Page 16 of Twisted Cage

“No, Pcholka, it’s not. But I can’t give you this.”

“Fuck my virginity?—”

His tortured groan takes me in a choke hold where all I want to do is soothe him.

“Sleep with me.”

“Pcho—”

I press my fingertip to his mouth. “Just sleep. I can face the dark if I’m in your arms, Konstantin. Please.”

He doesn’t speak. His eyelids sink shut and his shoulders relax. With his nod of surrender, I take a step back and climb back under the covers while he blows out all but one candle. At the edge of the bed, the flicker of light illuminates the doubts raging through him and every second of looming darkness without him touching me plunges me into all-consuming fear.

“I’m exhausted, Kostya. Please.”

He blows out the last candle and the swift rise of panic grips me by the throat. The complete darkness unlike anything I’ve known being in this crypt squeezes around me.

But then the mattress dips and he’s there, lining his body up with mine. His bare chest a broad warm force keeping me anchored to safety. I lay my palm over his heart, reassured by the rhythmic pounding behind his ribs.

I focus on each one, counting them in my head until the bands tightening around me loosen, and my breathing grows deeper, my breaths longer. Unable to see, my other senses take over. The musky scent of his cologne, faint but still clinging to his skin. His forearms brushing over my shoulder as he threads his fingers through my hair tentatively, like he doesn’t know what to do next or how to treat me.

Growing bolder, I trace my fingertips along his chest, the curls covering hard muscles and hiding a roadmap of scars he’s picked up along the way. Some jagged and raised, others no more than a barely perceptible line.

“So many scars. How did you get them?”

He stills under my palm. “Protecting you.”

The air stutters out of my lungs. “What?”

He takes my hand and runs it over the first scar. “When you were five, the Povlovs tried to kidnap you. I intercepted their men making their way up the stairs to your room while you slept.”

Ignoring my gasp, he moves my hand to the next, a raised scar, more of an oval between his heart and shoulder. “When Vlad was attacked in the schoolyard, your father ordered another child’s death, despite my protests. The family, in turn, went after you. This was the bullet they aimed at your head the next day at the park.”

A soundless tear breaks free and streams down my face, tumbling into the hair at my temple. “How many scars are from protecting me, Kostya?”

“All of them.” Tipping my face up to his, he brushes at the damp skin beneath my eyes. He can’t see one single bit of me, but it doesn’t matter. He’s so attuned to my proximity, he doesn’t need light.

He knows every square inch of me, without ever having memorized my body with his own hands.

Our history goes so much deeper than even I know.

“This is your love for me,” I whisper as I finally understand everything… and perhaps nothing at all.

“Yes, Pcholka. You were born to your mother and father, but make no mistake, you’ve always been mine.” His voice deepens, turning gruff and jagged with the words that follow. “What you’re asking of me—it’s not so easy for me to accept whatever this is between us.”

“You know what it is, Kostya.” His admission, even as he evades the stark truth, gives me a kernel of hope and for right now, it’s enough.

With a snarl of pure aggravation rumbling from his throat, he snatches my hand from his chest.

“What—”

“I smell you, dammit!” Grasping the fingers I had buried between my thighs, he brings them to his lips.

When his hot, wet mouth closes over my fingers, my eyes roll back in my head. The air leaves my lungs in a whoosh with every hum that vibrates over my skin. Each sweep of his tongue around each digit leaves me gasping and frantically clutching him with my free hand.

“What have we done, Pcholka?” His anguished murmur over my fingers sends me in a spiral of longing. I can’t stay still, every part of me seeking, struggling to get closer to him.

Heat swallows me whole. When I cry out in sheer frustration, he’s there, his mouth on mine, devouring all my sounds like he can collect them deep inside and keep me to himself.

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