Page 132 of Punish Me, Daddy

His fingers brushed my ankle where the rope had dug in—matching abrasions, tender to the touch. He didn’t say anything. Just stared for a long moment.

Then he lifted my leg and pressed a gentle kiss to the inside of my ankle.

“I should’ve gotten here faster.”

“You got to me just in time,” I whispered.

He stood and gathered me into his arms again, this time lifting me clean off the ground. I let out a surprised breath as my arms instinctively wrapped around his neck.

“I’ve got to go,” he said to his brothers, and they nodded, not saying anything at all because they understood.

Nikolai carried me out of the warehouse like I weighed nothing at all.

Out into the night, into the car, and then straight to the spa he apparently owned a stake in. It was an upscale, velvet-curtained sanctuary hidden on a quiet South End Street. The entire place was cleared within minutes of our arrival. He didn’t explain or apologize. He didn’t need to. The staff didn’t ask questions, they just obeyed.

Someone handed me a silk robe. Another brought hot tea and placed warm towels around my shoulders. A massage therapist appeared with soft hands and gentle words, promising not to touch the sore spots, just to soothe the knots. A woman named Juliette came in to draw me a hot bath, pouring in something lavender and herbal, the scent immediately relaxing.

And Nikolai never left.

When they tried to suggest he wait outside—offering a private lounge, a drink, even a full room to himself—he just shook his head once.

“She’s not leaving my sight.”

So he stayed seated in a leather chair in the corner of the room, jacket off, sleeves rolled up, elbows on his knees. His eyes never left me, not while they rubbed cream into my wrists or when they cleaned the grime from my ankles and gently laid cool cloths across the abraded skin. Not even when I slipped into the bath and sank under the water with a sigh so soft I barely heard it myself.

He was there, watching, the whole time.

Silent. Fierce and resolute all at once.

I understood then—really understood—that this was devotion. This was what it looked like when a man who’d killed for power decided to live for love.

I laid back, closed my eyes, and just let myself be taken care of in a manner befitting royalty.

By the time we returned to the penthouse, the sky had lightened. The streets of Boston were mostly quiet, the world outside stillunaware that it had shifted on its axis. One king had fallen, and another had carried his queen home.

The elevator opened directly into the living room, dimly lit by warm sconces and the reflection of city lights in the windows. I was barefoot. Wrapped in the softest robe I’d ever touched, skin still damp with lavender oil and heat. My wrists were bandaged with silk gauze. My body floated, somewhere between exhaustion and the strange, blooming peace that only comes after surviving something that should have broken you.

Nikolai didn’t say anything as we stepped inside. He locked the door behind us, checked the perimeter out of habit, then returned to me with a quiet certainty and gentleness that unraveled me just the slightest bit.

He reached for my hand, pulling me gently toward the bedroom.

“I want you in something of mine,” he said. “Something that won’t touch where it still hurts.”

I nodded. I didn’t have the strength to fight him on that, but I didn’t want to either.

In the bedroom, he opened a drawer and pulled out one of his shirts—white, worn-in cotton that smelled like him. He helped me out of the robe, careful with every movement not to touch the tender places on my wrists. His touch was patient. Not slow from caution, but reverence.

He didn’t look at me like I was fragile. He looked at me like I was something sacred.

Once the shirt was on, he guided me to the bed and pulled back the covers. I slid under them, the sheets cool and clean against my skin. I watched as he stepped into the bathroom, removedhis watch, his rings, his shirt and pants. He washed his hands, scrubbed them clean, and dried them with methodical precision.

When he returned, he joined me in bed without hesitation, lying beside me like there had never been any other place in the world he could have belonged.

He pulled me into his chest, one arm tucked beneath my head, the other wrapped around my waist, and I curled into him without thought or hesitation.

He pressed a kiss to my hair, another to my cheek, and then, finally, to the inside of my wrist, just above the bruising.

“I should’ve killed him,” he whispered.

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