One month later
Vlad thought it was torture when the guys were reading his words. That was nothing compared to this.
It had been three hours since Elena had taken his manuscript with her to bed with a stern order not to bother her until she was done. He’d set his rehab back a month with his fall in the hospital, so he’d used the time to his advantage. He took care of her as she recovered from her concussion, and he finished his damn book.
Taking care of Elena had been the harder part of the two. In the month since the incident, there had been FBI interviews and media attention and interest from literary agents who wanted to sign her to write a book about her experience and her investigation. The team’s immigration attorneys were working to make sure they didn’t violate any visa laws if she chose to do so, but it was low on Elena’s priorities. She’d already vowed that any money offered for her story would immediately go to Marta and the other women Yevgeny and his goons had hurt. Marta was now safely hidden under federal protection while Gretchen represented her claim for asylum.
The assholes who’d taken Elena were in prison awaiting trial on charges that would ensure they never stepped foot outside a cell again. That didn’t make Vlad any less worried, though. He’d upgraded his security system and hired a bodyguard for when she left the house without him. She’d tried to argue that issue, but one look at his face, and she’d backed down.
After all that, it should have been a breeze to have Elena read his book. It wasn’t. He was dying. He lay on the couch and flipped through the channels as the hours ticked by. Finally, her soft footsteps padded down the stairs.
He couldn’t see her face or her expression at first when she walked into the dark room. He zapped off the TV and sat up. “Well?”
Elena stepped into the light. Her eyes were puffy and red. “Vlad . . .” she breathed.
“Wh-what does that mean?” He gulped.
She crossed the room to the couch and curled up next to him. When she pressed her hand into his chest, his world tilted off its axis. It happened a lot with her. “Vlad, this is so, so good.”
His heart leaped into this throat. “Are you lying to me?”
“No,” she laughed. “Look at me.”
He obeyed, but reluctantly.
“Why didn’t you ever tell me you could write like this?”
“I don’t know.”
She rubbed a circle over his heart. “That soft part of you, the one that cries at animal shows and weddings, the one that studies poetry and kisses chickens . . . you’ve poured all of it into a story that made me cry and cheer and want to kiss you until you can’t breathe.”
He gulped again. “I like the kissing part of that.”
She obliged. She straddled his lap, and their mouths met in a tangle of wild and unrestrained longing. It was a sloppy kiss, tender and fierce at once, just like her. This was the moment he’d read about so many times, but nothing he wrote in his own book would ever come close to capturing how this felt. The completeness of handing your whole heart to someone who gave hers back in return.
Vlad gripped her head and brought them brow to brow. “ ‘My voice that is for you, the languid one and gentle . . .’ ”
She choked on an emotional noise, and her voice broke as she picked up the verse for “The Night,” an ardent declaration about the burning fire of love, the poetry of passion, the rivers that ebb and flow between two lovers. Vlad stroked her velvet mouth with his tongue before pulling back and panting the final lines, written, it seemed, for them alone. “ ‘My friend, my sweetest friend, I love—’ ”
But his throat clogged with a rising sob of joy, cutting off his voice. Elena kissed his nose, gently, sweetly, and took over for him, completing the promise with a fervent whisper against his lips. “ ‘I love . . . I’m yours . . . I’m yours.’ ”