turn her graceful body around. Her warm breasts pressed against my chest, her hands grazed my waist, her eyes locked onto mine.
“You are trying to right the mistakes you’ve made,” she said. “You’re regretful, and you’re working to be better. To live up to the expectations they not only have of you, but the ones you’ve set for yourself. I see that, Nico.”
I averted my gaze. “It’s not enough. It’s never enough. I turned my back on them. I basically abandoned my own family.”
Her cool fingers splayed over my cheek, forcing me to look at her. “I know you invest in stocks for your parents that no one else, not even Cris, knows about. I saw documents on the desk in your office. You went out of your way to find properties in Istria you knew your parents would love. In fact, I think that business about buying the winery was a bunch of…what’s the expression? A bunch of hog-wash?”
I chuckled, ducking my head.
“I think that whole trip was specifically planned around assessing those properties for your parents,” she continued. “Jasmine also told me you’ve been making fewer trips overseas and spending more time in the city. I’d even wager to say that’s why you chose to open the distillery in Brooklyn. You said it’s been a dream of yours for fifteen years. You had the money and connections to build it anywhere you wanted, yet you chose your own backyard for its location. To me, that says you want to have an excuse to stay around. You want something to keep you here.”
How? How did this woman know all of this?
Despite how perceptive she was, she shouldn’t have been able to understand what drove me deep down. How had she seen all of this in such a short amount of time? It hadn’t even been a month since I’d met her, and already she knew me better than Cris did.
“You wouldn’t have gotten that tattoo if you didn’t want to do right by your family,” she went on. “You’re trying to overcome your guilt by taking on the responsibilities your father once asked of you. You’ve been earning his forgiveness, Nico, whether you see it or not.”
God, she was wrecking me.
Her intuition, her kindness. I didn’t deserve any of it. I pressed our foreheads together, trying to communicate my appreciation, my gratitude, my devotion. I never wanted to stop touching her.
“For all your wisdom, legs, you’re wrong about one thing.”
She frowned adorably. “What’s that?”
Gazing into the vast depths of her blue pools, I swear to Christ, I got a glimpse into my own soul. “The distillery might not be enough. Maybe I want someone to keep me here. And maybe I’ve found her.”
Her face went slack, an expression I couldn’t interpret. I slammed my lips against hers and drove my cock past her slick folds before she could get a word out.
I was too afraid I wouldn’t like her response.
And I was even more afraid that she would tell me exactly what I wanted to hear.
My wife didn’t wear my ring, didn’t even bear my name. Yet she was mine all the same. The only physical proof I had that she belonged to me was a Russian marriage license. Part of me needed more than that. And the other part insisted this was enough for now. Her looking at me with need shining in her sapphire eyes. Her lower lip quivering with impending release. Her pussy dripping for fulfillment from my cock.
That was a deeper, more powerful stamp of ownership than the name on her driver’s license or an expensive diamond on her finger.
This was us.
And we couldn’t be denied. Not anymore.
Thinking back on it, it was incredibly ironic—and almost prophetic—that Lexi and I had that particular conversation, on that particular night, at that particular time. Because the phone call I received just over an hour later put all of my fears and insecurities front and center again.
“Nico, you need to get to the hospital as soon as you can,” my mother said in a frantic voice. “Your father’s had a heart attack.”
I was no stranger to hospitals.
Having had my share of experiences in them at a young age, I understood how scary it could be for a child to be surrounded by beeping machines and intimidating-looking doctors with clipboards. Which was why I’d often visited sick and injured children back in Moscow.
And it was beyond inappropriate for me to reflect on how much I missed that as I