Nikolai sat deathly still. One tattooed hand stroked the toy’s head. It was a deceptively calming movement. I could feel his menace and wariness from across the room.
While part of me, that part that had been terrified of my father my entire life, contracted with fear, the other part, the one that had fallen in love with this terrible, complicated man, eased. It was over. The lies were done. The chips would have to fall where they may. I had no control over that anymore.
“Come in, let’s talk.” His words were a quiet command.
I felt like I was falling from a great height as I walked into the room. His eyes were locked on mine, and I couldn’t tear myself away.
“So, talk,” he said after a moment, while I stared dumbly at him.
“It’s not Angelo and Chiara’s kid in the hospital,” he said. His prompt loosened my tongue.
“No, it’s not.”
“It’s yours. He’s yours. You didn’t think to mention it?”
“When? When you gagged me, or locked me in a coffin, or hunted me through the woods?”
My challenging tone sent one of Nikolai’s eyebrows up in a mocking expression.
“I guess I shouldn’t put too much stock in your assurances of honesty. Still telling lies, lastochka? How disappointing.”
His soft tut sent my color high.
“I was scared of my father.”
Nikolai sighed. “So what else is new?”
A bitter laugh left me. “Not like this. I’ve never been scared of Antonio like this.” I turned around and reached for a picture frame on the dresser. There weren’t many of them. Framing pictures was just another one of those domestic things I never seemed to get around to.
Now, I clutched the frame hard between my fingers and closed the distance between us.
Nikolai tilted his head back to keep me in sight as I loomed over him, my legs brushing his knees.
Just like in the past, when trusting this unpredictable, dangerous man had felt like jumping off a high cliff, with no certainty that I would reach the water, I hesitated on the edge. His gray eyes stared into mine. Steady. Just like his son’s. In that moment, my mind was made up.
I was done carrying this burden alone.
I was done.
I handed Nikolai the frame.
He turned his attention to it slowly. My heart was pounding so loudly, I could barely hear anything else. His head tilted down, and his eyes locked on the photo.
In it, I held Leo on my knee. We were both laughing. I was looking at the little boy who had changed my life, and Leo was looking at the camera. His eyes looked silver in the light of that sunny afternoon.
Nikolai jerked, an involuntary response, like how you might fold over after a sucker punch. He stared at the photo, and I stared at him. His long, tattooed hand fell to the glass, and he traced a long finger over the image of Leo.
It felt wrong to be standing over him. I needed to be closer. I sank to my knees in front of him so I was able to look up into his face.
His expression was blank. Only the tic of a muscle in his jaw betrayed that he was even alive.
“If Antonio had only threatened you, I would have told him to go to hell. Who could take out the devil himself? I would have written you, visited you. No one could have stopped me.”
I took a deep breath. I was crying, I realized with a shock. Tears were running freely down my cheeks. My biggest sin, and my most awful regret, were being dragged out into the light, and I couldn’t control my pent-up emotions.
“But Antonio didn’t only threaten you. He threatened him, and I couldn’t take any chances with”—I took a deep breath, saying the words for the very first time—“our son.”
Nikolai flinched again. His eyes still hadn’t moved from the picture. He wiped beneath one eye, slowly and deliberately. A tear fell on the glass of the photo. It wasn’t mine, but the sight of it only sent more of my own down my cheeks.
I’d been so alone. So terribly lonely and so afraid for so long. A sob wrenched itself from my chest, sounding wretched and ugly in the silence between us.
Nikolai’s hand landed softly on my cheek. His finger wiped the dripping tears away, though only more fell. I was really crying now.
“Don’t cry, Sofia. Tears can’t change the past.” His voice was rough. “Nothing can.”
He shifted, placing the photo on the bed with a soft reverence I’d never seen before. Then his hands went to my face. He stroked his thumbs across my cheeks, washing away my tears. I blinked at him, my eyes swimming and unfocused.
“Get up, prom queen,” he softly urged.
