12
SASHA
The sound of the howling wind reverberates around me, but it doesn’t feel cold.
In fact, it’s warm.
So warm that I bury my face in the pillow and moan softly at the welcoming embrace. In an instant, it feels as if I’m back to happier times in my life.
Times when Mama would hug me to sleep, Papa would kiss my forehead, and Anton would tease me about being a baby.
Times I took for granted, oblivious to the bleak reality fate had prepared for me.
So I burrow further into the warmness of the pillow, inhaling deeply and engraving every detail to memory.
Then I pause when I notice something hard against my head. In fact, the firm surface is glued to my whole body. A pillow isn’t supposed to feel like steel.
Slowly, I open my eyes. The moment I understand the situation, a wordless gasp spills from my lips.
Turns out, the pillow isn’t a pillow, after all, and I am, in fact, cocooned in Kirill’s arms.
I tilt my chin up to catch a glimpse of his sleeping face. The hard lines of his jaw are shadowed by the early morning light slipping through the window.
The storm is still blazing outside, but it’s not dark, or maybe not as dark as anyone would expect.
His lashes are quite thick, and so are his brows. I have an undeniable compulsion pushing me to touch them, just to see how they feel.
As I lift my hand, he tightens his arm on my middle. It’s the same arm he threw over me last night, and he hasn’t changed his position, not even an inch. I’m the one who turned in his direction and practically hugged him back.
My hand pauses near his face.
What am I doing?
Kirill is my captain and benefactor. He saved my life because, as he said, he’s not the type who’d leave any of his men behind. Not only that, but he also agreed to keep my identity a secret and didn’t probe for the actual reason I assumed another gender.
Am I in awe of him due to gratefulness? I can’t even look away from his face or attempt to pull away from him.
No. It’s not really gratefulness, but more like an intense version of that feeling of uneasiness I have whenever he’s around. Only, now, it’s accompanied by a dangerous impulse. Maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea to stay in this position for a bit longer.
Without touching him, my hand hovers in the air as I trace my fingers over his brows, the straight line of his nose, the contour of his cheekbones, and the dark shadow forming on his hard jawline.
My forefinger pauses when I reach his mouth. These lips were so close to mine that I couldn’t breathe properly.
That feeling has come back again, and I find myself constricted, hot, and abnormally bothered. Even the dull pain in my shoulder throbs and stings.
I shift and accidentally, or not really, inch closer to him, but then I come to a jolting halt.
Something hard and massive stabs the bottom of my belly. At first, I think there’s an object between us, so I move my stomach up and down, but the ‘object’ grows in size.
Holy shit.
It’s his…dick.
And it’s erect andhuge.
My ears heat, and my fingers that are hovering in the air tremble. Tracing his face is the last thing on my mind now that I’m being poked by his boner.
This is highly inappropriate and has the potential to screw over any professional relationship we might have had. No, it wasn’t the best, and we had our differences, but it was always ‘proper.’ Strained but right.