Page 98 of An Heir to Blood and Power

I even got to be the little spoon.

Every night in my twin bed in my one-room apartment, I’d wadded up a roll of blankets behind my back because it helped me sleep to lean against something other than the cold wall.

Butthiswas what I’d been missing.

The warmth.

His hand, resting on my hip.

Nicolai’s mint-tinged breath leaked over my neck, and his body deflated a little behind me, like he had sighed out the tension of the day. “Now sleep, angel. Tomorrow will come soon enough.”

But surely I wouldn’t sleep. Feeling every second of Nicolai, a gorgeous and ripped man like Nicolai Romanov,spooning mewas more important than sleep.

I could sleep anytime. I could sleep for hours when I was alone again.

Right then, I wanted tofeelhim.

His warmth seeped through the blankets, surrounding me.

The weight of his arm wound around my side, bearing me down into the mattress.

The even puffs of his light breath, pleasant on my shoulder through my tee shirt, like the gentlest of kisses.

It was really nice.

Very soothing.

I shouldn’t get used to it, because in a year, he was going to leave me.

I must not forget that.

My heart would not withstand another shattering. My whole soul was a rattling bag of broken-glass shards.

I couldn’t let Nicolai crush me, too.

I sighed, and my body melted into the bed and into his arms?—

—and everything became quiet.

CHAPTER 28

they don’t make henchmen like they used to

DEMYAN VOLKOV

“The fuck you mean,they chase you off?” Demyan Volkov demanded, his fist clenching his phone. The phone’s sharp edges bit his fingers, but he didn’t release. He was strong, not weak like leisure class, not cringing like bourgeoisie, and a fucking phone would not make him stop.

In the footage from one of his men’s bodycams, a grainy video played on Volkov’s phone. Their boxy black cars screech-stopped around three black SUVs in a cement-boxed parking garage. Shouting in Russian, English, and French chirped out of his phone screen, then the image went dark as an arm covered the camera lens when the man wearing it reached cross-body for his gun.

But no shooting.

The video returned, showing first men waving their arms, then a car’s interior swallowed the view of the garage.

No bodies of Romanov’s men littered the cement, nor his men.

No bleeding. No grabbing gory wounds.

Just shouting.