She lays herself back on the hood, which makes her spine arch and display her swollen breasts for my hungry gaze. It’s been hell and a half pretending not to notice the way her pregnancy has plumped up her curves so perfectly. But now, she’s spread for me, begging for me, and I intend to feast on every inch of her.

  Once I’ve sated the beast pulsing between my legs.

  I wrap her legs around me and guide myself to her slit. She’s so fucking hot as I push inside; it’s enough to completely forget about the cold rain pelting my back. I lean over her to block some of it out, to keep her warm and pressed to me as I push harder, thrust deeper.

  She takes me so good. So fucking good.

  I brace my hands on either side of her head, hypnotized by the way her breasts bounce and sway with every thrust. Her nipples have tightened into perfect nubs begging to be suckled, and it would be rude of me to deny her. So I dip my head and suck a sweet bud into my mouth, coaxing and massaging with my tongue.

  Taylor squeezes and pulses on my cock in time with each suckle. Fuck, that feels incredible. It makes me go harder, deeper, faster. I want more. I need more. Her moans pitch high and loud as I stop holding back and fuck her the way I’ve wanted to since the moment I met her.

  And just like I’d predicted, she bucks her hips and lets out a loud, long, uninhibited scream.

  “Yes,” she moans. “Please, please, please…”

  I slam my hips against hers. It’s the only thunder I can hear, and the only wetness I want or notice is the surge of her warmth bathing my cock as she orgasms around me. I keep going, and she keeps writhing and begging for more. I lift her leg and rest it against my good shoulder as I lean forward, and we both cry out at the insane pleasure the new angle gives us.

  Her hand slams down against the hood of the Hummer as she cries out my name. I run a palm over her stomach, marveling at what’s growing in there right now. I can’t quite tell if it’s starting to swell yet, but I know for a fact that once she does start showing, I’m never going to not be hard as a rock. I’m never going to not want her.

  I’ve never felt more deeply possessive of anything in my entire life. All I can think, other than that I need to ruin her for every other man on the planet, is that she’s strong enough to take me as I am.

  My tigrionok. My wild tiger.

  Once I’ve reduced her to a quivering mass of hormones, I pull her closer, grinding my cock inside her as deep as she can take it.

  “Sure you don’t want to go back inside?” I ask her, testing how far this sense of adventure of hers will go.

  She grabs my face with her hands and meets my gaze. “Don’t you dare,” she warns. “I haven’t had nearly enough.”

  I grin. “Is this what happens when you stop thinking and start living?”

  “Apparently,” she says softly. Her eyes flicker with excitement as she runs her hand through my drenched hair. “Tell me something. Why did you bring me here?”

  The woman certainly doesn’t dance around the hard questions. I could give her the conservative answer, the easy lie—but I promised her the truth.

  As much of it as I can bear to give her.

  “I was trying to correct my first mistake.” It’s hard to talk normally when I’m still inside of her, still teetering on the edge.

  A fresh raindrop strikes her cheek. The rain above us has slowed, as though the sky has tired itself out.

  “What mistake?” she asks.

  “I chose the wrong sister.” But then I shake my head. “No, actually, that’s not quite right. I should have made you tell me your name.”

  The truth doesn’t flush out everything that has happened since then. But it’s a start. I’ve been haunted by the would’ve-could’ve-should’ves since that damned engagement party, but in reality, they were whispering in my ear from the moment I drove away that first night.

  I would have chosen Taylor from the start if I’d known who she was.

  I could have done things right and avoided this mess.

  I should have turned the car around and pulled her back inside.

  Taylor’s eyes are heavy with emotion, but she bites her tongue. “You didn’t want a marriage based on love,” she reminds me.

  I nod. “I didn’t.”

  “Why?” she asks boldly. “You know, since we’re telling the truth.”

  I sigh. “I was scared to love my wife…because loving her meant the risk of losing her would cripple me. It would make everything harder.”

