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“I’m sorry, but you just saved the towels.”

“I am trying to preserve your dignity.”

“My dignity is gone. We are in a linen closet.”

His mouth curves, but only for a second. Then he pulls my underwear aside and touches me right there, feeling my pulsating clit.

I grip his shirt with both hands, biting down on my lower lip as his fingers slide through me. I am already wet, embarrassingly wet, and the second he feels it, his eyes darken.

“Elara.”

“Don’t say anything.”

“I wasn’t going to.”

“You were.”

His fingers circle my clit slowly, and my knees soften. “I was going to say, you want this?”

I stare at him, breathing too hard. Then I whisper, “Yes.”

His mouth is on mine immediately. He kisses me as his fingers work between my legs, swallowing the sound I cannot hold back. It is not gentle now. It is controlled, but barely. His hand moves with a kind of focused hunger, rubbing my clit until pleasure builds fast and hot under my skin.

I reach for his belt.

My hands are clumsy in the dark little room, but he helps me, his mouth still on mine while the buckle opens, and his trousers loosen. When I wrap my hand around him, he goes still for one hard second.

Then he says my name in a voice that makes me ache.

“We can’t take long,” I whisper.

“No.”

“And we can’t make noise.”

“No.”

“And this is a terrible idea.”

“Yes.”

I look up at him.

He looks back at me, and there is grief still there, and want, and something more dangerous than either.

Nikolai turns me carefully, his hands firm on my waist, and bends me forward just enough that my palms brace against the shelf in front of me. My dress is pushed up around my hips. My underwear is pulled aside. His body is behind mine, large and hot and impossibly close.

I close my eyes. The head of his cock presses against me.

“Nikolai.”

“I know.” He pushes inside me slowly.

My mouth opens, but no sound comes out. I have to press my forehead against my own arm to keep quiet as he fills me, inch by inch, stretching me in that tight, impossible space until there is no room in my body or my head for anything except him.

He stops when he is fully inside. His hand slides around my waist, holding me against him. “Breathe,” he says quietly.

“I’m trying.”