretches against me. The only thought in my head as I grip her hip is, She’s mine.

“We have to leave today,” she rasps.

I finally open my eyes and her lower lip is pouted out. I can’t resist pinching it between my teeth. “Hush. We’re not talking about that yet.”

“About what?”

I press my lips to the hollow of her throat. “About anything outside of this room. Anything that doesn’t involve the many different ways I could have you screaming my name.”

She laughs, her long lashes fluttering against pink cheeks. “There’s a lot to pack up. We never put the candles away after the ceremony yesterday. I think the cheesecake is still on the counter, so it’s probably rotten. There’s a lot to do and?—”

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