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AS I STEPPED OUT OF the car at last, I let out a sigh of relief. I was out of there.
At least, for now.
“You okay?” Andreas asked as he draped an arm around my shoulders. I still couldn’t believe that he had really done that, staged such a dramatic break-out just to make sure I escaped Nikita’s grasp. I had been so ready to do whatever it took to make sure that I took Nikita out, but Andreas had saved me the weight of it.
“I think so,” I murmured. “I – what about my father? I was going to send a car for him tomorrow, but I—”
“We’ve already gotten him out,” Andreas assured me. “He’s heading to one of our safehouses in Vancouver right now. He’s going to hide out there for a while, with all of our security and everything – he couldn’t be anywhere safer.”
I nodded, still feeling a little wobbly. I wished I could have seen my father in person, but that would come when the time was right, and clearly, that wasn’t now. I needed him to know that I was okay, too, that both of us had somehow managed to make it out alive, despite everything that had happened – despite the mess that had unfolded of our lives, we would survive it, the way we always had.
I could feel the tears starting to rise inside of me, the stress and the shock of everything starting to catch up with me at last, as Andreas led me inside the New Jersey safehouse that we would be staying in for the foreseeable future. It wasn’t much, just a small place with about a dozen armed guards outside, but it felt like a damn holiday resort compared to where I had been before. Stuck in that room, counting down the seconds until I had to marry a man I hated, anywhere would have been a relief in comparison. But here? With Andreas? It was more than I had imagined possible, and I would never stop being grateful for it.
“Come on, you need to get some rest,” Andreas told me, as he guided me up the stairs towards a bedroom waiting for me at the top. I was so grateful for him, I didn’t even know how to put it into words. I wished I could tell him, in no uncertain terms, that I was beyond grateful for everything that he had done, but I didn’t have the energy to think of the right way to do it.
I headed to the small ensuite bathroom attached to our bedroom, and looked at myself in the mirror. It was the first time I had laid eyes on myself since I had cut all my hair off, and yeah, it was a shock. I reached up to run my fingers through my new cropped mop, and I wondered how long it would take to grow it all back again.
Maybe it was better like this. Maybe it was easier on me to just leave all that behind, some version of myself that had existed before all of this had happened. The thought of it energized something in me. That long hair had been attached to the woman who had been stuck about to marry someone she hated just to protect her family – but now, here, in all of this, I could be okay. I could leave it all behind. I could lop it off and not care a bit about it.
There was a robe hanging over the back of the door, and I changed out of the ill-fitting clothes Andreas had brought for me and slipped into a shower. I tipped my head back as the cool water rushed over my face, and I couldn’t help but smile. It was as though all the weight that I had been lugging around with me had finally started to lift, and I knew I could move on. My father was safe. I was with Andreas. I couldn’t think of much more in the world that mattered than that.
I washed off the stress of everything that had happened, and slipped that robe over my shoulders, wrapping it around me before I emerged into the bedroom once more. Andreas was sitting on the edge of the bed, and he grinned as soon as he saw me.
“You look good with that short hair, you know,” he remarked, and I ran my fingers through it.
“It could use a little attention from an actual hairdresser,” I replied. “But yeah. I don’t mind it as much as I thought I would.”
“You’re saying that you don’t think I already did a perfect job?” he asked, playing at being insulted, and I laughed as I slipped down on to the bed next to him.
“You going to start your new life as a hairdresser?” I teased him, as he draped an arm around my waist, pulling me in closer.
“Hmm, I’ll have to think about that,” he murmured as he leaned in to plant a kiss on my lips. And, just like that, everything we had been talking about just vanished from my brain at once. Because we were here again, here together, and nothing else seemed to come close to mattering right now.
He pulled me down on to the bed beside him, wrapping his arms around me as though he never intended to let me go, and I sighed into the kiss, relief flooding through me. As long as we were together, I knew I could handle anything the world threw at us. We had each other, we would survive anything. I loved him. I knew I loved him. And I knew that he felt the same way about me, even if we hadn’t said as much to each other yet. Sometimes, you didn’t need to say a damn thing, you just needed to know, in your heart of hearts, that it was true, that you could share it in a kiss without worrying for a second about anything else.
He pulled back for a moment, looking deep into my eyes, and smiled.
“You have no idea how good it feels to have you back here,” he murmured.
“Show me,” I murmured right back, and he grinned as he leaned in to kiss me again – harder than before, his tongue slipping past my lips as he pressed his body to mine. I could already feel his cock stirring, and I hooked one leg over the top of his so I could grind against him passionately. He couldn’t even imagine how much I had missed him in the time I had been away from him. But I intended to prove it to him, once and for all, make it so that he had no reason to doubt.
He pushed the robe away from my body, his mouth tracing down my skin and over my neck, lingering for a moment at my throat as though he was trying to steal my breath right out of my body. I groaned, cupping his head in my hands, the warmth of his lips on my skin enough to make everything else just vanish from my mind. This was the special power he had, to be able to make me drunk on my want for him to the point where nothing else mattered.
He continued down, rolling me on to my back as he pulled the robe off me, his lips tracing a line down my stomach, towards my mound. I couldn’t take my eyes off of him – he flicked his up to meet mine, and I could see that flash of want in his face, a reminder of his need for me, how badly the two of us craved each other.
