Page 287 of Sexting His Assistant

His hand cups my face. “You survived,” he says.

“That is not an answer.”

“It is the only one I care about right now.”

I let out a broken breath.

Behind us, Sergei shouts, “We need to move.”

Luka looks toward the SUV, then back at me.

I grab his shirt. “He has to live.”

“He will,” Luka says.

“You don’t know that.”

“No,” he says. “But I’m going to behave like it is true until it becomes true.”

That sounds so much like him that I almost cry again.

I press my forehead to his chest. “I love you.”

The words come out before I can think. Luka goes completely still.

For one terrible second, I think I have said it at the worst possible time.

Then his hand slides into my hair.

He tilts my face up. “What did you say?”

I swallow. “Don’t make me repeat it while Misha is bleeding in your car.”

His mouth moves like he almost smiles, but it does not reach his eyes. He is too shaken for that.

“I love you,” he says.

My breath catches.

He says it again, lower. “I love you, Nina. I should have said it before tonight. I should have said it before you had to wonder what you were to me.”

I stare at him.

The warehouse noise fades for half a second. Not gone. Just pushed back by the one thing I did not think he would give me here, now, like this.

I touch his face. “You picked a terrible time.”

“I know.”

“Misha is going to murder you if he wakes up and hears this.”

“When he wakes up,” Luka says.

I nod quickly, because I need that correction. “When he wakes up.”

Luka kisses me once, his lips ghosting over mine as if to make sure I’m still here.

Just enough to make it real.