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“I know that too.”

I take her hand. She lets me.

“I spent the whole day thinking about it,” I say. “About you in that bed with her. About the way she asked for you at breakfast. About what happens if I get this wrong.”

“And?”

“And I am done pretending I can keep you separate from the rest of my life.”

Her breath catches.

I lift her hand and press my mouth to her knuckles. “I want you here.”

“Nikolai.”

“Not only at night. Not only when doors are locked.”

She closes her eyes. I continue because if I stop now, I may never say it at all. “I’m scared,” she says.

“I know.”

“That doesn’t mean I want to leave.”

I step closer and touch her cheek. “Good.”

Her mouth trembles once, barely, and then she kisses me. She still wants me without restraint. I thought after a conversation like this, after all the words we have both avoided, she would have more apprehension. But all her defenses seem to melt away the moment I touch her.

Instead, she grips my shirt and kisses me like she is angry with herself for needing me, like she has spent the entire day holding herself together and has finally decided to let the pieces fall.

I catch her around the waist and pull her against me. Her robe parts under my hands. She’s naked beneath it. That simple fact takes the air out of my lungs.

“Elara.”

“I didn’t come here to talk forever,” she whispers.

I almost smile, but then her hand slides down my stomach and opens my trousers, and there’s nothing left in me that feels amused.

I lift her onto the bed.

She lands on her back, hair spread over my pillow, robe open around her body. For a moment I only look at her. Her breasts rise and fall.

Her thighs part slightly, then more when she sees where my eyes have gone. She’s flushed already.

Wanting already.

Mine because she chooses it, not because I can take it.

I strip quickly, but I don’t rush when I come over her. I brace one hand beside her head and lower my mouth to hers. She opens for me immediately, her fingers sliding into my hair, her body arching as I settle between her thighs.

My cock presses against her, hard and bare against the heat of her.

She gasps into my mouth.

I reach into the drawer without taking my mouth far from hers, find the condom, and roll it on with hands that are not as steady as they should be. She watches me do it, and the look in her eyes nearly ends me before I start.

Then I’m over her again.

I kiss her throat, then lower, taking one nipple into my mouth. She makes a soft sound and grips my shoulder. I suck her slowly, hard enough that her hips lift under me, then move to the other breast and do the same until she is twisting beneath me.