Page 127 of Only for Him
I recognize them. They’re Bratva tattoos. The only reason he’d have them is if?—
But how could he? And then do allthis?
I want to ask what it all means, but my mouth won’t work.
He lifts my chin with one hand, his thumb rough against my jaw. His gaze consumes me. Not as something chewed up and spit out but as something reborn.
“Look at me,” he says.
But I already am. I haven’t looked away. I couldn’t, even if I wanted to.
The world narrows to this: the water, the steam, the ache in my arms, and the weight of his stare. The moment stretches forever.
I’m raw. Scraped down to nerve endings and bones.
“You want answers,” he murmurs, breath warm on my skin. It’s not a question. I feel like we may never need to question each other ever again. “So ask.”
I slide my hand up, press my palm to his chest. The skin there is hot, the muscle twitching under my fingers. My flesh erupts, even now, at the thought of his bulk pushing me down.
The water runs clear now, washing away the blood, the lies, the old life.
“What are you?” I whisper. “Where did you come from?”
31
ROMAN
This goddamn woman.
I never saw her coming, and now I’m paying the price.
Her fingers trace my chest. A match strike to scar tissue, straight through the armor I spent my life welding shut.
Her eyes are questions, endless fucking questions. If it were up to me, I’d stay locked up forever, take my stories to the grave. But she deserves to know the monster she's standing naked with under this scalding water.
She deserves to know why it was so easy for me to see past all her goody-goody cop bullshit to the weapon beneath.
"This one," she says, pressing her fingertip against the Orthodox church inked over my heart. "What does it mean?"
I stare down at her. Water sheens across her skin, slicks her lashes.
She’s glowing, blood-washed and wrecked, trembling and perfect.
And she’s still here. After everything.
I’m stronger than most things, but not this. Not her.
"It marks me as avor,” I say. “A thief."
The water will wash away the blood but not the memories: the first time I ever held a weapon, the expression on the face of the girl who walked in on me holding her father by his collar and slamming him against the wall, the first time I could keep the heat on all winter.
"I was fifteen when Timofey Starkov recruited me," I tell her. "A street rat with nothing to lose. He gave me a job, a purpose. A family.”
Her gaze snaps to mine. I see it in her eyes. She’s cataloging it, weighing it, not judging but storing it somewhere deep. That’s what she does. Shekeeps things.
“Or what passed for one," I say.
The steam rises around us, cocooning us. We will not come out of this bathroom the same people. Already, she’s transformed. The way she brutalized Skinner—it was beautiful. A work of art.
