43. Viviana

No nightmares.

It's the first thought that pops in my head as I start to wake up.

The next is, Holy fucking shit, that feels good.

I reach between my legs and run my fingers through Mikhail's hair. His hands are hot on my thighs, spreading me wide open so he can feast on every inch of me.

"Good morning to you," I manage as he slips his tongue inside of me. "What a way to wake up."

Mikhail lifts his face to smile at me, but his thumb slides in to replace his mouth. He circles my clit and my hips jerk off the mattress.

"You were already so wet." To prove it, he plunges two fingers into me. I barely have to stretch to accommodate him. "Were you dreaming about me?"

My face flames. "Wouldn't you like to know?"

The dream wasn't concrete—no clear series of events or faces. But I felt… happy. Safe. And I knew Mikhail was there with me.

"I don't care about dreams." He kisses my stomach, my hip. "I prefer reality."

When this is my reality, I tend to agree.

Mikhail fucks me with his fingers and his tongue until I'm gripping the headboard and screaming out my release. When he crawls up my body, I reach for the erection tenting his gray pajama pants. But Mikhail pins my hand to the mattress.

"Later," he says, a dark promise in his eyes.

"Why not now and later? We can do both."

"Unfortunately, we're in a bit of a rush." He presses his forehead to mine, blowing out a harsh breath. "It'll have to wait until we're on the plane."

I jolt upright. "Plane? What plane?"

"My plane."

"Of course you have a plane." I roll my eyes. "I mean, why are we getting on a plane? Where are we going?"

Mikhail smiles cryptically, which might be the single most attractive thing I've ever seen. "Get dressed. You'll find out when we get there."

I have a million more questions, but I know Mikhail won't answer any of them. Strangely… I don't need him to.

Is that trust? Is this what trusting someone feels like? God knows I'm not very familiar with the concept. But this is nice.

"Okay." I slide out of bed on wobbly legs. "Do you want to get Dante ready while I shower?"

"I'll get Dante ready, but—" Mikhail snags me on the way to the bathroom, pulling my naked body against his. He palms my still-throbbing center. "Don't shower. I want you to smell like me."

His eyes are hooded. Mikhail is usually tough to read, but there's no hiding the fact that he wants me. And there's no denying that I like it.

"Okay." I stretch onto my toes and kiss him, tugging on his lower lip with my teeth. Then I turn and walk into the bathroom.

Do I swing my hips a little more than normal? It's impossible to say.

But as the bathroom door closes, I hear Mikhail curse under his breath.

I can't bite back a grin.

"I want to drive the plane!" Dante runs down the center aisle towards the cockpit. "Can I steer?"

I laugh. "Probably not, bud. I think the pilot should do that."

"George would probably let you look around the cockpit once we're up in the air," Mikhail whispers in his ear. "Until then…"

Mikhail opens a secret compartment in the wooden paneling to reveal a mini fridge stuffed with juice boxes and pudding cups.

Dante forgets all about getting into the cockpit and begins stockpiling snacks and drinks in his seat like it"s the end of days. To be fair, I also thought the world would end before I"d ever be on a private plane again. This time is a little different than the last, though.

"He's going to be in a sugar coma by the time we get there. Which reminds me…" I rest my chin on Mikhail's shoulder. "Where are we going?"

He wraps his arms loosely around my back. "If you're trying to catch me off-guard, you'll have to do a better job of distracting me than that."

I lean against his solid body, my stomach fluttering with a whole lot more than pre-flight jitters. "I have a few ideas."

Any "ideas" I have are forgotten as Dante throws his arms around both of our legs. "I'm so excited!" he screeches.

"He's already vibrating and he hasn't even cracked open a juice box," I mutter to Mikhail. "This is going to be a long flight."

"How long?" Dante asks. "Where are we going?"

Mikhail pats his head. "We're going on vacation. That's all you need to know."

He frowns. "What's ‘vacation?'"

I cringe. Survival has been the name of the game for the last six years. There wasn't time, money, or energy for random trips. Still, it feels like a bona fide Mom Fail that my son has never heard the word "vacation" before.

"A vacation is an adventure," I explain. "A fun thing you do just because you want to."

Dante gapes at me like I just told him we're going to live in a magical treehouse and eat nothing but candy for the rest of our lives.

Then he frowns. "But we don't have any money."

If it was possible to die from humiliation, those six words would kill me stone dead.

Mikhail already knows my situation with Dante wasn't exactly lucrative before he came along. That was obvious enough, given my job as a personal assistant to a man with chronic Funyun breath and the apartment held together with tape and hope.

Still, the fact I've said that we don't have money out loud enough times for my five-year-old to repeat it now verbatim is a punch to the gut.

I'm still reeling, trying to figure out what to say, when Mikhail kneels down in front of Dante. "Do you know who owns this jet?" he asks. When Dante shakes his head, he points to himself. "I do. And the house where we live?"

"You? You own the castle?" Dante guesses.

Mikhail nods. "What about the swimming pool and the pantry full of snacks and the cars in the garage?"

"You," Dante answers a bit more confidently.

"Exactly. I own all of that and I'm sharing it with you and your mom," Mikhail explains. "All of this stuff is ours now."

Dante gasps. "The jet is mine?"

"That's right. Yours and mine and your mom's. We all three own it. And we all three have enough money and time to go wherever we want in the world, whenever we want."

"Disney World?" Dante blurts. "Can we go there?"

Mikhail shrugs. "Sure. It's not where we're going today, but we'll go one day."

"Where are we going today?" he asks.

I expect Mikhail not to answer. I'm actually about to warn him that if he doesn't answer, we"ll be in for many hours of Dante repeating the same question ad nauseam.

But Mikhail surprises me with an actual, factual response.

"Costa Rica."

"What?" Dante and I blurt at the same time for very different reasons.

"I have a house there," Mikhail continues, as casually as if he's telling us he owns two pairs of shoes. Like it's no big deal.

"What's Costa Rica?" Dante asks.

I try to explain it to him, but I give up and hand him my phone so he can watch a travel video for Costa Rica on YouTube. That quickly transitions to him watching a movie, which ends with him slumped in his seat with drool on his shirt and a half-finished juice box clutched in his fist.

"I can't believe you're taking us to Costa Rica," I mumble for what has to be the hundredth time in an hour.

Mikhail and I moved to the back of the plane so we wouldn't wake Dante up. According to Mikhail, we have a lot of plans once we arrive, so it'll be good that he"s rested.

"You didn't need to do this," I tell him.

"I don't do anything I don't want to do."

I suppress my snort. I don't doubt that for a second.

"So why did you want to do this?"

"Because I can," he says nonchalantly. "We never had a honeymoon."

"We skipped a lot of wedding traditions. No proposal, no engagement party, no rehearsal dinner, no reception?—"

"No wedding night." Mikhail looks me over, the heat in his gaze setting my insides on fire.

I reach for the blanket folded under his seat with shaking hands. "Do you mind?"

He waves me on. "What's mine is yours, remember?"

I drape the blanket over both of us, snuggling in close. Then I slide my hand under the blanket and scrape my nails along the seam of his pants. "Does that make this mine, too?"

The low growl in Mikhail's throat is hard to interpret, but by the time I have his hard length in my palm and he's snarling a long string of curses under his breath, I'm pretty sure I understand perfectly.