I clung to his arms as he stood from the chair and took me with him. My legs felt uncertain as I held on to his arms. His voice was low as he pulled me into the warmth of his chest.
“You don’t kneel. Not for anyone, and not for me.”
My head jerked up, and I stared at him in surprise. That gentle reverence was in his voice, too. My eyes finally cleared enough to be able to see his.
He wasn’t angry. He wasn’t vengeful. He wasn’t manic with that terrifying energy that had sent me running into the woods the other night.
He was calm. His eyes were resolute. For the first time since he’d come back into my life, he looked like Nikolai from the basement of Casa Nera. He looked like the man who had held my hand and stopped me from falling over a rusty broken railing, even though it meant he’d get caught.
He was still there, deep down inside the damage that jail and lies had caused. My heart squeezed hard.
“What do you mean?” I managed to force out.
“You, Sofia De Sanctis, kneel for no one.”
His arms went around my legs, and he picked me up before I could really process what he meant. He held me tightly to his chest, bridal-style, and left the room that smelled of Leo. I reached out when we got to the door and switched the light off. Nikolai turned slightly to take us both through the narrow doorway. In that moment of darkness, he looked up at the neon glow that suffused the room in the sudden darkness.
Stars.
A multitude of night stars.
The night sky that had always connected us.
His hands tightened on me to the point of hurting. I didn’t care. Sometimes, some things should hurt. This was one of them. I’d been hurting for so long, it barely registered. He pulled away from the night sky I’d built for our son and walked us down the dark hall. I stared at the underside of his jaw and the tattoo that licked up his neck.
Moonlight passed over us as we walked past windows. I couldn’t resist bringing my hand up to touch his jaw. He was real. He was here. It still felt like an impossible dream. The thought of Antonio finding out, which had once terrified me, didn’t seem to matter anymore. Nikolai was free. I wasn’t alone anymore.
I’d never be alone, with the weight of the world on my shoulders, again. I knew it without asking. The thing between us, born in darkness, forged with pain and fear, had never died. Not in all this time.
We reached my room, and Nikolai closed the door with his foot before advancing to the bed. He placed me gently on it and stepped back, reaching out to turn a light on beside the bed, and chased away the shadows between us. There was no more hiding parts of ourselves in the darkness.
I was in the middle of the mattress and rose on my elbows to watch him. His face was unreadable in the dimness of the light. I could see his hands, though, and I watched every single second of him undressing. He tugged his leather jacket off and let it slide down his arms like a snake shedding its skin. His T-shirt followed, baring his beautiful, tattooed torso to me. He was so broad now. He barely looked like the young man he’d been all those years ago, locked in the basement. Now, he was all grown up. His shoulders were wide and thick with bunched muscle. His torso was flat and tight with packed strength. His body looked like a lethal weapon. Only his tattoos remained unchanged, though there were a lot more of them now. Crude, prison-style tattoos. One caught my attention. On his chest, right over his heart.
A swallow mid-flight. The wings were outstretched.
A free bird. A lastochka.
He continued to strip, his jeans and boxers going next, kicked into a corner with his boots. He straightened up, naked before me. His cock was hard, lying in a long, thick line up his belly, straining desperately forward. He stood there and let me look at him. His eyes were on me the entire time. He stared at me like I was something he’d never seen before. A person he’d never truly met.
My body heated and my heart pounded at his look.
There was a world in his eyes that took away my breath.
Then he moved, prowling toward me and reaching for my shoes first. There was a solemn kind of ceremony to his slow unfastening of my shoes and the way he rolled my socks off. He pulled my jeans down in the same way, and then my panties. I sat up when he reached for my sweater. My face came near his, and I could smell the scent of his skin, and bodywash. That pine-and-leather musk that had always been unique to him. The smell that made my body sing. My bra followed my T-shirt, pushed out of the way and forgotten. We were both naked. My skin prickled all over at his careful inspection. He stroked a hand down my damp cheek. I was sure my face had to be blotchy and red after that cathartic crying jag. It certainly stung like it was. He was positioned over me, his weight held on his corded arms. I wished he’d lower himself to me. I wanted to feel his weight pressing me into the mattress, owning me. I wanted it more than anything.
