Page 164 of Sexting the Pakhan

Her breasts are pressed against my chest. Her hair falls around both of us, loose and warm. One of her hands is braced beside my head, the other trapped against my shoulder. Her thigh is between mine, close enough that my body responds before reason has time to intervene.

I go hard under her.

Unwelcome. Impossible to hide.

Zoya feels it. I know the moment she does, because her eyes widen.

Neither of us speaks.

The apartment noise fades. The girls are still in the kitchen, arguing softly about milk, but for a few seconds, all I know is Zoya’s weight on me and the heat of her breath near my mouth.

This close, I can see the faint shadows under her eyes. The tiny line between her brows. A small mark near her jaw I don’t remember. She smells like coffee, sleep, and the same skin I have spent six years pretending I had forgotten.

I should move but I don’t.

Her gaze drops to my mouth.

My hand lifts before I allow it. It stops at her waist, not gripping. Just there.

A warning to myself. A mistake already made.

“Zoya,” I say. Her name comes out too low.

Her lips part.

For one dangerous second, I think she will let it happen.

I think she might lower her mouth to mine and burn the last six years down in her own living room while our daughters argue over cereal a few feet away.

Then Mila calls, “Mama, can injured people have chocolate milk?”

Zoya jolts like someone has cut a wire. She pushes herself up at once, but the movement sends pressure through my leg and I curse under my breath.

She freezes halfway off me. “Did I hurt you?”

“Yes,” I say.

Her face changes.

I add, “I mean, not really.”

The concern vanishes behind mild annoyance. “You are impossible,” she says.

“I didn’t ask you to fall on me.”

“You tried to stand on a bullet wound.”

“I was getting milk.”

“You were being stupid.”

“Possibly.”

She gets fully off me, cheeks flushed, hair messy, eyes refusing to meet mine now.

I sit up carefully, pain still pulsing through my thigh. My body has not calmed down. Not even close. I shift the blanket across my lap and hope she doesn’t look.

She looks anyway.