Page 95 of Inked Adonis

Ignoring my burning need, I go to the shower. I crank the heat until the bathroom steams up like a sauna and my skin scalds. I need to raze the last few days from my pores.

The trip was successful; I wouldn’t be back Stateside if it hadn’t been. But betrayal always leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

I don’t regret what I did to the traitor and his accomplices, and given the thorough way I dismembered and disposed of them, I’ll never have to think of them again.

Still, I scrub at myself a little harder. I want to leave that bloody business in Russia.

I don’t want to touch Nova like this.

I’m not satisfied until my skin is red and raw and fresh. Only then do I turn off the water and towel off. I don’t bother with clothes as I pad across the dark bedroom and finally slide in next to her.

The sheets smell like her vanilla skin and the mattress is warm from her body. The second her back brushes against my chest, I exhale—for the first time in ten days, it feels like.

I breathe in her hair and the softness of her skin under my hands. I trace the curve of her body along her bare thigh and over her hip. Her silk camisole shifts like water under my fingers, making way for me to follow the toned stretch of her stomach to her breasts.

As my fingers circle her nipples, she shudders in my arms. A sigh slips between her lips, and I’ve never been this hard.

My erection presses between her thighs, and we both exhale again. She feels like silk everywhere—soft and delicate. After almost two weeks of brutality and cold, she is fucking heaven.

“S…Samuil?” Her voice is thick with sleep. She twists in my arms, her body pressing back into mine like she wants to make sure I’m real. Like she’s checking this isn’t a dream.

If it is, I’d rather not wake up.

Her lips part to say something, but I catch her mouth with mine before she can. I sweep my tongue across her full lip and part her, then dive inside to taste more of her.

She melts in my arms. Her hips writhe against me, and all I can think is,So much for rest.I thought I was tired on the plane, but my body is alive now. Wide awake.

I roll Nova onto her back, never breaking the kiss. My hand slips between our bodies, one finger just beginning to dip into the wet heat between her thighs?—

—when there’s a sharp, sudden pain in my bottom lip.

“Blyat’.” I pull away from her as the metallic taste of blood fills my mouth.“Nova?—”

“Don’t you dare.” She shoves at my chest, and I let her force me back onto my knees because something in the feral gleam of her eyes is alarming me. “It’s been ten days, Samuil. Ten days! And you climb into bed without a word and think—what? That I’ll spread my legs and welcome you home?”

I have a strong feeling she doesn’t want me to say,Yes, that’s exactly what I thought.

She snaps on the bedside lamp, but the light does nothing to shatter my delusion. If anything, seeing her in the warm glow is making it even harder to focus on how pissed she is at me right now.

Even with her flared nostrils and disheveled hair, she looks magnificent.

“I texted.”

She scoffs and turns away from me, her teeth grinding together. “Three times. You texted three times in ten days. And there was no information. I didn’t know where you were or when you’d be back. I didn’t even know if you were—” Her voice hitches and dies.

“Krasavitsa—”

I reach for her, but she jerks away and leaps to her feet. She paces, half-naked, at the foot of the bed, too beautiful to be so angry and so sad.

“I didn’t even know you were okay or if you were leaving. I didn’t get to say, ‘Have a nice trip’ or ‘See you next fall’ or ‘Are you ever planning to come back or should I find someone to cover your half of this astronomical rent?’”

I stand, using all of my self-control to keep my hands to myself. “I own the penthouse.”

“Not to mention,” she continues, ignoring me, “you didn’t even tell me you were leaving in the first place! I just woke up one day to you,gone. You left the freaking country and didn’t feel like that was worth mentioning to me, your—” She stumbles over a potential label for herself. “You should have told me!”

Even as Nova says it, I’m not sure she’s right. I’d rather her have as little connection to the shit I had to deal with in Russia as possible. The less she knows, the better. I kept it hidden forhersake. Same reason I scrubbed myself half to death in the shower.

She’s too pure to be tainted by the evil things I have to do to keep her safe.

---