  Those rosebud lips of hers part. I can sense that I’ve crossed some sort of invisible line that I didn’t even know to look for. Somehow, this wild, wonderful, stubborn woman has backed me into a corner.

  “You love me?”

  And there it is—the one line I drew in the sand myself. So long ago that I forget when it first appeared.

  Doesn’t she understand that she’s asking too much of me?

  “Taylor…”

  “It’s okay,” she says, cupping my face. “It’s okay. I don’t need you to say it. I already know.”

  I frown, desperate to fuck her into silence so we can avoid burning my heart with her magnifying glass. “How?”

  She lightly traces the corner of my eye and smiles. “I can see it in your eyes. And I can feel it in my bones.” She looks away for a moment, her eyes growing sad for a fraction of a second. “And I suppose, if nothing else, that comforts me.”

  “What does?”

  “The thought that, if I’m going to hell, at least I’m going there with you.”

  One last crack of thunder rumbles across the sky. She doesn’t flinch and neither do I.

  That’s the problem with freedom: sometimes, it goes to your head. It makes you feel invincible, even when you’re not.

  I pull her off the hood of the Hummer and spin her around. My hand presses firmly between her shoulder blades, and she arches her hips back toward me at the same time her breasts mash against the metal.

  I sear the image of her like this to memory—the way her fingers curl against the hood as I kick her legs open wider…the way her lips part in a gasp when I push deep inside her…the way she throws her head back and screams my name as I grab her and fuck her without an ounce of control left in me.

  Until the only flash of lightning left is the spine-tingling flood of release that shoots through my body as I pour into her.

  We haven’t waited out the storm.

  We’ve ridden it home.

  67

  TAYLOR

  Ilarion carries me into the cabin because I can barely walk. My legs are limp from spasming so hard for so long. Not to mention the utter fullness keeping me warm and sated from the inside.

  We leave a trail of rainwater in our wake, but he doesn’t seem to give a damn about the wooden floors as we go through the foyer, down the hall, and into the master bedroom.

  Not “his” bedroom.

  Ours.

  The ceiling is vaulted high, with wooden beams as thick as my waist flowing from wall to wall and meeting in a skylight at the apex. An entire wall is nothing but glass, framing the world beyond like a painting. I feel like we’re suspended in the treetops. Floating in the clouds. High above the world splayed out at our feet.

  We pass through into the bathroom. Beneath another wall of glass is a claw-footed bathtub the size of a ship.

  I’m naked already, so he sets me gently into the tub and opens the faucet. Hot water gushes forth instantly, smoothing away my goosebumps. Steam spirals up off of my bare skin, and I moan with relief.

  Ilarion waits until the tub is half-full and then he clambers in himself. He slides in behind me and pulls me into the fork of his legs, my back nestled against his front. We fit so perfectly together.

  Only in this cabin. Only for now.

  But perfect.

  “I don’t know why you don’t just live here,” I say, glancing out at the view. “It’s so peaceful.”

  “It can get boring.”

  I splash some water on his knee. “Maybe boring is what you need. The Bratva can do without you for a while.”

  He snorts. “They’d crumble before I even left the house.”

  “Fine. You could run it from here.”

  Ilarion nibbles my earlobe playfully. “If you’re trying to get me to move up here, then the answer is no. But we could make it our summer home. Winter home, too, if you’re feeling daring. We can fuck on bearskin rugs in front of huge fires in the heart. I’ll lick cold snow from the inside of your thighs. I’m kinda talking myself into it, actually.”

  I twist around so I can see his face. The image he’s painting is almost enough to make me come again from the words alone. But I’m hung up on one word in particular.

  “‘We’?”

  He shrugs. “Our child will love it here.”

  It’s a backtrack, I get that. Or maybe he’s just too self-conscious to admit to seeing a future for the two of us. Either way, I’m not willing to press. Not when this moment feels this good, and the future sounds that tangible.

  For right now, being here with him is enough.

