Chapter 7
Chapter
Seven
Lucy
Unknown number
Just say the word. Your getaway car is ready. Plane is on standby. You have a new identity.
Me
Who is this?
Your darling cousin
A brief laugh left my mouth. I had many cousins, but Bianca was the only one who calls herself “darling cousin.” I’d gotten a new phone with the same number.
Kirill wanted to give me one programmed for Zahkarov security, but I wasn’t ready to surrender my privacy yet.
There was no assurance that my husband-to-be wouldn’t monitor my communication.
Didn’t mean I couldn’t acquire burner phones without his knowledge.
Mamma’s foot nudged me under the table. “What are you doing?”
After yesterday’s drama at my apartment, this was a surprisingly cordial dinner.
Kirill officially asked Dad and Mamma for my hand in marriage.
Did Dad give me the same escape spiel as Dom and Luca?
Of course, he did. But he didn’t get the chance to corner me for more than a few minutes since yesterday because Mamma was glued to my side.
There wasn’t much conflict resolution of their concerns yesterday. As far as Mamma and I were concerned, the arranged marriage was a done deal. I was even thankful she invited me to spend the night over at the family residence.
We had some mother-daughter time where she advised me on how to carry on my role as a mafia queen. We even indulged in face masks and had her masseuse come to the house, since according to Mamma, I should look my best tonight and I appeared too tense.
She blamed the men in my family at the same time she lovingly chided them. She used sweetness to mask the vinegar. Besides, they were careful about raising Mamma’s blood pressure. Since before Dad’s health scare last year, this was the happiest I’d seen her.
Mamma was positively radiant.
“Nothing. Just the cousins giving me a hard time.”
“What was that, Lusenka?” Kirill asked beside me. He’d been talking to his mother, who seemed as ecstatic as mine.
“My cousins are wondering when they can meet you?”
“We have a month to prepare for the wedding,” he said. “I’m sure that in that time we’ll have plenty of opportunities. Tonight is a formality to adhere to Margo’s procedure.”
Which really should only include the core families, but Luca was at the table too. I think the matchmaker made an exception because she was eyeing my uncle’s son for future alliances.
Rounding out our party were Dom and his fiancée, Sloane.
I thought there would be awkwardness between her and Kirill’s sister since Mamma initially had set her eyes on that union.
Aralina was an enigma. She stopped talking after a fire in their vacation home.
She appeared sweet yet spunky. I saw the way she would sign with Kirill and her parents.
Well, now she was using her phone to communicate with Sloane.
It was interesting that Margo seated them together.
Maybe the matchmaker wanted to shut down whatever cattiness might occur between my two future sisters-in-law.
I could unequivocally say that the problem wouldn’t be coming from Sloane.
She had always been a straight shooter. She’d just passed the NCLEX and was now a licensed nurse.
We owed her big-time for her quick thinking that saved Dad’s life last year.
So if there was going to be friction cropping up, I was on her side.
I didn’t know Aralina well enough to determine whether her sweetness was a front.
Kirill chuckled, and I looked up at him questioningly. He was also looking at Sloane and Aralina. “My sister is shy at first. I hope the two of you will get along.”
I made a noncommittal reply.
After dinner and before dessert, Kirill leaned back in his seat, and his arm went across the back of my chair. His fingers stroked the top of my shoulder. I stiffened. No one noticed his moves because the conversation revolved around the Amalfi Coast properties.
“You didn’t tell me you were going to throw that in.” Ivan leaned forward to look at his son.
“Lucy has great ideas for it,” Kirill said.
“Great ideas?”
Dom coughed into his fist while Luca’s mouth tipped up in a suppressed grin.
Fantastic. Put me on the spot, would you? Everyone at this table knew those villas had been used for sex trafficking.
“We can turn them into a women’s shelter, a sanctuary. A school that would teach new and marketable skills. It’s near tourist spots. So, skills to do with tourism?”
“You might have a problem reclassifying that property use,” Ivan pointed out gruffly, but he didn’t seem angered by my suggestion. He even looked contemplative.
“I can help with the zoning.” Luca had influential connections to organized crime groups in Italy.
“I think that’s a wonderful idea, Lucy.” Irina smiled at me.
“My Lucy is so smart and has such a big heart,” Mamma preened. It was all I could do not to sink into my chair.
“The lawyers should come up with a prenup this week,” Dad said.
“Aw, Paulie,” Mamma groaned. “Did you have to mention that?”
“The properties were mentioned, cara,” he said. “It’s the perfect time to bring it up.”
I agreed, but I was having trouble concentrating on the conversation going around because Kirill’s fingers wouldn’t stop touching me.
It wasn’t unpleasant. It even made me aware of him as a man I might be having sex with in the future. We never talked about consummating the marriage, but typically in arranged marriages that was expected to perpetuate the bloodline.
