Page 105 of Secret Heir
“Maksim,” I gasp, my nails raking down his back. “I’m going to—”
“Yes.” He increases the pressure on my clit, his hips driving harder now. “Come for me, moya krasavitsa. Let me feel you. Let me watch you fall apart.”
I jump off the proverbial cliff and I cry out, my body clenching around him, pleasure radiating from my core to every nerve ending. He doesn’t stop moving or touching me, working me through every pulse and tremor.
“Beautiful,” he breathes, watching my face with something like wonder. “So fucking beautiful.”
Before I’ve fully come down, he shifts his angle again, and suddenly I’m climbing toward another peak. His thrusts are deeper now, more urgent, and I can feel him swelling inside me, getting close to his own release.
“Again,” he demands. “Give me another one, Aria. I want to feel you come around me again.”
I shake my head. “It’s—too—sensitve,” I gasp.
“You can.” His thumb presses harder against my clit and I cry out. It’s pleasure and pain all at once. “You’re so close. I can feel it. Come for me again, love. Please.”
The second orgasm hits even harder than the first, stealing my breath, and making my vision white out at the edges. I feel myself clenching around him, pulsing, and hear him groan.
“Aria. Fuck. I’m going to—”
“Yes.” I pull him closer, wanting all of him. “Please. Come inside me, Maksim.”
He buries himself deep with one final thrust, and I feel him pulse inside me as he comes, filling me with heat. I cry out his name as my legs tighten around him. We stay like that for a long moment, both barely able to breathe. The water streams over us, washing away the sweat and tears and everything except this feeling of perfect connection.
Finally, he carefully lowers me to my feet, supporting me when my legs wobble. His hands are gentle as they steady me and brush my wet hair back from my face.
“Okay?” His voice is hoarse.
“More than okay.” I lean into him, letting him take my weight. “That was…I don’t have words.”
“I know.” He presses a kiss to my forehead. “I feel it too.”
We stand under the cooling water for another minute, just holding each other. Then he reaches behind me to turn off the shower. He helps me out, wraps me in the softest towel, and dries me with such care it makes my eyes sting. Every movement is tender. He dries my hair then wraps another towel around it. He dries himself off in record time before he scoops me up again, carrying me to the bed despite my weak protest that I can walk.
“Let me take care of you,” he says simply. “Please.”
We slide between the cool sheets together, and I curl into him immediately, my head on his chest, his arm around me.
“I love you,” I whisper into the quiet of the room.
“I love you too.” He presses a kiss to my hair. “Sleep now, moya. I’ve got you. I’ve got all of you.”
For the first time in eight years, I do. I let myself sleep, safe in the arms of the man I love, trusting that he’ll keep us safe.
15
MAKSIM
I throw myself into the investigation the moment I wake up with Aria still sleeping in my arms.
She’s emotionally wrung out from the confrontation with Nikolai and from finally telling the truth after eight years. I slip out of bed carefully, pressing a kiss to her hair before I leave.
The investigation has to be completely secret. Nikolai can’t know what I’m doing or suspect that I’m still pursuing this despite agreeing to “test Aria’s credibility.”
I call in a favor from someone I trust completely: Stephen Berry, a forensic accountant who worked for the FBI before I saved his daughter from a trafficking ring three years ago. He owes me his daughter’s life, and more importantly he’s completely outside the Bratva. No connections, no loyalties, no reason to report back to Nikolai.
“This is off-the-books,” I tell him when we meet in a coffee shop in Brooklyn at six in the morning. “No paper trail. No digital records. You report only to me.”
Stephen is in his fifties and balding, with wire-rimmed glasses and the keen eyes of a man who’s spent decades finding money people tried to hide. He nods without hesitation.
