“Mila,” I whisper her name like a prayer, like absolution I don’t deserve but desperately want.
“Show me,” she breathes against my lips. “Show me what it feels like when you stop holding back.”
I cup her face in my hands, thumbs tracing the delicate lines of her cheekbones. She’s so soft, so warm, so impossibly alive beneath my touch.
“You’re sure?” I ask, though we’re past the point of return and have been since the moment she knocked on my door.
Instead of answering with words, she nods.
And I’m lost.
16
TWELVE MINUTES OF MIDNIGHT
MILA
The kiss is everything I expected and nothing I was prepared for. Yakov’s mouth moves against mine with hunger, like a man who’s been starving and finally allowed to feast. His hands frame my face, thumbs brushing my cheekbones as he backs me against the wall. Every nerve ending I possess lights up as he deepens the kiss, his tongue sliding against mine in a rhythm that makes my knees weak.
I’m drowning in him—his taste, his scent, the solid heat of his body. My hands fist in his shirt, pulling him closer, and he groans low in his throat, the sound vibrating through me like a physical touch.
Then the shouting starts.
Sharp voices in the hallway snap reality back like a whip. The spell breaks, shattered by boots pounding the floor and the clipped cadence of a tactical report.
We break apart instantly, both breathing hard. Yakov’s eyes are dark with want and sharp with alertness, the soldier and the man warring for control. Heavy footsteps pound past his door, radios crackling with terse updates.
“Fuck,” he breathes, running a hand through his hair. The interruption couldn’t have come at a worse time, or a better one, depending on perspective.
I press my back against the wall, trying to catch my breath, trying to process what just happened. What was about to happen.
“I should—” I start.
“Yes.” His voice is rough. “You should go. Now. Before they come checking rooms.”
At the door, I pause with my hand on the handle, heart still racing from more than just adrenaline.
“Yakov?”
He looks at me, and I see everything I’m feeling reflected in his eyes—want, frustration, the knowledge that we’ve crossed a line we can’t uncross.
“This isn’t over,” I say quietly.
Something dangerous flickers in his expression. “No. It’s not.”
The promise hangs between us like a loaded gun.
Morning bringsa security briefing laced with thinly veiled threats and quiet revelations. Pablo knows where we are. He hasn’t breached the property, but he’s close—too close. Igor delivers the news with clinical detachment, using the word “neutralize” like it’s nothing. Just another bullet point. Another problem to be solved.
They’re planning something. I don’t ask what.
“Your sessions with Gagarin will continue,” Igor tells me once the others have cleared out, his tone clipped, hismeaning not. “But I’d advise reestablishing stricter professional boundaries.”
His gaze pins me, sharp as a scalpel. He doesn’t accuse. He doesn’t need to.
“Of course,” I say, tone neutral. “We’re making steady progress.”
He doesn’t believe me. But he doesn’t argue either.
