She kisses me deep and angry. I taste her defiance, her fire, her love. I taste the reason it’s so fucking hard for me to stop doing what I’m doing.
When she pulls back with a ragged breath, she whispers, “Then find a way to let me breath without breaking yourself.”
I don’t answer her because I don’t know if I can.
But I can promise her that I’ll try. For her, for our love, for the heartbeat growing under her ribs.
Even if it fucking kills me.
thirty-one
Cressida
Thebabyshopsmellssofter than I expected. Powder and faint vanilla, a sweetness that seeps into the air like sunlight on clean cotton. Even the rubber bite of dummies seems harmless tucked between blankets and lullabies. It sneaks past my guard before I notice, the kind of scent that settles low in your chest, warm and uninvited. I don’t say it out loud, but it smells like safety, like something I don’t trust myself to want.
Of course, Sunni says it’s comforting while Lucetta says it’s trying too hard.
I say it’s trying to seduce into spending way too much money on blankets that look like they belong in the royal nursery.
Still, I run my hands over the tiny onesies and my chest aches.
It’s the first time I’ve let myself truly enjoy it.
The kicking has started. It’s just flutters, really, but it’s so damn real. They’re real. It’s not just some words on a stick or some picture on a machine from the doctor Konstantin brought in.
“Konstantin’s going to lose his shit when he sees all this in the house,” Lucetta mutters, eyeing the trolley Sunniva’s filled with plush toys.
“He already did. Twice,” I say with a half-smile, thinking about all the stuff I’ve already had delivered. “He tried to veto me coming out today. Gave me a five-minute speech on how nothing is more important than my safety. I had to remind him that hiding in a fortress isn’t living.”
“How’d he take that?” Sunniva asks distractedly, tossing a cute little nappy bag into the trolley. “Do you have a pram yet? What about a cot?”
“Yes, and yes,” I answer her last two questions before moving to the first one. “He growled a lot. And then he kissed me like I was air and he was drowning. Then he left the room muttering something about making sure we had a convoy with us.”
Lucetta snorts. “That’s hot.”
It is.
I don’t tell them that I felt his fear, though. That I felt the way it clawed up his spine and slithered into my bones. I don’t tell them I almost stayed home because I knew if something happened—if I was hurt or worse—it would wreck him. I don’t say that every night when he falls into the restless few hours of sleep, that he does it wrapped around me and that he whispers prayers in Russian that I don’t even think he knows he’s saying.
We load the last of our haul into the SUV. The four carloads of security detail fan out in front and behind us.
I should feel safe, but I don’t.
Something shifts in the air. It’s a subtle pressure, a crackle under my skin. A wrongness that makes my breath catch. Lucetta’s posture goes stiff, her hand twitching near her thigh holster like she’s waiting for someone to lunge from the shadows. Sunniva’s chattering beside me, flipping through something on her mobile and laughing at it.
I try to focus on her voice. On her sunshine, her unapologetic chaos, but I’m struggling.
Paranoid. I’m just paranoid.
Konstantin prowls on the other end of the bond and I’m half-tempted to close my eyes and let it lull me, but before I can, the world jerks sideways.
Tires squeal and metal screams, the impact slamming me into the door as glass shatters against my shoulder.
My head rings.
Sunniva shrieks from beside me, but it cuts off when her temple bounces off the door. The SUV spins, lurches, then slams to a stop and my breath tangles in my throat.
“Out! Out!” Lucetta’s voice cuts through the ringing. She’s already moving, dragging me across the seat while our guards tumble into chaos.
