CLAUDE
I DIDN’T REMEMBER how to breathe without him.
Not really. Not in a way that made the air feel like something I deserved.
But lying here now—beneath him, around him, with his breath brushing mine and his hands moving like they knew every part of me—I finally felt it again.
The breathing. The being.
His eyes were locked to mine, hands trailing every part of my body like he was afraid to miss an inch. Like he needed to memorize the way I trembled beneath him.
“Claude,” he groaned against my lips, lips trailing down my jaw, my neck, kissing and sucking like he needed to taste me again.
“Nikolai, please,” I begged, my hands gripping his shoulders, pulling him flush against me.
He didn’t answer with words.
Instead, he rose up, arms sliding beneath me in one smooth motion, and lif
