Page 164 of Violent Possession

I laugh, unable to stop myself. “You don’t even know how to curse properly, Alex. How are you going to try and keep me locked up in here, by drowning me in French perfume?”

“If I have to,” he says, and there’s a hint of humor in his voice. Then his voice becomes perfectly controlled again, as if it had never wavered. “While you were sleeping, I went out. I met with Seraphim tonight, Griffin.”

I feel my breath catch. He went. Alone. After everything I did to get Seraphim to the table, after the risk, the humiliation, the pain—he crossed the bridge without me. My blood boils. I feel childish.

“You went alone? After everything?”

“After everything,” he repeats, and his mask truly cracks. He approaches, stopping in front of me, slowly. I stay, gritting my teeth, waiting for the professional barrier between us.

But no. What comes is just a hand—warm, firm, unexpectedly gentle—cupping my face, forcing me to look at him up close. I don’t even want to resist.

His touch is affectionate in a way that disarms me. His thumb traces the line of my battered jaw, his other hand open at the nape of my neck, firm, anchoring me there.

“I went,” he says, low. “Precisely because it was after everything.”

I don’t understand. The anger dissipates quickly with his touch.

“You did your part,” he continues, his eyes fixed on mine, and there’s no lie there. “You did the impossible. The risk that followed… was mine. Not yours. My responsibility was to ensure you were safe. And I don’t break my promises.”

His words cut through me in a strange way. My entire body is reduced to a single point: his hand, holding the back of my neck, saying without words that the world can explode outside, but I will stay exactly where he decides. Because he wants to protect me.

I don’t know what to say. The words disappear. I break down. Literally—my body gives way. I lean forward, rest my foreheadon his shoulder, feeling the cool fabric of his shirt mixed with the warmth of his skin, and I breathe deep, hoping his scent will erase what’s left of my pride.

His fingers lace into my hair, at my nape, holding me there, against him. A silent way of sayingyou stay here.

We stay like that, motionless, for a few seconds too long to be casual. If I fell right there, he wouldn’t let anyone but himself pull me up from the floor.

“You already ruined his plan, you know,” Alexei whispers. He speaks with a poorly disguised pride.

“What are you talking about?”

“Vasily,” he replies. “His grand strategy depended on Kirill being alive to be the witness who would incriminate my cousin. And you killed him. You removed the centerpiece of his game without even knowing it.”

At the time, it seemed like just settling a score, a favor. Now, I understand: it was a checkmate in their game. I feel a wave of satisfaction, but with it comes the terror of what it means.

“I just followed your orders. That’s good, isn’t it?” I ask.

“It’s good and it’s bad,” Alexei muses, his hand still on my neck. “It’s good because his original plan is in ruins. It’s bad because now he’s cornered. And a cornered man is unpredictable.”

I close my eyes, smelling him—the expensive fabric of his shirt, his skin,him. It drags me back to all the previous nights, to every time his life and mine were separated by only a line drawn in the flesh. It’s a complete and abject surrender, the kind of thing that would have disgusted me years ago. Now it just makes me want to sink deeper.

His arms wrap around me, firm, and we stay like that for a long time, in the silence of the office.

I don’t feel anger, I don’t feel that automatic impulse to sabotage my own comfort before it’s taken from me. I don’tfeel the need to be anything other than what I am at this exact moment.

The pressure of his embrace carries away the residue of violence still bubbling under my skin. And it works. For one whole second, there is only him.

“Griffin,” he whispers.

I know, by the tone, that the truce is over.

I pull back just enough to look into his face. Alexei is wearing that expression of absolute impassivity. Up close, with his hands still on me, I see the cracks: the nervousness at the corners of his eyes, the slight tension in his jaw, the pang of fear camouflaged as concern. He doesn’t like talking about uncertainty.

“My father has called an emergency council in response to the rift between my cousin and me.”

“You were expecting that?”

“I was expecting at least another forty-eight hours,” he says with a bitter disdain in his voice for having underestimated his own family’s unpredictability. “If something goes wrong tonight,” Alexei continues, and his voice is so calm it borders on cruel, “if I don’t come back by dawn…”