CHAPTER 312

CHAPTER 312
ALEXANDER

FOUR DAYS LATER....

I pushed the door open quietly, half-expecting to find her asleep.

She wasn’t. Alina was propped up against the pillows, hair loose and slightly tangled, one of my shirts slipping off her shoulder in a way that immediately made the rest of my thoughts significantly less orderly than they’d been thirty seconds ago.

She looked up the instant I stepped inside, and the way her face softened at the sight of me still did something dangerous to my chest—every single time, no matter how many times I’d walked through this exact door.

“You’re back,” she said.

“I’m back.”

I crossed the room without rushing, though every part of me wanted to close the distance faster than my leg currently allowed.

The limp had improved over the last few days, but it still announced itself with every step. I didn’t care. Nothing in the room mattered except the woman watching me approach the bed.

I sat carefully on the edge of the mattress, close enough that my thigh brushed hers, and just looked at her for a moment.

Colour was finally returning to her cheeks. The shadows under her eyes had lightened. She still looked tired, but she looked like herself again—sharp, alive, unmistakably Alina.

“Hi,” I murmured.

A small smile tugged at her mouth. “Hi.”

I leaned in and kissed her.It was meant to be a fucking peck. It deepened almost immediately.

The kind of kiss that said I haven’t stopped thinking about you since I left this room to deal with Santos.

Her lips were warm under mine. She made a quiet sound against my mouth, one hand coming up to rest flat against my chest like she needed the contact as much as I did.

That was all it took for the careful part to die.
Her fingers curled into my shirt. I angled my head and deepened the kiss further, tasting her properly for what felt like the first time in endless days, and she responded like she’d been waiting the exact same length of time for permission.

Heat rolled through me fast and sharp—too fast for the current medical situation. My body reacted before my brain could intervene.

Blood rushed south so hard it bordered on painful. My cock thickened against the confinement of my pants, already straining, already aching with a need that had been denied for far too long.

My hand slid up to cup the side of her neck, thumb tracing along her jaw as I pulled her closer. She parted her lips without hesitation.

For a few dangerous seconds the rest of the world—Rogers, the reports, the rules, the entire concept of modified bed rest—ceased to exist entirely.

I wanted more..God, I wanted more. I wanted to climb onto that bed properly, drag her into my lap, and fuck her senseless. The waiting was killing me.

My body felt wound too tight, every nerve ending hypersensitive, the ache in my groin a constant, heavy pulse that only got worse the longer I kissed her.

Days of restraint were collapsing all at once. My muscles were locked with the effort of holding back. Even the brush of her thigh against mine sent another sharp jolt of want straight through me.

Her breath hitched against my mouth. My other hand found her waist, fingers pressing into the soft fabric of my own shirt on her body, and she arched slightly into the touch.

A low, involuntary sound escaped me before I could catch it. My cock throbbed hard in response, trapped and insistent, reminding me exactly how close I was to losing the last thread of control.

Then reality arrived like cold water down the back of my neck. Fuck. What am I doing?

Rogers hadn’t cleared her for this.
The baby was stable. The critical window had closed. But “stable” was not the same word as “cleared for whatever I currently wanted to do to her.”

Modified rest still meant limited movement, limited strain, limited everything that involved me losing control the exact way I was thirty seconds from doing.
Fuck.  
Fuck.  
Fuck.

I broke the kiss, and it cost me more than I wanted to admit out loud. My body protested the loss immediately—cock still hard, muscles still tight, every part of me screaming to close the distance again.

I stayed where I was for a second longer than I should have, forehead nearly touching hers, breathing hard, fighting the raw, physical demand to take what both of us clearly wanted.

Alina's eyes were dark when they opened, lips slightly swollen, breathing uneven, looking at me like she was fully prepared to drag me back down and let the rules sort themselves out later.

"Alexander—"

"I know." My voice came out rougher than intended. I pressed my forehead to hers, trying to get my own breathing back under some kind of control. 

"I fucking know. But we can't. Not yet."

She made a small, frustrated sound that nearly undid every ounce of restraint I'd just fought to reclaim.

"Rogers hasn't given the go-ahead," I said, quieter now. "And I'm not risking you. Or the baby. Not even for this. Not even a little."

Her hand stayed fisted in my shirt a moment longer, neither of us quite ready to fully separate, foreheads touching, breathing the same unsteady air, the heat between us stubbornly refusing to fully dissolve.

Finally I forced myself upright, putting distance between us before my resolve could reconsider its position. 

"Fuck. I'm going to take a shower," I said.

Her gaze dropped briefly, then lifted again with a knowing, slightly wicked glint that should probably be illegal given her current medical status. "A cold one?"

"Something along those lines, yes."

She sank back against the pillows, watching me, frustration and reluctant amusement warring across her expression in equal measure. 

“Fucking Rogers,” she muttered. “I swear that man has made it his personal mission to ruin my life.”

I couldn't help the small smile tugging at my mouth. “He's keeping you safe.”

“He's keeping me imprisoned.”

