Page 70 of Sexting the Pakhan

I lie awake longer than I should. Thinking about the mole. Thinking about the men who tried to kill me. Thinking about the nameless woman from the phone, whose messages have been quiet since the shooting.

Thinking about Zoya Hart in my bed.

And the dangerous, impossible chance that I’m already in deeper trouble than I planned.

10

ZOYA

The next fewdays do not feel real.

That’s the only way I know how to explain it.

Outside the house, everything is still broken. The library is closed. My apartment is unsafe. Karina texts every fifteen minutes until I threaten to block her, then every hour instead. Ruslan’s men come and go in black cars, speaking in low voices, carrying folders, answering calls, disappearing behind closed doors.

Somewhere out there, someone still wants him dead.

Someone may know my face.

Someone may know my name.

And somehow, inside the house by the sea, Ruslan and I begin living like the world has narrowed to a bedroom, a kitchen, a stretch of wet sand, and the dangerous little space between his hand and my skin.

It starts that first morning.

I wake up in his bed with my face half-buried in his pillow, sore in places I feel too shy to name, and his arm heavy around my waist. For one terrifying second, I don’t move.

Then he does. His hand slides slowly under the shirt I slept in, palm warm over my stomach, and his mouth brushes the back of my neck. “Awake?” he asks.

I should say no. I should pretend to sleep. I should roll away and demand a serious conversation about what we did, what it means, where I’m supposed to go, whether I’ve officially lost my mind.

Instead, my body answers before my brain can organize itself.

I press back into him.

He goes still for one breath. Then his hand tightens.

That morning is slow. He touches me like he has nowhere to be, even though I know men are waiting downstairs for him. His mouth moves over my shoulder, my breast, my stomach. By the time he pushes my thighs apart, I’m already shaking, already whispering his name like I’ve known it in this way for years instead of days.

After, he leaves the bed only because someone knocks on the door.

He pulls on trousers, opens it halfway, and listens to whatever his man says with a face carved out of stone. I sit under the sheets, naked and flushed and trying not to stare at the marks my nails left on his back.

When the man leaves, Ruslan shuts the door and looks at me.

“What?” I ask, because his stare makes me nervous even after everything.

“You’re hiding.”

“I’m literally sitting in your bed naked. I think I’m past hiding.”

His mouth almost smiles. “Not entirely.”

I throw a pillow at him. He catches it.

The next time happens that afternoon against the bookshelves in the sitting room.

That time is not slow. It starts because I make the mistake of asking whether he actually reads all the books in the house or if they’re just there to make him look less criminal.