Finally, he landed between my thighs, parting my legs so that he could admire my pussy close-up – normally, I would have felt a little nervous at being so exposed, but with him, it was anything but. I knew I could trust him, totally and utterly, and that relief of giving myself, my pleasure over to him – it was everything.
He pressed his mouth to my pussy and I let out a long sigh of pleasure, my breath catching in the back of my throat as the delight of it coursed through my system. He always knew just what to do to me. His hands slid under my ass as he pulled me onto him properly, and I glanced down to steal a look at him between my legs like that. Damn, he looked perfect.
But he felt even better. His tongue swirled around my clit a few times before he drew it between his lips, applying the gentlest amount of pressure as he teased me. I groaned and arched my back from the bed so that I could press myself against him properly. How did he make it feel so good? He was so tender, kissing me down there as though he knew I could only take the slightest pressure, my body so over-sensitized just from his presence that it felt like my whole system was on fire.
I reached down to grip his hair, holding him in place as he started to apply more pressure with his tongue, and my mouth dropped open as I felt it increase, starting to grow and build between my thighs. The pleasure was delicious, but I needed more – enough that I would be able to forget entirely about the mess that surrounded us.
It consumed me. His hands dug into my ass as he pulled me on to him, as though he couldn’t get enough of the taste of me. I knew how he felt. After so long apart, it felt as though I would never be able to get enough of him. I wanted to gorge myself on every part of him, the way he was feasting on my pussy right now...
The orgasm started to build inside of me, the pleasure and the pressure of everything I had attempted to hold back making it hard to think straight. Nothing mattered but the way that he made me feel, nothing could. His tongue swirled around my clit in long, slow strokes, and he let out a moan into my pussy, sending a coursing rush of pleasure through me all at once.
“Fuck,” I groaned, one hand gripping the sheets as the other clutched to his hair. I needed this. I could feel my body tensing, clenching around him, my thighs pinning him in place as I got closer and closer to the edge. I was panting for air, gasping for breath, and soon, it hit me.
The orgasm rose up and over me like a wave, swallowing me whole so that I couldn’t think about anything other than the pleasure as it rolled through me. He pulled back, my pussy pulsing where his tongue had just tasted me, and I groaned helplessly, my body convulsing with pleasure. I reached down for him, pulling him on top of me so I could taste my wetness on his lips, a reminder of where he had just been and what he had just done.
“Fuck me,” I panted to him. I couldn’t think of anything more important than that right now, and he didn’t need telling twice; he pulled his cock from inside his pants and pressed himself to the entrance of my still-convulsing pussy, thrusting into me so hard that it made me cry out.
He wrapped himself around me as I wound my legs around his once more, pulling him deeper and deeper into me. He felt so perfect, it was almost more than I could take. The way we fit together, as though we had been made for each other – how did I think for a second that I could have married someone else? I was his. I belonged to him completely, the way my body craved his, the way I felt when we were together.
I held him close, inhaling the scent of his skin greedily as he fucked me. He felt so good I couldn’t think straight, my body desperate for another orgasm, hungry for that new wave of pleasure. I squeezed my thighs around him, pulling him in deeper – I felt like I couldn’t get enough of him, not even if I tried, the sheer intensity of it getting the better of me.
I had no idea how long we were tangled on that bed together, the two of us fucking like our lives depended on it. Because maybe they did – maybe there was some part of us that needed this assurance that we were together again, that we weren’t always meant to come back to this point to find one another. But all that mattered was that he felt downright perfect inside of me, and I was here, with him, in his arms, close to him in the way I could only ever really be with the man I loved.
His breathing started to come harder and faster than before, and I knew that he was getting close. I wanted to feel him finish inside of me, letting him flood me with his seed to claim me as his own. My body cried out for that primal connection, something that I would never have given to anyone else. He pulled back, gazed into my eyes for a moment as he continued to move inside of me, and I bit my lip and then pulled him in for another kiss.
Our tongues danced together as he pushed himself deeper and deeper into me. I could feel his body tensing, my own responding in kind, as we both arched towards the release that we needed. I wanted to feel him inside of me, every part of him that I could, the passion and power of our coming together enough to wipe everything else off the face of the Earth. As far as I was concerned, it was just the two of us in the entire world right now, and that was exactly how I wanted it.
When he finished, I felt the warmth of him inside of me, and then my own body responded in kind. I moaned against his mouth as he stilled, letting my pussy contract in orgasm around his cock, as the two of us slowly, slowly came back down to Earth.
He planted one last kiss against my lips before he pulled back, allowing me to savor him for an instant before this was over, and then he flopped down into the bed next to me, cupping my face in his hands as he did so. I smiled, utterly sated, my body spent in the best way possible. I turned to him, found his eyes soft on mine as he looked at me.
“I love you,” he murmured. And the words, though they were simple, meant everything in the world to me. I smiled and reached over to stroke his leg.
“I love you, too,” I replied. He pulled me into his arms so that I could rest my head against his chest, and I closed my eyes and snuggled in close. I never wanted to be away from this man again, not as long as I lived. He was everything to me, and the closeness I felt when we were together was all that I needed to keep me sane.
These last few weeks might have been hell without him – but now that I was back where I belonged, in his arms, I knew nothing could take it away from me.