  He starts shampooing my hair, and I close my eyes as he massages my head and works the knots in my shoulders at the same time. When’s the last time a man has taken care of me this way?

  Never.

  It’s only ever been him.

  I suppose a small part of me feels that I’m owed this little slice of happiness. After all, I gave Alec up immediately, as soon as Celine told me how she really felt. Why should I be expected to give Ilarion up, too? Especially when what I feel for him is a thousand times stronger than what I felt for Alec.

  “You’re thinking about things you shouldn’t be thinking about,” Ilarion gently scolds, breaking through my reverie.

  I scowl. “How can you tell?”

  “I just can.”

  He leans down and presses a feathery kiss to my lips. He tastes like mountain rain. Beneath me, his body is hard as stone.

  One kiss is good, but two is better. I drape my hand over his neck and pull him closer for another one. The second is as good as the first, so I go for three, and then I just keep him there, swiping my tongue across his soft lips until they part and I can taste more of him.

  He grabs me and pulls me to him, tickling me beneath the water. I squeal with laughter and try to get away from him, but he holds me close, silencing my laughter with his tongue in my mouth.

  We make out in the tub for ages, until all the bubbles are gone and our fingers are wrinkled from the bathwater. He fucks me again slowly, and the orgasm breaks over me like dawn over the mountains. The sun has almost completely set by the time we come up for air.

  My stomach grumbles and, of course, Ilarion catches it. “I promised you dinner. I should’ve known you wouldn’t let me forget.”

  “It’s my fault. I’m the one who changed the plan.”

  “Get dressed and relax,” he orders with a wry smirk. “I’ll go cook.”

  “Need any help?”

  He looks at me with an arched brow. “Do you really want to help?”

  “Not even a little bit.”

  Laughing, he hauls himself out of the tub. I admire his sculpted ass while he towels himself dry and pulls on a pair of sweatpants. Bare-chested and sexy as hell,, he leans down and kisses me one more time as I rise to meet his tempting mouth. He takes the opportunity to grab me around my waist and pull me out of the now-cold water, wrapping a fluffy towel around me with another warm kiss.

  Then he saunters off to the kitchen, leaving me to pat myself dry and figure out something to wear.

  The mirrors in the walk-in closet connecting the bathroom to the master bedroom are almost as big as the windows they’re facing. There’s no way to hide from my reflection.

  I cast a critical eye over my body. It has changed somewhat since the pregnancy…and, to my surprise, I’m not hating it.

  My breasts are fuller, and there’s a roundness to my belly that’s new, too. I turn to the side and examine my stomach. I let my hand run over the almost-imperceptible swell and I imagine our baby inside.

  Our baby.

  Most women have dreams of this moment. I don’t. I suppose it was too unplanned, and I was too young to have longed for it. It just came upon me suddenly and violently and beautifully. Like a devil driving a car too fast down the street when you aren’t looking.

  I rifle through the suitcase we brought and pull out one of Ilarion’s t-shirts. I add a button-down sweater over it, but I leave it undone.

  I emerge from the closet and examine the bedroom in the twilight. The bed is a pastiche of varnished wooden panels. Aspen and birch glow white and bands of pine are black where they run in between. Just above it hangs a Coronado wagon wheel chandelier, dripping with lit candles. I run my bare toes through the thick, earthy carpet.

  On the far side of the room, I notice a series of staggered floating shelves. They hold books, mostly, but in between are tchotchkes and knickknacks. Antlers, a music box, a chunk of crystal, a snow globe.

  The snow globe catches my eye. It’s just big enough to fit snug in the palm of my hand. Inside, snowflakes swirl down around a mountain range that matches the one outside the window. At the foot of the mountain is a herd of deer grazing in snow-covered grass.

  And in the very heart of the shadows clustered behind them, where the sun can’t reach, is a pair of predator’s eyes.

  I feel my stomach twist suddenly, and I’m filled with a strange sense of foreboding. We can’t stay up here forever. I have a feeling that the real world will catch up to us sooner than we want.

