Page 73 of Love Is A Draw
Victor’s breath caught.
Dmitry came closer and, for the first time, rested a hand on Victor’s shoulder. “You already play like family. Make it official.”
Victor’s eyes burned. He bowed his head again. Not just to a master. But to a grandfather. Family. “I will never leave her. Not again.”
“Good,” Dmitry said. “Because if you do, you will answer to me.”
Victor let out a breathless laugh—and then Gail was there. Watching. Waiting.
Dmitry turned to her, extended his hand, and she took it with a smile that trembled on her lips.
Victor offered his arm. She accepted it. And in that quiet space between sea and sky, with the fog lifting like a curtain, Gail and Victor stood side by side—seen, chosen, and loved.
At last.
CHAPTER 32
The ceremony was small but meaningful. Greg and Lady Hermy had opened their drawing room, the windows thrown wide to let in the soft light of late afternoon.
Gail wore a borrowed dress from Rachel, ivory silk trimmed with lace that had once belonged to Lady Hermy’s grandmother. It hung a little loose at the waist, but Maia had insisted it wasperfect,and who could argue with a child who’d braved the hot house to pick armfuls of peonies for her bouquet?
Gail held them close as she stood beneath the chuppah, a thin canopy draped in muslin and Dmitry’s tallit. The old prayer shawl, worn soft at the edges, had been Dmitry’s only request—to stretch it above them, not only as tradition, but as the roof of the home they would build together.
Victor hadn’t worn a new coat, but his eyes had held her with such quiet devotion that the world might as well have fallen away. He’d looked at her like she waseverything.
And when he’d taken her side beneath that canopy to meet her, it wasn’t just to take her hand. It was to give her his whole life.
They had no elaborate guest list. No pomp. Just a vow exchanged with their hands intertwined, and Maia clutching Gail’s skirt and declaring that she would teach their children to spot queen traps before they turned seven.
Later, as dusk bled into night and laughter rose from the Pearlers’ supper table, Gail excused herself quietly.
Victor followed soon after.
They were to stay here a few nights, under the Earl’s protection. Dmitry had already been lured into a brandy-soaked round of chess stories in the study, Greg and Hermy hanging on every tale.
Gail didn’t hear the end of the story because Victor entered their chamber, and all at once, the world turned to firelight and breath and him.
Gail’s breath caught as Victor moved toward her, his body cast in the warm, flickering light. Victor stood before her, his body a testament to the life he’d lived and the man he had become. His form was lean, each line and contour sculpted not by vanity but by years of hardship and perseverance. The play of light caught the curve of his shoulders, the firm strength of his chest, the ridges of his abdomen, each revealing a fortitude etched into his very being. Yet there was nothing aloof or unreachable about him. For all his power, he was wholly, wonderfully human, his skin warm and golden, carrying the faint sun-kissed hue of a man who did not shy away from the world he faced.
He seemed, to her, both a man and something infinitely rarer. He displayed a balance, the effortless poise of someone who carried burdens with grace, his presence commanding without pretense. She couldn’t look away from how his very being breathed life into a room that had been so unremarkable before. His face, every sharp plane and soft angle alive with a quiet nobility, showed patience and resolve chiseled his brow,his jaw. But his eyes held her still, bright and brimming with something she had never seen directed at her before. Not merely affection, but something much deeper, something that made her feel as though the battlegrounds of his life had all led him here, to her.
And then he shrugged his unmentionables off.
Out sprang … well, she ought not even think what to call it, much less wonder how it could ever… the mechanics that had been so clear in theory were suddenly as elusive as her courage.
“Your expression is priceless,” Victor rumbled, a gentle laugh, and…was he posing?
He carried no arrogance in the way he stood. His strength did not tower over her but reached out to draw her in, as though he were offering her not protection, but partnership. She marveled at him—not simply his form, though it was something to marvel at, but at the reality of him. That a man such as this, so capable of enduring and so willing to feel, would chooseher. Her heart swelled with something too vast to name, a mix of disbelief and aching tenderness that caught her breath in her chest. For so many years, she had felt invisible, and yet he stood before her, gazing at her as if she were the only person who had ever truly mattered.
Her gaze drifted lower again, tracing the taut skin of his abdomen. She’d seen him clothed a hundred times, always impeccable in his few, well-kept garments, but here, stripped of pretense, he was breathtaking. The faint veins threading across his forearms and torso hinted at stories he’d likely never tell, yet none of them made him any less her Victor. If anything, they endeared him to her more. Each scar cast a reminder of his resilience, of the man who carried so much more than he would ever admit. She reached out, her fingers barely brushing against his skin, marveling at the contrast between the roughness of life etched upon him and the tenderness he offered her.
His broad, steady shoulders were hers to hold onto. She could easily imagine leaning into them, trusting them to bear her weight, her worries, her heart. He made her feel safe, not just in the shelter of his arms when a balloon plummeted to the ground, but in the quiet strength he radiated with every step, every glance. He hadn’t just come into her life; he’d transformed her understanding of it, of herself. He was her Victor, and tonight, he was hers entirely.
He approached the bed, his movements unhurried, deliberate. The weight of his gaze on her, dark and intent, seemed filled with something far more complex than desire. It humbled her, the way he looked at her, as if she were not just beautiful but essential. She swallowed hard, her pulse fluttering in her throat like a delicate bird trapped between exhilaration and surrender.
Victor knelt beside her, his presence filling the space between them. He brought her hand to his lips, his touch so reverent it almost made her weep. How could a man who embodied strength be this gentle, this careful?
She watched as his hand moved to the hem of her shift.
