All Chapters of Crave The Enemy : Chapter 91 - Chapter 97

Nico's PovThe gun doesn't fire.That's the first thing I understand after Sasha hits me from the left and takes us both behind the nearest table, his body completely covering mine, one hand on the back of my head keeping it down. In the room above us there's shouting and movement and a single crash of something heavy and then Sasha's men have the situation and I can tell from the sound of it before I can see anything.Sasha doesn't move off me."I'm all right," I say.He doesn't move."Sasha. I'm all right."He lifts his head and looks at my face from very close range. His eyes are doing something I haven't seen before, not cold or flat, something underneath the control that is none of those things."You're certain," he says."I'm certain." I put my hand on his jaw. "I'm here. Look at me. I'm here."He breathes.The room is being cleared around us. His men, efficient and practiced, moving people out and managing the man with the gun with the quiet professionalism of people who have d

Nico's Pov We find him in two days.A safehouse in the Belyayevo district, registered to a shell company that took Dima's analyst twelve hours to trace. Ground floor, back exit onto a service lane, two men outside who are not particularly good at looking like they're not outside a safehouse.Sasha pulls the car to a stop half a block down."East entrance," he says. "You take it. I'll go through the front when you're in position.""How long.""Three minutes."I check the time. "Three minutes," I say.I get out.The service lane is dark and narrow and smells like wet concrete and somewhere behind me a cat does something in a bin. I move along the wall to the back door and I wait. The two minutes feel longer than two minutes, which they always do when you're standing in a lane by yourself about to go through a door.My phone vibrates once. Sasha's signal.I go through the door.The man is at a table in the main room. Mikhail Petrov, twenty-nine, Bratva auxiliary intelligence, recruited

Nico's Pov I don't tell him everything that night.Not because I'm hiding it. Because I need to carry it alone for a few hours first, to see what it weighs, to understand what it asks of me before I bring it to him. That's what she's been helping me learn the difference between isolation and processing. I'm not shutting him out. I'm just sitting with my own fear first so it doesn't come out sideways.The letter burns in my pocket like fire, but I push it down. Tonight I need Sasha more than I need air. We are in our bed the night before the pre-wedding event. The lights are low. Sasha lies on his back, watching me with dark, patient eyes.I climb on top of him slowly. “Tonight I want to take care of you,” I whisper. “Let me.”He nods once. For the first time in our healing, he lets me lead.I kiss him deep and slow, tongues sliding together while my hands roam over his chest. I feel his heart beating fast under my palm. I reach down and stroke his cock until it is hard and leaking. S

Nico's PovA year.I know it's been a year because Lucy calls every anniversary of everything, and she calls this morning to say happy anniversary and I answer from bed and Sasha, who is already up because he is always already up, hears me talking and brings coffee without being asked, which he has done every morning for three hundred and sixty-five mornings and which I have not yet stopped noticing."Tell her the coffee is good," he says."He says the coffee is good," I tell Lucy."That's the most romantic thing he's ever said," she says."I'll tell him.""Don't, he'll stop doing it." She pauses. "How is it. Really."I look at him reading at the other end of the kitchen table. The pen behind his ear. The briefing he's annotating. The untouched cup, second one, always the second one he forgets about."Good," I say. "Really good.""Good," she says, and I can hear that she means it.We walk in the afternoon.That's the thing we do now, when the work allows and the day is mild enough, we