Page 79 of Lethal Alliance

He doesn’t put me down inside the elevator, cradling me against him until we reach the penthouse, where he walks us straight down the corridor to the bedroom, slipping my dress off as we go and leaving it in a pool of cotton on the floor. He lays me down, unbuttoning his shirt as he stares down at me. “I can see it now,” he says roughly, one hand stroking the curve of my breast, the faint swell of my belly, as the other tears his clothes off. “I don’t know how I didn’t see it before. Your body is so beautiful,milaia...”

When he joins me on the bed he slides gently inside me, moving slowly, his body rigid with tension.

“You won’t hurt me,” I whisper.

“You don’t know that,” he growls.

“You won’t hurt me, Roman.” I thrust upward to meet him, and he groans, his arms quivering with the effort of holding himself back. “You won’t hurt the baby. I promise.”

“I don’t want to jolt you around—”

I put my mouth close to his ear. “Let yourself go.” I wrap my legs around him, urging him onward. “It’s what I want, Roman. And it’s what you need.” I grasp his ass, pulling him deep inside me. “Just let go.”

He scoops me up and folds me around him, sinking into me with a savage sigh that sends me spiraling into bliss, thrusting with sure, deep strokes that hit every part of me.

“Fuck, Darya.” He lifts my ass high and drives home in a final, heady surge. “Fuck, I love you.”

“Ilyan Fedorov.”I repeat the name as Roman rubs the towel through his hair and reaches for his clothes. The sun is golden and brilliant beyond the window, the last burst of daylight over the water before night falls. “So you think this man is behind Vilnus Orlov, controlling him?”

I watch with unabashed pleasure as Roman drops the towel from around his waist and pulls on black leathers, his eyes running over my naked body on the bed as he does. I’m not going to lie—I still get a thrill from seeing how immediately his body reacts to what he’s seeing.

“I’ll never focus if you lie around looking like that.” He pulls the sheet up and tucks it around me with the twisted smile I love. “Yes, it looks like this Fedorov bastard is the one who started it all, back in Paris.”

“Paris.” I repeat the word slowly. It’s strange how one word can evoke so many emotions that I never truly realized I felt until now, after Roman explained what he has learned about our fathers’ shared past. “Papa would never take us there. Even when I was at finishing school in Switzerland, he’d holiday with us in Italy or at Lake Geneva—but he’d never take us to Paris. And my mother never went there either. I remember once there was a school trip to France; Papa refused to sign the form. He took Alexei and me to Barcelona instead. He never explained why he hated France. I just knew that he did.”

I sit up, clutching the sheet around me, my chin resting on Roman’s shoulder as he pulls on his boots. “It’s like all the other shadows that were never spoken about in our house, this darkness that sat around us, all the secrets I could sense were there but never understood. When I think of France even now, I feel this uneasy sensation of fear and danger. I never knew why I was afraid of Paris. I just knew it was a dangerous place for some reason.”

Roman tilts his head toward mine, his cheek touching my head in a brief but incredibly comforting gesture. “I don’t remember my father ever mentioning it at all.” He presses a kiss to the top of my head and stands up. He’s in his bike leathers, a white T-shirt molding his chest, the jacket slung over a nearby chair. The last rays of the afternoon sun turn his muscled biceps a tawny gold and highlight the warm depths in those midnight eyes. He’s so damned beautiful I want to tear all his clothes off again, and at the same time, I want him up at the lab, working to bring our girls home.

“But I do know what you mean about the atmosphere of secrecy,” he says. “The first thing I thought, after Mak explained what had happened, is that Paris is the reason our fathers never met up for drinks or dinner. They lost what must have been a lifetime of friendship, all because they wouldn’t risk a public relationship that might expose their families to Ilyan Fedorov.” He pulls the jacket from the back of the chair with savage force, his jaw hard. “Not that it helped. They lost everything anyway. We all did.”

I touch his hand, feeling the tension coursing through him. “We can’t blame them for that, Roman,” I say softly.

“Can’t we?” He shakes his head, his mouth a tight line. “It seems to me there’s a lot they could both have done and didn’t. It all comes back to that damn vault.” He shakes his head, breathing deeply to calm himself. “Anyway. None of that matters now. We’ll finalize everything tonight at the lab, and then I’ll fly to Switzerland first thing tomorrow.” He pauses, looking down at our joined hands. “I’ll call Dr. Ballasteros.” His voice is careful and measured. “If she agrees that it’s safe, then you can come too. But, Darya.” He fixes me with a stern look that is meant to quell my excitement, but absolutely does not succeed in doing so. “If she says it isn’t safe—”

“I know, I know.” I stand up and wrap my arms around his neck, kissing the hard corded muscle there. “Only if she says it’s okay. I get it, Roman.” I kiss him until he groans and wraps his arms around me, hauling me hard against him. “Thank you,” I whisper in his ear.

His kiss is long and sweet, and I never want it to end. I want him to know it isn’t just Switzerland I’m thanking him for, or even his willingness to include me in every step of this. It’s for all he has said since the moment he placed that white stick by my bedside. For making me feel safe and loved. For reassuring me that I won’t ever have to be out in the cold again, running alone in the darkness with a small life to protect. I realize that right up until today, until I saw the fierce wonder in Roman’s eyes, part of me still feared it would come to that. Feared he would resent me or reject this baby, and all that it means to be a family.

But he called it a miracle.

I cling to him, wanting to hold on to those words forever. They feel like a miracle in themselves. A small explosion of rich, pure joy amid the horrific darkness we will live until Roman has the girls back safely.

“Go,” I whisper against the shell of his ear. “Go, and do what you must so our girls can come home.”

25

OFELIA

“I’m starting to think your daddy doesn’t care what I do with you,kotya.” Vilnus lounges against the door of our cell, smoking, flanked by a small party of his guards.

I swear the watch party gets bigger every day.

“We sent Roman a message days ago. He still hasn’t answered us.” Vilnus drags heavily on his cigarette and casts Alexei a calculating glance. “Probably too busy fucking the Petrovsky whore.”

His men all laugh obediently.

Alexei doesn’t move. Not by so much as a flicker does his face betray the fact that Vilnus is talking about his sister.

---