Instead, his hand wandered down my neck and along my collarbones. His mouth followed. His kisses were hot and dragging. His stubble prickled my flesh and I shivered, while his teeth nipped and bit.
He reached my breasts. Again, he stared at them, thumbing the nipples.
I jerked when he spoke.
“You fed our son with these breasts?”
The question was so unexpected, I couldn’t do more than nod. His hand closed over one, squeezing it lightly, and then his mouth enveloped my nipple. His tongue was shockingly hot after the cold air of the room. He stroked my nipple with his tongue, sucking and lathing it, tugging it between his teeth. I could have felt embarrassed. My body wasn’t what it had been seven years ago. There were the places I’d hidden from him last night with my strategically placed arms. Areas on my body that our moonlit chases hadn’t illuminated. My breasts sagged, and I had stretch marks, not to mention the lines on my tummy or the slight puckering around the C-section scar. It had been a difficult birth.
“I hadn’t known it was possible for the girl I knew to become more beautiful…” He trailed off when both breasts were well sucked, pink and aching. “But here we are.”
He moved down. I was so wet now, I could feel my want working down my thighs, dripping onto the bed. Soaked didn’t cover it. He worked his way down my body and paused at my belly. I bent my legs, sucking in my stomach instinctively. It was my go-to whenever that particularly vulnerable area of my body was exposed to other people’s eyes, which only happened at the beach nowadays.
“Don’t hide from me, lastochka. Don’t you dare. This body is still mine. My prize. Never forget that.” His lips found the scar. He paused over it, tracing his lips back and forth.
I felt compelled to explain somehow.
“It was a difficult labor. He was breech,” I started. The medical talk sounded totally wrong in the intimate atmosphere between us.
“Were you alone?” Nikolai’s question caught me off guard.
“I don’t remember the C-section. I was so tired,” I admitted.
The entire birth had been a rush of pain and fear, and the memories were hazy now. It had happened suddenly, and by the time Chiara and Angelo had heard, it was all over. The only thing that stuck in my memory, brighter than any star in the sky, was the moment when the nurse put Leo into my arms. The fog had cleared, the tiredness had lifted, and everything else had failed to matter.
“Yes, I was alone, until I wasn’t…” I mumbled, senseless words, lost in pleasure.
His lips slid along the scar, pressing kisses as he went.
“My brave, strong lastochka. You aren’t alone anymore, and you never will be again.”
With those words, he pushed my knees wide and licked up my center. Growling low in his throat, he rested his entire face against my pussy, his tongue pressing deep inside, lapping at me, like he wanted to drink me up.
“Whose ring were you wearing?” he pulled back to ask now. “Don’t tell me it was just for show again.”
I searched for his face with my hips, needing more of that delicious pressure. He started to lick me again, and I sank my fingers into his hair.
“You didn’t look too closely at it, did you? Figure it out yourself.”
He bit down on my inner thigh. I groaned.
“No more secrets.” He nipped me again, making me laugh.
“It’s yours. Didn’t you see? I’ve always been yours.” The words left me in a rush, and I blushed. Thankfully, it was too dark for Nikolai to tell.
His grin against my thigh told me he knew anyway.
“And you didn’t think to tell me when I first found you? Hmmm?”
“You weren’t very approachable.” His tongue was right back on my clit, laving it in rough circles. “I was scared. Scared you’d never forgive me.”
He hummed against me. “You should have realized by now… I’d forgive you anything. Scar my face, get stabby with your liccasapuni, turn me in to the police… I’ll always forgive you. I’ll never let you fall, remember?”
Tears sprang to my eyes. “It’s been so long, I didn’t know if you’d still feel that way.”
He worked his way up my body, and before I knew it, he was pressing inside me.
“I have no other way of being, prom queen. Loving you is in my bones.”
