Page 29 of Her Russian Master

She stopped walking to lean on her tiptoes and kiss his cheek.“I love you, Yuri.”The words slipped out, easy as pie, yet it was the first time she’d spoken them.She realized, with a start, they were true.They didn’t hold the heaviness of a promise, or the weight of a yoke.They felt light and honest.

Like when she’d asked Yuri to take her to Ibiza, an agonized pleasure washed over his expression.Within seconds, she found herself shoved up against a nearby building, her legs wrapped around Yuri’s waist as he devoured her with his mouth, kissing, biting, sucking her lips, neck and shoulder.

“You love me, you love me,” he chanted.“Is it true,moye solnishko?Do you?”

She nodded happily, like a woman telling her husband she’d discovered she was pregnant.“It’s true.”

He hadn’t told her the same, but she didn’t have to ask.He’d shown her every minute of every day.He watched her with those intelligent, blue eyes, absorbing every detail about her—what she liked, who she didn’t, and orchestrated their days accordingly.Everything he did was to make her happy.And he was damn good at it, too.

“I love you,” she repeated.

A stream of Russian came from his lips.He kissed her again.“I need you,” he groaned for the second time against her mouth.

“So you said.Come on,” she urged gently.“We’re almost at the apartment.”

He pulled her away from the wall, but didn’t lower her feet to the ground, instead hitching her up to sit on his hip, like a koala bear baby on its mother.She laughed as he took off with swift, determined steps toward their apartment.

“Mine,” he growled, as if to himself, and she laughed again.He’d been making that claim in the bedroom since the day they arrived, but now, instead of an assertion, he sounded as if he truly believed it.

“Yes, yours.”

Yuri looked up at her, his handsome face split into a wide grin.

“Yours,” she murmured again, her heart overflowing with love.The rare, unexplainable love that she hadn’t thought existed outside of romance novels and fairy tales.Yuri had given it to her.Her crazy Russian.

The End