About loving me.
About me rescuing him.
“I love you, Flynn.” I’m still weepy. Kind of a mess. I swipe the back of my hand over my eyes. “I love you so much, and this last week has been so hard.”
He looks over at me–now the meaning burns in his gaze. “So fucking hard.” He scrubs a hand across his trimmed beard. “Cadence isn’t pregnant. That was a stupid ploy for my attention. I’m really sorry.”
“What are you sorry for?” I’m still crying. “You didn’t do anything. She’s the nutjob.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. What you mean to me. I just…I was afraid to fuck things up. Everything was so good with you, and I didn’t want to scare you off by getting too intense.”
“Too intense.” I give a watery laugh. “I’m always too intense. That’s why I didn’t say anything to you.”
He looks over at me again. “I want intense. I want that with you. You make me want to try hard in life instead of just hanging back on the sidelines. You make me want to live.”
He parks in front of his apartment and throws open the door to come around to my side.
I fall into his arms when he opens my door. “You make me want to live, too,” I tell him. My sobs have subsided. All I feel now are bubbles of hope. Glimmers of joy.
I wrap my legs around his waist, and he carries me to the door. “I love you,” I say. “YA tebya lyublyu.”
“What does that mean?” he asks.
I smile. “It means I love you.”
He throws his head back. “Aw, fuck.”
“What?”
“You were telling me that all along. I should’ve said it first.”
I laugh because it’s a silly thing to lament.
He unlocks the front door, and we take the steps up to his apartment. “Are we back together?” he asks.
“Da. Definitely. I mean, I want to be.”
He stops at his door and catches my face in his hands. “I want to be, too.” He kisses me like I’m his bride, and it’s our wedding day–a kiss full of promise, loaded with love.
The kind I never, ever want to recover from.
Then he pushes open the door, pulling out his phone as we walk in. “I’m texting your brother to tell him where we are and not to bother us,” he says.
“Good plan,” I say.
I see the smile slip a bit from his face, probably as he remembers what we just did.
“I’m sorry you had to help me.”
“I’m not,” he says fiercely. “I’m not sorry at all.”
“Adrian is a cleaner. That’s what he does for the bratva. He’ll take care of everything.”
Flynn draws a breath and lets it out. “That’s good. I’d go to prison for you, but I’d rather not.”
“Yeah, I’d rather not, too.”
He tips his head toward the bedroom. “Can I show you how I’d prefer to impress you?”
I laugh and pretend-race to the bedroom. “I’m already impressed.”
When we reach the bed, he catches my hands and pulls them both to his mouth to kiss. “I’m the one who’s impressed. Nadia–you’re free now. You’re standing on your own. I’m just here to admire you.”
I reach up to kiss him. “You’re the one who got me here.”
“No.” He stops my lips. “You got yourself here. It’s all you, Peaches.”
I unbutton his jeans. “No, you.”
He laughs and divests me of my jacket. “No, you.”
“You.”
“You.”
Piece by piece, we strip each other of clothing, and Flynn maneuvers me to sit on the bed and pushes my knees wide, dropping to the floor between them. He licks into me, parting my flesh with the tip of his tongue, circling my most sensitive parts.
I manage to stay present, not allowing my mind to associate anything from my past with this moment now. Not allowing the ugliness back in the parking lot to crowd in this room.
This is a space for Flynn and me. Just the two of us. And right now he’s showing me just how capable he is at bringing my body to life. Heat rushes between my legs. My internal muscles squeeze and lift. He penetrates me with his tongue, uses the tip of his nose against my clit.
I catch the back of his head and urge him to my clit, and he sucks there as he slides two fingers inside me. I come almost immediately, but I want more. I want the real thing.
“Flynn.” I push him away and crawl back on the bed. “Please.”
He climbs over me with a condom in hand, his brown eyes dark with desire. “Fuck, I missed you, Nadia.” He drops kisses across my collar bone and into the hollow of my throat. He kisses down between my breasts, then latches on to one nipple, sucking hard enough to wring another mini orgasm out of me.
Then he’s inside me, moving with a rhythm we find together. The kind of motion where I can’t tell where his body stops and mine starts. We’re one unit, riding into the sunset together.
It’s perfection.
Glory.
It’s power and love.
When it becomes too much for me–when I need to have it all wholly and completely, I wrap my ankles behind his back and pull him in harder.
He braces on one hand and shoves in with force, sinking deep into me with each thrust.
“Da…da!” I scream and come.
Flynn picks up his rhythm and pumps another dozen times to find his own happy ending.
When he blankets my body with his, his panted breath mingling with my own, we nuzzle into each other. He slows his rhythm to an unambitious rock, and we melt into the mattress. Into the covers. Into each other.
“I love you,” he murmurs, brushing my cheek with the back of his fingers.
“I love you so much, Flynn Taylor. You’re everything.”
“No, you,” he murmurs, kissing along my cheekbone.