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"Alexei." His name comes out wrecked.

"I know." His hand slides from my hip to my stomach, fingers splaying wide, and the gesture is so possessive and so tender that my eyes sting. He holds me there, pinned against the desk with his cock buried deep and his hand spread across my abdomen like he's mapping the body that carried his child.

"Harder," I say, because the tenderness will undo me faster than anything else.

His pace increases. The desk rocks forward with each thrust, and his grip tightens on my hip. I reach between my legs and press my fingers against my clit, and the added pressure pulls a sound from my throat that bounces off the walls.

"There." His breathing shatters against my shoulder. "Touch yourself. I want to feel you come."

I work my clit in tight circles while he fucks me, and the pressure builds in waves that grow tighter with every stroke. His rhythm turns erratic, and I feel him thickening inside me, and the knowledge that he's close pushes me to the edge.

"Come with me," I gasp.

His hand slides from my stomach to my breast, fingers closing around my nipple, and he drives into me three more times before his whole body locks. I follow him over, clenching around him in pulses that drain every drop, and his mouth finds the back of my neck while he spills inside me with a groan that vibrates through my spine.

We collapse forward onto the desk. His weight presses me into the wood, and scattered papers stick to my damp skin. His breathing comes hard against my shoulder, and his hand stays spread across my stomach, fingers tracing slow circles against the skin he mapped.

Neither of us speaks. The clock on the wall counts the silence, and the lamp throws our shadow across the desk in a single dark shape.

He pulls out slowly, slides my underwear off, and tosses it over the chair before turning me around. I sit on the edge of the desk, legs dangling, while he stands between them with his shirt gone and his pants barely hanging on his hips. His hand lifts to my face and pushes the hair back from my forehead, and his thumb traces the line of my cheekbone with a gentleness that contradicts everything we just did.

"Stay tonight," he says.

Not an order. A request, spoken by a man who has spent the day asking permission for everything and taking nothing.

I nod.

He pulls me off the desk and leads me to the couch. The blanket unfolds over both of us, and I curl against his left side, my head resting in the hollow of his shoulder where the ink darkens across his chest. His arm wraps around my waist, and his hand settles on my hip, thumb tracing the same absent circles against bare skin.

His breathing evens out before mine does. I lie awake in the circle of his arm and listen to his heartbeat slow against my ear, steady now, strong. The desk is a wreck of scattered papers and displaced reports, and my underwear hangs from the armrest of a chair across the floor.

I close my eyes. Sleep pulls at me in warm, heavy waves, and I let it take me down into the dark, held against a body I've spent four years trying to forget. My hand rests on his chest over the chess knight, and my fingers curl against the ink like they're holding on to something they've already lost.

18

ALEXEI

Misha’s cry cuts through the shouting, running feet, and two gunshots farther down the west wing.

Vera pulls on her sweater, drags her skirt into place, and runs barefoot toward the door. The lights die before Vera reaches the inner hall.

I pull on my trousers and shirt, then cross the office for the pistol and secure radio.

A guard opens the door. “Sir, stay inside.”

I step past him. Red emergency strips come on along the floor and walls, marking every doorway and turn through the corridor. This isn’t a main power failure. The generators should already be working. Someone has interrupted the west wing’s local circuit, the one controlling reinforced doors, cameras, alarms, and service access.

“Abramov.” I press the button on the radio as I move down the corridor.

Static breaks, then his voice comes through. “The cameras near the west service entrance are showing the same nine seconds again and again.”

“Misha?” I ask.

“My men are moving to secure him and Vera.”

“Vera’s with me. Keep Misha and Oksana inside, and seal the corridor.”

A faint shout reaches me from farther ahead, and I quicken my steps. “What entered the west wing before the cameras failed?”