Page 65 of Reign
He gives me a look that says if I’m wise, I’ll shut up now. I’ve never been wise where he’s concerned, so I don’t.
“You needed time,” I say. “You took it. I hated every second of it, but I would’ve hated violating it more.”
He breathes hard through his nose, gaze pinned to mine. “You talk like I make sense.”
“You do, to me.”
That earns me another one of those rare, real smiles that make him look too much like the boy I lost and the man I found all at once.
He leans down until his forehead rests against mine and just breathes for a second. “I remember more now,” he says quietly.
My fingers tighten on his wrists before I can help it. “How much more?”
His mouth brushes mine when he speaks. “I remember enough to know I’ve been missing half my soul and calling it survival.”
I don’t know what to say to that. So, I do the only thing that has ever made sense between us. I pull him down and kiss him until speech stops mattering.
This time, he breaks first by making a low, shaking sound into my mouth that tells me he’s barely holding himself together under the weight of everything returning at once.
I wrap both arms around his neck and hold on while he leans into me, into the bed, into the moment, into every ugly, beautiful thing we’ve both been trying not to name since Bucharest. He kisses me like a man crawling home through fire.
When he finally rests his forehead against mine again, both of us are breathing hard.
“I don’t know how to do this right,” he says, and hearing that from Nikolaj—proud, brutal, impossible Nikolaj—might be the most honest thing he’s ever given me.
I thread my fingers through his hair and hold him there. “Neither do I.”
He laughs softly, wrecked and warm at once. “That’s reassuring.”
“It’s truthful.”
“Worse.”
“Usually.”
His mouth curves against mine.
“My King,” he says once more, stripped of any edge until it’s just truth, reverence, and devastation. “I’m going to spend the rest of my life making up for every second they took from us.”
My throat tightens around a laugh and a sob at once. “You’d better,” I whisper.
For tonight, for this one impossible, merciful stretch of time, there is no summit, no wife, no fathers, no ruined kings, no bloodlines, and no past except the one we’re finally allowed to touch together.
There is only Nikolaj above me, looking at me like he found his way back to something holy and terrible, and me beneath him, heartsick and alive enough to want.
And when he saysMy Kingagain against my mouth, I know with brutal, useless certainty that I was never going anywhere else.
eighteen
Vincenzo
Idon’twantapologyorpity shadowing us tonight, so I guide his hands to my belt.
The message is plain:strip me, lay me open, see I’m still yours.He gets it. His fingers work the buckle with steady precision that belies the tremor in his breath. Each piece of clothing he peels away lands on the floor like a quiet promise.
He shudders when my fingers slip under the waistband of his trousers, and that tells me he’s barely keeping his restraint on a short leash. I could tease him for it—I used to—but what rises in my throat now isn’t mockery. It’s gratitude so sharp I almost choke on the weight of it.
I lean forward and mouth each of his scars, silently cataloging what I owe in return, until he hisses my name and braces a hand on the headboard.
