Page 222 of Mile High Ruin

“Fine.” I swallow, my voice humiliatingly unsteady. “Just moving.”

He waits, because Vadim Chernovar, who has threatened men twice his size without blinking, is apparently afraid of touching my pregnant belly without permission.

I take his hand and place it over the swell. His palm is warm. Large. So careful that it makes my eyes sting. The baby moves again, a small firm press beneath his hand, and Vadim goes completely still. Every brutal thing in him seems to pause.

His thumb moves once, barely there.

“He knows you’re awake,” I whisper.

“She,” he says.

I look at him.

His eyes stay on my stomach. “She knows.”

I hate that my heart does something stupid and soft at that.

“You’re very sure.”

“I’m right about many things.”

Despite everything, a small breath of amusement leaves me. “That is the most annoying way you could have said that.”

His gaze lifts to mine. The amusement fades.

The air changes again.

His hand is still on my belly, but his eyes are on my mouth now. “You want something from me.”

I kiss him again just to shut him up.

He responds instantly. His hand cups the back of my neck, careful with my swollen belly, and he kisses me deeper, hotter, with the kind of hunger that makes me forget the bed, the hospital, the entire ruined night behind us.

He makes a low sound against my mouth, half warning, half surrender.

“Sloane.”

“I woke up wanting you,” I breathe, and the honesty of it should embarrass me, but it doesn’t. Not when his eyes flash. Not when his hand slides up my ribs over my thin dress and stops just beneath my breast.

His thumb brushes the underside of me through the fabric.

My whole body arches.

“Vadim.”

“I know,” he says again, but this time his voice is almost cruel with restraint.

He looks at the door, then back at me. “This is madness.”

He pushes the blanket down only enough to reach me, then adjusts the pillow behind my back, helping me turn slightly onto my side so I’m comfortable, so my belly is supported, so nothing pulls. It should feel clinical. It doesn’t.

It feels intimate enough to make me tremble.

“Tell me if this is too much,” he murmurs.

Then he lowers his mouth to my breast through the thin material.

The first warm pull of his lips over my nipple makes pleasure streak down my spine and settle low in my hips. I gasp, fingers clutching his shoulder, and he stops at once.