  As much as I want to stay…our snow globe will eventually shatter.

  I put it back on the shelf and go downstairs to join Ilarion.

  68

  TAYLOR

  “As loath as I am to inflate your ego any further, I have to admit: you cook an amazing meal, Mr. Zakharov.” I set my fork down with another sigh of contentment, the latest in an evening full of them.

  He inclines his head in thanks as he collects my plate and carries the dirty dishes to the sink. “And to think, you haven’t even tried the chocolate mousse yet.”

  “Stop.”

  “I’m not joking.”

  “I will literally explode if you make me eat a single bite of dessert, Ilarion. I’m serious.”

  He winks. “So am I.”

  My mouth is still zinging with the taste of butter-poached elk and wild rice. “How about we go for a walk before dessert?” I suggest. “I kinda wanna see the mountains at night.”

  I expect him to tell me it’ll be too cold for a walk, but instead, he says with a chuckle, “You might want to put on some pants first.”

  I glance down at my bare thighs and remember that I’m both naked from the waist down and sinfully wet from how unexpectedly hot it was to watch Ilarion cook. Those hands—my goodness. I’d call them panty-droppers, but I hadn’t even bothered to put any on.

  Once we’re both fully dressed, we step out. He doesn’t take my hand as we leave the cabin, but I don’t mind. It’s enough to see it twitching by his side like it’s taking everything he has to resist the impulse.

  A small footpath leads away from the cabin and into the dark woods. But as dark as it is amongst the trees, the sky is unbelievably bright. The stars are sprawled out above us in brilliant constellations, and the moon is perched full and high, bathing everything it touches in silver.

  I breathe in the fresh air. I can’t get enough of the stuff. I want to bottle it up and take it with me. “This place is magical.”

  “It’s far away from cities and people and bullshit. That’s why.”

  I laugh. “You may be right about that.”

  We stop at the edge of the cliff that looks down over the lake. I turn to him, an agenda written all over my face.

  “Oh, boy,” he says. “Here we go.”

  I smirk and punch his arm playfully. “Let’s play a game.”

  “Unless it’s a sex game, I’m not interested.”

  “Two truths and a lie,” I press. “Come on; it’ll be fun. I’ll go first.” He inclines his head, and I know he’s going to play along. I sidle closer to him. “I won a beauty pageant when I was six. I broke my arm when I was eight. I learned to ride a bike when I was fifteen.”

  “You’ve never won a single beauty pageant in your life.”

  I punch him again, harder this time. It’s like punching a mountain. “Rude!”

  “Well? Am I right?”

  “You’re right. I wasn’t six when I won; I was seven.” He raises his eyebrows, and I laugh. “Just kidding. It wasn’t me, actually. Celine was the one who won.”

  I’m not sure if mentioning my sister is breaking cabin rules, but how can I not? She’s been such an integral part of my life that there’s no way I can avoid mentioning her altogether. Nor do I want to. The only thing sadder than losing her would be forgetting her. She’s tied up in everything.

  She’s part of me.

  I’m part of her.

  “Why on earth was she entered into a beauty pageant at six?” Ilarion asks incredulously. “I didn’t take your mother for that type.”

  “She wasn’t.” I shrug. “It was this random little impromptu thing they set up at a carnival. The people organizing the thing were recruiting people in the crowd, and one of them approached Mom. She thought it would be cute to see Celine in one of the big, puffy dresses, so she said okay. We still have the pictures. Dad looks like the wrong end of a donkey, though. He was so pissed that Mom decided to enter her.”

  “I would be, too,” Ilarion says. “If we have a girl—no beauty pageants.”

  I feel a tingle when he says that. If we have a girl…

  And just like that, I picture the two of us with a baby girl. A cooing little thing swallowed up in Ilarion’s arms. A daddy’s girl. An angel.

  “Is it my turn?” Ilarion asks.

  “Huh? Oh, right. Yeah. Shoot.”