Page 36 of Brutal Loyalty

She would put her father in the ground if she needed to. He was already dead to her, anyway. Blood or not, she’d found her real family. She would never stray again.

CHAPTER27

Roman

For a while, there was weightless, blissful nothing. Roman floated. The world passed around him, of that he was certain, but there were no markers of passed time, and no shapes or sensations he could cling to. For some time, he wondered if this was what death was—a vast, impersonal nothing in which he could be forever, and yet never be. He was only vaguely aware of his body—a warm, nebulous thing with blurry borders—but it no longer bothered him. It was an afterthought rather than an immediate consideration.

Then, the dream world came to a sudden end, and Roman opened his eyes to light. To silence.

He blinked a few times in an attempt to clear the sleep from his eyes and focus his vision. Above him was the same ceiling he was used to waking up to every day. There was a mattress beneath his back, familiar, and warm blankets over his body with the same fresh laundry smell he knew so well. It was his bedroom in the Sokolov mansion, he realized.

He was alive.

Slowly, he turned his head to the side. The furniture in the room was the same as always. The sparse belongings on his dresser and the few decorative items he owned were just as they usually were. His bedroom had been undisturbed. The only difference was the woman in the tiny dress standing at the window, looking out over the front lawn.

“Elena,” Roman murmured. He tried to sit up, but there was a shooting pain in his side that prevented him from doing so. He clenched his teeth and sank back down into the mattress. Memories of what had happened before his weightless sleep flooded back to him—the assault, the take-down, and the injury. The details were at first hazy, but slowly, the fog parted. Elena had tried to kill Viktor…and now here she was, standing in his bedroom. Had she succeeded, or had he passed through purgatory and found his way to heaven?

“Roman?” Elena turned. Her eyes were wide, but there was a gentle smile on her face. There was no fear. She came calmly to his bedside and took his hand in hers. A strange, sprawling peace spread through his chest. “How are you feeling?”

“About as well as a man who was stabbed in the side can feel,” he said. He tried to shift his weight but gave up when the pain returned. It wasn’t worth the effort. “What…what happened? Why are you still here? Why are we both still alive?”

“Viktor took pity on us—well, on me,” Elena replied. She stroked the back of his hand with her thumb. “I begged him to save you, and he did.”

“He wouldn’t have done that without a reason. I broke the code by protecting you and betrayed him in the process.”

“I showed him that I was serious when I said that I was no longer aligned with my father.” Elena’s thumb traced slow circles. The contact relaxed Roman, and he closed his eyes again, allowing the sensation to spread through him as he lay listening to her talk. “I gave him the information he wanted, and he…he decided to give me a second chance. I told him the truth, and his investigations proved I was being honest. He’s still very angry, but I’m not going to die. Not right now, at least…and I think, in time, maybe he’ll come to trust me again. That’s my hope. But for now, all I want is for you to be okay. I was so worried.”

“You saved me.” Roman tried to laugh, but his injury made doing so too painful. He gave up, choking off the end of the laugh to rest his sides. “You stabbed me…but then you saved me, too.”

“I didn’t mean to stab you.” Elena’s cheeks turned pink, and she dropped her chin. “I didn’t know who it was who’d tackled me, and I freaked out. I was really strung out. My father’s enforcer came to see me—and he threatened my mother. He showed me a pic of my mother and me in her room at the nursing home. He made it clear thatshe’dbe punished if I didn’t kill Viktor the way my father wanted me to. I panicked. I’m sorry for that. I would understand if you can’t forgive me, but…but I want you to know that, despite what I did, despite whether you’ll forgive me, I meant what I said. I do love you. And I’m sorry for what I did—for everything.”

Roman considered her words and knew in his heart that they were true. There was no way that Elena would be here in his room if Viktor thought she was lying.

Elena dropped his hand. She sank one knee into the mattress, then climbed up over him and carefully settled on his lap. She supported her weight on her thighs. His injury didn’t flare up, and he found he liked having her on his lap like this.

“I…I’m sorry for what I’ve done, Roman.” Elena traced her fingers along his shoulder, and he let out a slow, pleased sigh. “I want to make it up to you. I was so worried that you wouldn’t pull through. Viktor’s doctor is amazing, but you lost so much blood, and there was internal damage…”

Roman blinked. Her touch was distracting him from the severity of what had happened, but there were still questions that had to be asked. “How long was I out?”

“It’s been almost a full week,” she admitted. “The doctor kept you drugged to make sure that you rested. He tapered you off yesterday, and he said that you’d be waking up some time today, but…there was no clear timeline as to when that would be. I decided I’d wait here for you.”

He smiled. Slowly, careful not to aggravate his injury, he lifted his hand and ran his fingertips down her arm. She leaned forward and kissed him gently, then tried to pull back, but Roman didn’t want her to leave. He lifted his hand and wove his fingers through her hair, keeping her close. He renewed the kiss, and she hummed against his lips in pleasure.

It didn’t matter that he’d been hurt. It didn’t matter what she had or hadn’t done. The past was the past. Heart pounding, he deepened the kiss. He knew that he was in no physical state to make love to her, but he craved her touch—the thrill of being alive was too great to resist, and he wanted to revel in it as best he could.

But Elena didn’t need to be guided. She pulled away only slightly from Roman’s lips and looked him in the eyes, her gaze filled with love and giving him hope. One knee at a time, she lifted herself from the bed and his body, guiding the covers down until she was seated on his lap. Roman was naked, but it wasn’t until she sat that he realized there was nothing beneath her skirt. The warm embrace of her skin caressed his shaft, and Roman moaned.

“Elena,” he murmured, in total awe of what was happening, but also apprehensive of what he knew would come to pass. He wanted her, but he was too weak to sit up, let alone treat her as she deserved to be treated. “I can’t…”

“You don’t have to,” she whispered. With calculated movements, she rubbed herself along his shaft. He sucked in a breath and closed his eyes, his heart skipping a beat. Even though his body was injured, it wanted her, and his cock hardened for her almost to the point of pain. She was already wet for him—he felt it, and it made him want to plunge into her and make her his, just as she’d been before.

Elena lifted up just a little, and when she came down again, she was angled just right so that he slipped inside of her. The sudden warmth of her body flooded him, and another moan escaped his lips. Elena replied in kind, and the sound of her pleasure drove him to want more…only, he couldn’t engage. Whatever happened next was up to her, and he let her take control, if only for a little while.

He let it all go, and he was glad that he did.

With a gentle swing of her hips, Elena teased him. She kept herself tight for him, squeezing every now and then to increase his pleasure. It seemed like every thrust of her hips and ripple of her walls was designed for his pleasure, not hers, and in his state, all Roman could do was accept it.

He remembered the bratty girl he’d met on the flight back to Boston and then how feisty she’d been at the strip club. What he was seeing now, experiencing now, was an entirely different side of her, and he couldn’t believe how far she’d come.

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