Page 67 of Reign
A choked cry punches out of me, and he licks sweat off my upper lip. “There?” he asks, voice fraying. “Right fucking there?”
“Don’t you dare move from it,” I rasp, grabbing the nape of his neck, yanking him down until his teeth clack mine.
He laughs into my mouth, then anchors his forearms beside my head and hammers in exactly that spot again, again, again, until my calves cramp, feet planted on the mattress, hips jerking like a man trying to crawl inside the fire that’s eating him alive.
The headboard thuds a steady drumbeat against the wall; somewhere beyond the door, I imagine security protocolsflagging the rhythmic impacts and deciding no one wants to interrupt the Pakhan at this.
“Eight fucking years,” he says, hips rolling in another deep stroke that knocks the breath out of both of us. “I tried to damn myself quietly, but your ghost kept screaming.” He bends, mouths the tattoo again, tongue circling the Cyrillic letters. Gooseflesh erupts across my chest. “I never guessed you’d written my scream under your skin.”
“Permanently,” I manage, voice splintering. “Not even hell can scrub it out.”
A growl rumbles in his throat—pure approval, filthy and reverent in the same beat. He shifts abruptly, slides an arm under my lower back, tilts my pelvis higher until my shoulders and head are pressed into the mattress, my ass on his thighs.
The new depth spears sensation so brutal my mouth drops open in a silent howl. Liquid heat coils messily and unstoppable, pulling my balls tight. He fucks me in long, ruthless strokes, each glide dragging across the place that makes white noise hiss in my ears.
Sweat drips from his hairline, lands on my chest, streaks through the ink of his name, and mingles with the sheen oiling my skin.
I brace both hands on his shoulders, nails digging crescent moons as I surge upward to meet him again and again. He slips a hand between us, wraps my cock, strokes in time with his thrusts, eyes never leaving mine.
“Come with me,” he says, voice shattered. “Give it back, all of it.”
When release hits, it tears a shout from my chest. I spill across his hand and my abs, pulse pounding hard enough to distort sound. He follows with a groan pitched so low it vibrates through my bones, hips locking as he comes inside me, heat flooding,chain reaction holding us motionless until sensation blurs into aftershock.
He collapses on top of me but catches himself on trembling elbows before crushing me. I haul him down anyway, wrap my legs around his waist, keep him buried inside while the storm subsides.
We lie tangled, the room echoing with slowing breaths, sweat cooling on skin, heartbeats syncing like they never learned to beat apart.
When Nikolaj finally softens enough that the last twitch eases, I flex around him, unwilling to let him slip free yet. He groans, kisses the corner of my mouth, then pulls out slowly—a messy slide that makes both of us hiss.
He rolls to his side, pulls me with him, draping my leg over his hip, palm spread flat across his name on my chest like a seal. I thread our fingers together and rest them there, letting the steady rise and fall of his breathing lull me to a calm I haven’t known in years.
nineteen
Nikolaj
IlieawakewithVincenzoin my arms and realize sleep was never going to touch me tonight.
The room is dark except for the city bleeding through the curtains in pale strips of silver and gold, enough light to make the edges of things feel real without forcing them into full shape.
The sheets are tangled around our legs. The air still smells like expensive soap, sex, and that faint, sharp cologne of his that always survives everything, even sleep, even the wreckage after.
My body feels used in the best and worst ways, heavy and loose, and still humming under the skin where his mouth, hands, and weight left their mark.
I should be exhausted; Iamexhausted. But exhaustion means nothing when the man I’ve spent eight years loving without memory is finally here, finally back in my bed, and trusting me enough to sleep.
That’s the thing I can’t stop staring at.
Vincenzo is asleep.
Not pretending, not drifting with one eye on the door and one hand near a weapon like the king he became while I was busy becoming my own monster. Actually asleep. Boneless with it. Warm and limp against me, cheek pressed near my shoulder. He has one arm stretched over my chest as if even unconscious, some part of him still wants to make sure I’m fucking real.
His hair is a mess against the pillow, dark and soft where it falls over his forehead in a way he’d absolutely hate if he knew I was looking at him like this. His mouth is parted slightly, lips swollen from everything we did to each other tonight, and there’s a bruise already forming low at the side of his throat where I lost patience and then found something much worse instead.
Beautiful doesn’t cover it.
I know that word gets thrown at men like him all the time by people with no imagination and too much distance, but it isn’t enough here. It was never enough with him. Even now, asleep, wrecked, and without that polished Vieri control holding every line of his body together, he looks almost unreal.
Tanned skin, warm even in the dark. Long, elegant lines everywhere that count. The sort of face painters used to ruin themselves over, and priests would’ve called temptation with a straight face. I know every inch of him better now than I did this morning, and still it feels impossible that I’m allowed to look.
