Page 36 of Mikhail Petrov

“Where’d you go?” she asks, caressing my face.

I take her hand and press a kiss on her palm. “I’m right here.”

There’s a beat of silence, and she tenses. I can sense a question hanging in the air. “Ask,” I urge, giving her a reassuring squeeze.

Leah pulls my hand to her lips to return the gesture and sighs. “Celeste. Can I ask what happened?”

“You can ask me anything. I have nothing to hide from you.”

She twists in my lap, now straddling me, her vulnerable gaze on mine. “You were married almost three years. Did you ever love her?”

“No. I’ll admit I tried. But you can’t force that shit. Learned the hard way.” I place my hands on her neck and caress her cheeks with my thumbs. “But it was the only way I thought I could forget you.”

“Why did you marry her, Mikhail? I begged you not to.”

“I’ll always regret that day. I hated myself for a long time,” I say, resting my forehead on hers. “But I felt like I had no choice. The world was stacked against us.”

Leah lays her head on my shoulder. “What about now?”

“Ya by razorval mir radi tebya, moya lyubov.” (I would tear the world apart for you, my love.)

She smiles against me, using her finger to trace the ink on my chest. The gesture jogs my memory of something I did for her days after my wedding when I heard she left for Spain. Guiding her hand, I place it above my heart and wait for her to read. The tattoo is written in Russian, but Leah seems to have a good grasp of the language.

Using the pad of her finger, she touches the flower and the words carved inside.

“Pretty girl,” she whispers, then lifts her watery eyes to mine. “When did you get this done?”

“Four years ago.”

“Four years?”

I nod. “If I couldn’t have you, I’d have a part of you exactly where you belonged.”

Leah wipes at her eyes and lifts up to kiss me. “I never knew you were so romantic, Mikhail Petrov.”

Her fingers on my scalp always have my cock at attention.

“It’s the most beautiful thing anyone has ever done for me.”

Dragging my lips along her neck, I say, “So now you’ve given me a new goal.”

“What’s that?” she asks, head tilted, eyes closed as I work toward her ear.

“Topping myself. Everything I give you, everything I do for you—every time will be better than the last.”

Her smile is radiant. “You don’t have to do that.”

“No, but I want to. And I will.”

“The only thing I want right now is you...and another orgasm.”

We laugh, and I dip us under the scalding water when she shivers. Our lips are fused as we break the surface, my tongue gliding against hers, begging for more. But she pulls away, flashes a cunning little smile, and slips beneath the churning bubbles, taking my cock in her hand.

CHAPTER 17

LEAH

The thrum of churning jets drowns out Mikhail’s voice above me. His fingers are threaded through my hair, hand guiding me forward over his shaft. While I don’t need direction on how to please him, his savage grip only increases my hunger to swallow him until the edges of my vision darken and heighten the euphoria.

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