Page 74 of Savage Surrender

She looked at me, deferring to me for a moment. “Well, I’m not sure where we’ll end up, but we—you—will always have a home with the Baranovs.”

His jaw dropped again. “What about Father?”

I shook my head.

“You don’t have to worry about him ever again,” Irina said. She kissed his brow. “I will have some meetings to get through. I’ll be busy with these people, but we will be safe here.”

Maxim looked at me, then at the fact that I still held his sister’s hand. “Because of him?”

She nodded. “Because of Viktor,” she agreed.

The teen smiled and rushed up to hug me. “Thank you, Viktor. Thank you.”

32

IRINA

Three days after Viktor brought Maxim to the mansion, I walked out of the shower just as he walked into our room.

“Oh.” I raised my brows and smiled. Then I dropped my towel. “There you are.”

He laughed, raking his gaze over me slowly. “What do you mean, here I am?” He stalked toward me, reaching for his pants as he approached. “I’ve been here all week.”

“Yes. But I’ve been talking with Lev and Oleg. Every day.”

He nodded, unzipping as he watched me cup my breasts and thumb my nipples. “Yeah.”

“And you’ve been on campus wrapping up your fake job and checking on the activity with Rurik.”

“Uh-huh.” He pushed his pants down, removing his boxers with them.

“We’ve been here together but apart,” I explained, breathing faster at the heat in his stare.

“For too long,” he agreed, stepping out of his pants as he started on his shirt.

We had both been so busy in the aftermath of rescuing Maxim. I came through on my part of telling the Baranov men all that I could. It took days to explain it all. I had pictures and videos too, everything on my phone. I took them back through all the spying I’d done for my father.

It should’ve felt like I was being a traitor, but I experienced the opposite. I felt brave. Like I was already a contributing member of therightfamily, a found family who happened to fail at being my rival.

Oleg welcomed me, personally thanking me for helping Eva and Lev get out of danger. All the men I spoke with who recorded and noted all that I could share showed me respect, not glares of annoyance like I was a burden or a pain in the ass to deal with.

I also spent a lot of time with Maxim. Eva and I had sat down to explain to him that his father was alive, but we altered that a bit. Boris begged us to not tell Maxim how he was conceived. He had no interest in being a father to a teen, and he felt guilty enough about it all. So, instead, Oleg posed as Maxim’s father. He would receive more protection that way, and already, Maxim deferred to the Baranov Boss so well.

They would get along, and I had a hunch that Oleg looked forward to getting to know Maxim.

It was still a big adjustment. Maxim was overwhelmed, and he’d seemed ill at first. The Baranov medical staff helped to check him out, and with ordering clothes and essentials, we invested a lot of time in just settling.

“But that was okay,” Viktor murmured as he lost his shirt. He lowered his voice to a deep, sexy rumble of a growly whisper. He fisted his dick and pumped it, teasing me with the sight of what I craved. “Because I know we’ll never be apart again.”

I smiled, opening my arms to greet him in a hug.

“Never?” I asked, needy for the confirmation that he would be mine.

“You are mine, sweetheart.” He picked me up and kissed me. “And I’m never letting you go.”

I lay on the bed after he lowered me to the mattress, but he didn’t move away. Following me down, he pressed a long, lazy trail of kisses over my sensitive skin.

“Can you be quiet?” he asked with his mouth a breath away from my nipple after he sucked on it, making a bolt of pleasure streak from my breast to my core. “We can’t wake up the whole house.”

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