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I turn my head into the crook of his neck, a soft sound of contentment rising from me.
“Okay?” he asks again, voice rough from use.
“Yeah,” I murmur.
I’m more than okay. Whole, in a way I’ve never been before.
He shifts just enough to search my face in the dim light, and whatever he finds there draws a soft smile from him. He leans down to kiss my forehead, my cheek, and the corner of my mouth, each one gentler than the last.
No words pass between us. None are needed. The way he touches me with such care says everything his voice can’t.
I lie on my back staring at the ceiling with Orien still half on top of me, body aching, and not all from the sex, though a lot of it is from that. My thighs burn from holding him in place, my hips hurt from being pounded, and my insides feel tender from the stretch of his cock.
I focus on those pains, because they’re the good kind that come from eager enthusiasm rather than punishment.
Orien’s cock slips free as he shifts to lie beside me rather than on top of me, his cum leaking from me to pool warm between my thighs. His arm slides beneath my shoulders, tucking me into his side with the easy confidence of someone who knows where I belong.
My head finds the hollow of his throat, and I nose at his strong pulse.
“You’re thinking too loud,” he rumbles beneath my cheek.
“Sorry.”
His hand strokes down my back, fingers tracing the knobs of my spine. “About what?”
I consider the question, trying to find words for the shift inside me. “Everything. Nothing. The fact that I’m here at all.”
His hand stills for a moment before it resumes its path. “Regrets?”
The question is casual, but I catch the tension beneath it. I lift my head to meet his eyes. “No. Not a single one.”
Something uncoils inside him, a tension I hadn’t even registered until it was gone. “Good.”
I settle back against his chest, my ear pressed to the steady beat of his heart. “What happens now?”
His fingers continue their path up and down my spine, the touch soothing. “We figure it out. Together.”
The simplicity of it steals the air from my lungs. Not promises or plans or careful contingencies, but the simple, unshakeable certainty that whatever comes, we’ll face it side by side. Not as Vartanian and Blue Note, not as spy and target, but as Lev and Orien.
As mates.
EPILOGUE
The Blue Note is louder than usual tonight, with regulars crowding the booths, while the stage lights paint the lounge in amber and blue. Music rolls through the room beneath the clink of glasses and bursts of laughter, but my attention keeps snagging on my mate across the bar.
Lev sits wedged between Reef and Ash at one of the larger tables near the stage, a laptop open in front of him while Reef talks fast enough to trip over his own words. Something about tournament schedules and why their Pulse Riot clips keep outperforming the live music promos.
Reef rarely latches onto anyone but Kain, yet my mate has his complete focus. A deep pride settles within me to see him settling in as a part of the family he was once sent to spy on.
He focuses on Reef with the patience of someone trying to organize a hurricane into a spreadsheet, while Ash offers dry commentary from the side.
“So ‘chronically online gremlins’ generate more revenue than alcohol sales now,” Ash mutters into his coffee cup. “Good to know.”
Every so often, someone walking past or the game running on his handheld console distracts Reef, only for Lev to pull the conversation back on track and redirect him toward the social media calendar they’re trying to build together. The sight of it stirs a worry I don’t know how to explain.
I don’t doubt Lev’s commitment to the choices he made, but I sometimes wonder if he regrets giving up his family for me. The more time that passes, though, the less the worry pops up.
The man who had first burst into the Blue Note a few months ago to shake up my life has slowly grown into the man he could finally become without the burden of expectation shoving him into a narrow box.
