Total pages in book: 94
Estimated words: 92284 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 461(@200wpm)___ 369(@250wpm)___ 308(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 92284 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 461(@200wpm)___ 369(@250wpm)___ 308(@300wpm)
I reach for her hand and kiss her palm.
“Thank you, little queen.” Her soft smile warms me through. When she draws closer to me, I stifle a groan. My cock stiffens between us, but this isn’t the time.
“Happy to see me?” she says with a smirk, her brow raised. “Or…”
I bend and kiss her shoulder when she yawns widely. “Always. But you’re exhausted.”
“Yeah.” Her voice is a breathy whisper.
“You have to stay awake until the pizza gets here, and then you can sleep for days for all I care.” She needs to eat.
“I can handle that,” she says on another yawn.
I turn her around to rinse her off.
It feels like we’ve walked through something we can’t really name—an unspoken battle neither of us wants to admit we were fighting.
It’s more than Shawn. More than her fears and mine. Neither of us does vulnerable easily—and yet here we are. We stand under the stream of water, bare in more ways than one.
I shift, reaching past her to adjust the water temperature. I move carefully, almost reverently, as if I could shatter this moment between us. But there’s nothing fragile about the way she turns to me and holds on, her arms about my waist.
Steam coils around us. My scars stand out against the warmth of my skin. Wordlessly, she traces one of them, brushing over it as if committing it to memory.
My hand covers hers, stilling the movement. My thumb grazes over her knuckles in slow circles.
Her fingers slide down my arm, stopping just above my wrist. Slowly, she traces the thick gold band on my finger. Her voice is quiet. “What if I don’t want temporary, Rodion?”
I bend my head, kissing her temple. “What if I don’t either?”
She draws in a sharp breath as if she wants to believe me, wants to believe herself, but can’t quite trust it all yet.
I brush the wet hair from her face. “Listen, Ember. I’m not going anywhere. Tonight was about survival. Survival is only the first step.”
She swallows hard, her fingers tightening around my wrist. We stand, wrapped in the heat and silence, letting the pounding water drown out the rest of the world until our skin is wrinkled and her stomach growls audibly.
I reach behind her and shut the water off just as a knock sounds at the door. “Food’s here!” Yana shouts.
She smirks. “Guess you really are staying, then. One way to keep you here.”
I smile at her. “Are you really afraid I’m going to leave, little queen?”
She holds my gaze for a long moment, searchingly, before she finally shakes her head with a sigh. “No. I don’t think you will.”
“Woman, you couldn’t chase me away if you tried.”
I wrap her in a towel, then wrap another around my waist. Wordlessly, she sits up in bed, and I get the food outside the door. We open the box on the bed.
“Rafail would kill me for this,” I say, lifting a slice and handing it to her.
She swallows and licks her lips. “Rafail can fuck off. I can’t think of a better way to honeymoon than pizza and cheesecake. You?”
I take a bite of the pizza and groan. “I would’ve said sex, but right now, this pizza tastes better than sex.”
Ember laughs softly, tucking her legs beneath her. The towel falls off her shoulder and pools in her lap. The warmth in her eyes lingers longer than usual. “You know,” she says with a twinkle in her eye. “If I were still making videos, I’d be running to make a video about this scene right here.”
I shake my head at her. “Why?”
She shrugs. “We can talk all day about a hot, tatted guy taking care of us. But being comfortable enough to share a pizza, half-naked, in bed… could be the hunger talking, but this is the stuff of dreams.”
We eat in silence. In the distance, we can still hear the muted sounds of people talking and music playing, but it seems we’re almost a world apart here.
She tilts her head up just enough to meet my eyes. “I meant what I said, you know. About not wanting temporary.”
“You say that now…” I want to believe her; of course I do. But I want her to say the same thing after she’s accepted what this really means. I’m not built for soft edges and quiet endings. I don’t like the thought of my world swallowing her whole.
But when I look down, she’s already watching me, eyes steady and unwavering. Like she sees the storm inside me and isn’t afraid of getting caught in it.
“I mean it,” she says softly, her fingers tightening around mine. “I know what I’m asking for.”
She drops her crust in the box, grabs another slice of pizza, and takes a huge bite.
I take her crust and bite it.
“Things sometimes go to shit, Ember. We don’t always have happy endings. Sometimes—”