Page 72 of Deception

With my hands trailing his stubbled jaw all the way to his nape, he allows me to take control of the moment, even as he carries me to the bed and keeps holding me while he crawls over the mattress to the heap of pillows and cushions. Slowly, he lowers us until he’s braced over me.

Our bodies perfectly aligned.

“Do you love me now?”

Tomasz nips the tip of my nose with a groan when he shallows inside me, stretching me in that glorious way that is pleasure and pain all at once. A hiss pushes out of me at the sensation of his cock pushing deeper.

“Love…” he growls so low that I shudder at the gut-wrenching gravel of his voice. He pauses, holding still while his hands comb through my roots. “There’s no such thing, malyshka.”

Tears pool in my eyes, my heart threatening to shatter with every word he utters because there is nothing but sincerity staring back at me. Affection gilds the depths of his silvered stare.

“It’s just a word.”

A sob escapes me as he sinks deeper inside me, every part of me pulsing and clenching to steal all of him for myself. I’ve never needed to own someone the way my soul demands to capture his own.

“Then say it,” I say, holding his face between my hands. “Tell me, master.”

Of course, he sees straight through my ploy to disarm him with the reminder that I have given him everything, including my free will. I made the choice to stay with him because my heart doesn’t exist without him anymore.

“If I pray at your feet for eternity,” he says with a hoarse gravel to his voice that has my entire being shivering to be encompassed in all his heat. “If I worship at your altar for a lifetime…” Trailing his lips to my ear, he sucks my lobe into his mouth, biting down as he thrusts into me, one hard shove that makes my heart skip a gazillion beats, as though it’s dying for him with every word he murmurs to me. “It will never be enough.”

“Tomasz…”

“I vowed to care and protect because love isn’t enough. It will never be enough.” He repeats the latter part with another torturous stroke that leaves me discombobulated, incapable of making sense of anything other than the way he’s making me feel.

Big hands encapsulate my neck as he licks the edge of my jaw to my chin, nipping the soft flesh before he closes his mouth over mine in something that is part kiss of life and lick of death. It’s a timeless echo of all he feels, and I drink it up greedily. I gulp every drop until I’m so full that my spirit is as uncontainable as the affection he speaks of. Something that no word could ever tame or restrain.

I allow Tomasz to pray, worship, and adore while he makes love to me with the same intense and overwhelming power that he protects me with. And there is nothing and no one in this world that could possess me the way he does. Even when we are calm and sated, lying in tangled sheets with nothing but our breaths whispering around us.

The universe could be on fire, and I wouldn’t care.

27

TOMASZ

The room falls quiet as we walk in. Niko looks between Red and me, standing from his place at the dinner table to give Lucy his chair beside mine.

“I’ll be fine over there,” she laughs lightly, brushing her long hair over one shoulder as she heads for the free chair beside Vanya.

Before sitting down, she greets Mama. The two of them have become almost inseparable since we’ve returned to the palace. I have to say that she makes even the gloomy Rasputin paintings look pretty in the background.

Despite all the craziness of the last week, she seems happy. Maybe a little nervous given we’re a few weeks away from entertaining the father of the man that kidnapped her and beat her black and blue. But she seems eager to face Mikheil Sarapov. As I am too, to put the last couple of months to bed. More accurately, a grave.

Of course, there’s also the fact that I’m waiting for her to freak out about the appointment at the clinic earlier today.

“Man, you moved quick,” Niko says when we’re both sitting down. “Married and expecting in less than a month…”

“News travels fast.” Glancing over at Mama, I give her a pointed look. “No wonder you insisted on eating dinner with us all tonight.”

“It’s wonderful news…” She reaches forward, stretching to pinch Lucy’s chin between her fingers. “I’ll take it as an early Christmas present… Summer can’t come soon enough, and then I really will have everything. Maybe a boy first, Petrushka,” Mama sighs the endearment with a gentle stroke of her fingertips over my wife’s face. “A grandson and heir.”

“Let’s not get too ahead of ourselves.” Lucy smiles, but worry presses her lips into a terse line as she looks at me and repeats the same thing she told me at the doctor’s. “With everything that’s happened, we should take it one day at a time.”

It takes all of my control to hold in the anger that burns through me. Guilt fists my heart as I focus on the way she flattens her hand to her stomach. I could’ve lost her and our child, and it would have been my fault. As it is, the only thing I can do is make amends. Before we go to bed tomorrow night, I’ll serve her Mikheil’s head on a fucking platter.

“I’m sure it’s going to be fine, but we have another seven months until we can hold our child.”

“It’s not that long,” Emin laughs.

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