“I’m yours!”
“Say you’ll never belong to anyone else.”
“I’ll never belong to anyone else!”
My orgasm slams into me like lightning, white-hot and endless. I scream, body clenching around him, sobbing into the sheets.
He follows with a roar, spilling inside me, holding me as if I’ll disappear.
We stay like that. Breathing. Shaking.
Then he unties my wrists gently. Kisses the marks he left. Pulls me into his chest, breath still ragged.
“My Devil,” I whisper, lips against his throat.
“My girl,” he growls. “Forever.”
Chapter 70
The Life We’d Choose
Isabella
The plates are still on the table.
We’ve been together, alone, for days now.
Empty, pushed to the side, the wine bottle half-full and forgotten. Candlelight dances slowly against the walls, melting wax pooling over the lips of old silver holders. It smells faintly of garlic, rosemary, and something sweet, something we didn’t need, but ate anyway.
Neither of us has moved in a while.
I’m curled into the corner of the couch, my legs tangled under me, a throw blanket over my bare knees. Aslanov is beside me, shirtless under a loose black sweater, sleeves pushed to his elbows, collarbone catching the low light. His hand rests lazily on the backrest, close to my neck, just barely touching, like even this stillness is a kind of closeness we’ve earned.
There’s a softness in him tonight.
And maybe that’s why I ask.
It slips out before I can second-guess it.
“If you weren’t who you are,” I murmur, “and I wasn’t who I am… if we met differently. No Bratva. No blood. What would your dream life be?”
He doesn’t answer right away.
He doesn’t scoff or change the subject like I thought he might. He just turns his head slowly toward me, like the questiondeserves real weight.
Like I do.
The fire crackles faintly in the hearth, and his gaze drops to the flames as he thinks.
“I’d live by the sea,” he says after a while. “Not a fancy place. Something quiet. Wind-worn. A house with old shutters and sand in the floorboards. You’d hear the ocean before you saw it.”
I close my eyes for a moment and try to see it through his words.
“I’d restore old cars,” he continues, voice low and steady. “Work with my hands. Things that need patience. Machines that don’t lie.”
That surprises me. But I say nothing.
He exhales, thumb brushing absently along the curve of the cushion behind me.
