Page 63 of Wilt

“Why… Nikolai, why are you doing this to me? I know you said my father’s a terrible person, but… I don’t know him. He’s not part of me. He’s… I don’t even know what he looks like.”

“You.”

I flinch, like he said something horrible and offensive, like my birth has tainted me. My face. “I just… I don’t understand. Why am I paying for his sins?”

Nikolai sighs. “Go to bed, Rose. Try and get some sleep.”

As I stand, he catches my wrist, taking the glass of bourbon from my hand.

“Enough of that shit,” he says. “Otherwise, you’ll be a mess tomorrow. Get some sleep and I’ll come get you in the morning.”

Nodding, I go to step back. He still has my hand, and his fingers slip down to link with mine. It sends a wild current through me.

“G-Good night.” I manage to get the words out, even with a tongue tied in knots from the feel of our skin touching. I turn to take a step, but he doesn’t let me go. Instead, he pulls me back, with a hard enough tug that I’m sprawled on his lap.

“Rose.” He brushes my hair from my cheek, his fingers soft and heartbreakingly gentle.

The resulting kiss is like nothing I’ve ever experienced.

Nothing.

Nikolai weaves magic with his lips, and I sigh into him, opening my mouth, meeting his tongue. It’s a lullaby of a kiss, slow and long, if lullabies had a darker undertone of sensual want. It’s deep and long and leisurely, like time stopped, like there’s nothing more for us to do than this. This is a kiss of heat, of embers, soft emotions and a low electric charge that is somehow more powerful than a bolt of lightning.

It doesn’t end, this kiss. It twists into bleakness and despair, then up into warm fires and languid pleasure. Through it all, though, is Nikolai. Just him and me. He tastes of bourbon, honeyed and sweet. He tastes dark and hot and everything that makes him so compelling. He tastes like untouched, shadowy dreams, like all the forbidden things. He’s tender with a hard center, violence cloaked in warm velvet. I could do this forever.

My toes curl and I can’t think; all I can do is kiss him back and ride the waves of this otherworldly place with Nikolai.

All there is in the world is this kiss and him.

When it ends, it’s slow, teasing kisses that sip and finally stop. We don’t speak, just stare at each other, barely breathing. There’s a strange link that suspends us in the moment, seeming to never end, that I don’twantto end. When he touches me, I feel… alive, hopeful, scared, turned on. I’m lost and found and damned and worshiped all at the same time. It really would be easier if I wasn’t.

He slips a finger along my cheek, his eyes dark, dipped in both desolation and something that looks like wonder. Then he closes them and sighs. He looks so damn tired; I want to hold him, soothe him, make his aching soul whole again. I suspect this man carries a lot of weight on his shoulders. His world is a deadly place and he walks fine wires and holds lives in his hands at all moments. It must take a toll.

For a long time, Nikolai doesn’t open his eyes. “Go to bed, Rose, before I drag you off with me.”

Even though I want to say yes, please do, and even though he can’t see me, I nod, and I go to bed.

Alone.

Chapter22

Nikolai

I’m already fucking tired of playing this game.

I can’t kill her. It’s way too late for that. She’s dug her way into me, way down deep to my sinew. When I got to my room the previous night, I watched videos of her sleeping, and maybe she didn’t wake, but in the early hours, she tossed and turned, like she was being hunted in her sleep.

It bothers me. It shouldn’t, but it does.

Yesterday, we had breakfast after I had her slip and the red dress delivered to her. It was an exercise in normal: I read my fucking paper—trying not to look at her—and then sent her back.

Fuck. I never expected to have her beher: bratty, smart, annoying, vulnerable, so wet for me at all times, so complex.

She kisses like nothing else on earth. I can’t even think about much else but her taste, touching her back.

When she told me about her sleep issues, how she’s been mostly sleeping here, I wondered… I don’t know what I fucking wondered. Nothing. It’s a lie, but I need it to be the truth.

One thing I know for sure is that her nightmares are real. They’re memories. Her fucking father, real award winner of the year. The number of times he’d beat the shit out of Steph and parade her around like it was an award for manliness was sick.

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