“Just a few more days.”

She groaned, sinking back against the pillows.

“I hate those words.”

"Me too more than you fucking know."

I leaned down one more time, pressing a far shorter, far safer kiss to her forehead, and forced myself to actually walk away this time.



The bathroom door clicked shut behind me and I had to lean against it just to catch my fucking breath.

It was getting harder. Every day, every hour, it was getting exponentially harder to be around Alina and not just take. 

God, I wanted her so badly it was physically painful. Literally. I looked down at the very visible hard-on fighting to get free of my pants and muttered a curse under my breath.

“Behave,” I muttered under my breath, mostly to myself, partly to the stubborn part of my anatomy that had decided the last five minutes constituted a green light.  

“She’s on medical restriction. You heard Rogers. We are not doing this right now.”

My cock remained entirely unimpressed by the argument. If anything, it throbbed harder, like it was personally offended by the concept of self-control.

I clenched my jaw and tried again, shifting slightly on the edge of the bed in a futile attempt to ease the pressure.

“Give it up,” I told it under my breath. “Stand down. That’s an order.”

Nothing. Still hard. Still insistent. Still completely ignoring every rational thought in my head.

“Stubborn bastard.”  

I shrugged off my shirt, the fabric peeling away from my skin where it had grown damp with sweat. I let it fall to the floor in a heap, not caring that it was stained, stiff in places with the blood of Santos I'd spent the last few hours turning inside out. 

The rest of my clothes followed, and I stepped into the shower, twisting the handle all the way to cold.

The water hit me like a physical assault, a thousand icy needles pricking my skin. 

I welcomed the shock, the brutal, cleansing cold. For about three seconds, it worked. 

For three seconds, the frigid spray was a distraction, a punishment for my weakness.

Then it wasn't. I was still hard. Achingly so. The memory of her was a brand, seared into my mind's eye. The soft, surprised parting of her lips under mine. 

The quiet, almost involuntary sound she made in the back of her throat, a mix of pleasure and protest. The way her fingers had twisted in the fabric of my shirt, not pushing me away, but holding on, wanting more.

I braced one hand against the slick, cold tile of the shower wall and wrapped the other around my cock.

A rough, guttural sound escaped my throat the second my fingers made contact. 

I was already leaking, the tip slick with pre-come, my entire length wound so tight it was a sweet, exquisite agony. I stroked once, slow and firm, from base to tip, and my head dropped forward as the water pounded over my shoulders and down my back.

I closed my eyes and let myself have the memory, let it wash over me, consume me. I didn't just remember; I relived it. 

The heat of her mouth, the soft, wet glide of her tongue against mine. The way she tasted—like mint and something uniquely her. In my head, I didn't pull back. 

In my head, I deepened the kiss, swallowing her gasp as I climbed onto that bed, dragging her body into my lap. I imagined my hands pushing her shirt up, up, over the soft curve of her stomach, until I could feel the smooth, warm skin of her back under my palms.

My grip on myself tightened, my strokes becoming more deliberate, more purposeful. 

I thought about the soft weight of her breasts in my hands, how they would fit perfectly against my palms. 

I imagined dragging my thumbs over her nipples, feeling them pebble and harden under my touch, the way her breath would hitch, a sharp, little intake of air. 

I thought about sliding my hand down, down, over the flat plane of her stomach, slipping beneath the waistband of her shorts to find her already wet for me, slick and hot and exactly as desperate as I was.

My strokes became faster, harder, a rough, frantic rhythm. There was no finesse now, only the desperate, clawing need for release. 

I imagined her voice in my ear, a breathy whisper, half scolding, half pleading, telling me we shouldn't be doing this, even as her hips rolled against my hand, seeking more. 

I pictured the look on her face when I finally, finally pushed inside her, the way her head would tip back, her lips parting on a soft, broken sound as I filled her completely, stretched her wide.

"Fuck Wife—"

The word tore out of me, ragged and raw, as I came hard against the tile, my release pulsing out of me in hot, thick spurts. 

"Wife..." I hissed as pleasure, sharp and blinding, ripped down my spine, a powerful wave that made my knees weaken, made me slump against the wall.

I kept my hand moving, milking every last drop of sensation from my body, stroking myself through the aftershocks until the pleasure started to edge into pain and the worst of the ache finally, finally loosened its grip.

Then her voice carried over the sound of the water—dry, unmistakably sarcastic, and far too close.

“Going it alone without me? You’re no fun.”

My head snapped up so fast my neck protested. Every muscle in my body locked tight. 

My heart slammed against my ribs like it was trying to escape. I was naked, still half-hard, caught in the aftermath of the most private moment I had, and there was nowhere to hide.

She was right there. On the other side of the fogged glass I could see her silhouette—soft, familiar, standing just outside the shower like she owned the entire damn room. I was trapped. Cornered. Completely exposed.

And from the tone of her voice, I already knew this was nowhere near over.

“You have a perfectly good wife standing right outside this shower, and somehow you still chose the solo option.”

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.