Page 96 of Inked Adonis

“I’m sorry you’re upset.”

I realize immediately that is not what she wants to hear. She whirls on me, eyes wild. “Of course I’m upset! Do you know how horrible, how humiliating, it was to hear about you being gone from yourbrother, of all people?”

Ilya…? What the fuck?I only have the one brother, but this is the first I’m hearing of another run-in. The only reason I’m not racing out of this room to pin thatmudakto the wall by his throat is because Nova is perfectly safe in front of me.

“God, he was so smug about it, too.” Her lip curls. “Also, has he ever been formally tested? His psychopathic tendencies are off the charts. Modern science would have a field day with him.”

I can’t help but smile. Ilya has fooled a lot of people over the years, but it’s nice to know Nova sees behind the mask.

She’s still ranting, cursing me and my entire family lineage by the sounds of it, when I snag her by the arm.

“Let me go!” she grits out. But her struggling only makes my situation worse—or better, depending on which specific part of my body you ask.

“Not until you calm down.”

“Iamcalm! Considering I thought you were dead or gone or… or abandoned me—” Her chest hitches again, and I feel her shudder with a matching sob. “You can’t do that. It’s not right, Sam. I thought—” She pirouettes in my arms, her golden brown eyes swimming with tears. “You can’t leave me like that.”

“I wasn’t,” I whisper. “I wasn’t leaving you,krasavitsa. I swore I never would.”

Her forehead falls to my chest and she wraps her arms around my body. “How was I supposed to know that?”

More like,How could you not?

I’ve broken all of my rules for Nova. She’s living under my roof and sleeping in my bed and weaseling her way into every one of my thoughts. She’s why I wake up and she’s why I can’t sleep. She’s why I go to Russia to kill traitorous men and she’s why I come back home afterward.

She’s become my reason for everything. Whether she knows it or not, whether she likes it or not, it’s true.

Nova Pierce is my why.

I stroke her hair and hold her until her shoulders ease down and her breathing is steady. “What kind of fool would ever leave you?” I whisper against her temple.

It’s not a real question. I didn’t even mean to say it.

But Nova stiffens anyway.

I pull her away, catching her chin so I can look into her eyes. “Nova… tell me. Who?”

Whoever it is, I’ll kill him. His bloody death will make what I just did in Russia look as innocent as fingerpainting.

Glistening tears roll down her cheeks. “My mom and dad had a huge fight one night, and she just… disappeared. For months. Without so much as a word.” She looks down at the floor and the tears fall splattering to her feet. “When I found out you left, I thought… maybe…”

I shake my head and pass my knuckle under her eye. “I would never.”

I’m not one for grand promises, but this doesn’t feel grand. It feels simple.

I left, and she cried, and I don’t want her to cry.

Simple as that.

Sighing, I tow her back into the bed. To my surprise, she lets me—and as she stretches long against my body, her thigh hooked over my hip, I’m prepared to show her exactly how much I don’t plan to leave her.

But if I want to keep Nova around—and, God help me, I think I do—I owe her an explanation. I owe her words. Not just touches. Not just deeds done under cover of shadow.

Those things might be enough for me, but she needs something different. She needsmore.

So I’ll give it to her.

I’ll change for her. Just so long as she stays.

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