But ours…would be closer to a marriage of convenience? A marriage in name only?
Ugh…the room grew stifling. I stood up so abruptly that Dom’s eyes shifted sharply to mine, and Sloane gave me a questioning look, but I gave them a slight shake of my head.
I didn’t want them following me.
“Do you want me to come with you?” Mamma asked.
“No,” I said shortly and didn’t wait for anyone else to ask.
Mamma scolded Dad for bringing up the prenup, but she said it so fondly, she made everyone at the table laugh.
Instead of going to the ladies’ room, I strutted straight to the small balcony at the end of the hallway.
Since it was summer, the air wasn’t that refreshing.
The humidity punched me in the face the second I stepped out, but I needed a few minutes to collect myself.
I gripped the railing and pinched the area in the middle of my back to open up my shoulder blades and relieve the tension that was building there.
Footsteps approached. I didn’t need to turn around to know who it was. Of course, he wanted to make sure he played the concerned fiancé.
“You didn’t have to follow me.” Pinpricks of awareness came alive under my skin as the cloak of heat descended over my shoulders and caused me to squeeze the unwanted pinching between my legs.
“Oh, but I did,” Kirill said. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. I just needed some air.”
He gave a snort. “If you want air, you need to find a freezer, not this soup pit. So tell me, what spooked you? Surely not the properties. We’d already mentioned it yesterday.”
“It’s nothing.”
“And you’re a liar.”
He was closer now. His breath feathered the side of my neck and shell of my ear. He could probably see the goose bumps forming there. “Are you sniffing me?” I demanded.
“You object? I like the fragrance you’re wearing. I’m trying to learn you, Lusenka.”
A fractured exhale. “What for? We’re only going to stay married for a year, and then we’ll go our separate ways.”
He laughed briefly, then he gently turned me around. “At least a year. Don’t be na?ve.”
I stared at the knot of his tie while I resisted the urge to press my body to his. God, my nipples were annoying me. They were like beacons trying to punch out of my bra. “Well, it’s still a year.”
“Tell me. What spooked you?”
My throat bobbed.
“My touch? You’ll have to get used to me touching you.”
Tell him. Ask him. Are we going to have sex? My cheeks flushed. They were probably as red as the tomatoes on the salad earlier.
I raised my eyes. “So, I think we didn’t define our boundaries.”
He chuckled. “Are there going to be boundaries between us?”
I narrowed my eyes.
“You’re wondering if we’re going to consummate the marriage.”
I blew out a breath. “Yes.”
“It didn’t occur to me until last night because I assumed that in an arranged marriage, especially the ones Margo brokers, it’s a given.”
“But you finally thought I would think differently.”
“Yes, because it’s you.”
I laughed. “What do you mean?”
“You don’t fit in a box or any preconceived notions. I’m still trying to figure you out.”
“So that touching thing you were doing earlier…you were testing the waters?”
A rumble of humor vibrated in his chest. It was the first time I’d heard such a sound from him. It was the closest thing to a laugh that held no hint of mockery.
“You can say that.” He tipped my chin up with his finger. “Do you detest my touch so much that you have to get out of the room and get away from me? You could have simply told me to stop.”
“And would you?”
He nodded. “Of course. I don’t force myself on women. So, with our marriage, I expect us to consummate eventually, but only when the time is right.”
“But what if the time is never right?”
He snorted. “A year. You think I can’t get you into my bed in a year? You might as well castrate me.”
“You’re not all that, Kirill,” I shot back.
The blue in his eyes sharpened and bored into me. Ice became fire and my breathing hitched. “Tell me honestly, Lucy,” he murmured silkily. “How did my touch feel?”
It was driving me mad, and I was sure he was just humoring me. “It was…not unpleasant.”
“Not unpleasant,” he repeated in a way that sounded partly offended.
His fingers traced the sides of my breasts down to my waist, sending renewed goose bumps rioting across my skin. His hands splayed across my hips, cupping the globes of my ass and squeezing. Throughout this, my breathing grew heavier, and the pinching pressure between my legs intensified.
Holy shit. I never thought Kirill was going to light that fire, and it was the last thought I had before I lost his eyes because his mouth captured mine.
Unlike the peck he’d given me yesterday, his tongue took advantage of my gasp, and he plundered and ravaged.
He pushed me into the corner of the balcony, where he pinned my body between the wall and his.
He dragged my leg over his hip at the same time his fingers went under my skirt, under my thigh, and set my skin on fire.
Wetness pooled between my legs as his fingers sank behind my underwear, straight to the center of me, gathering my arousal. I was embarrassingly wet. I had been since the thought of sex with Kirill entered my mind. He might be an asshole. But he was a sexy asshole.
He gave a rumble of approval but continued plundering my mouth. He applied pressure between my thighs, but not enough. I tried to position my pussy against the heel of his hand. I wanted to come. I was telling myself he wasn’t the only one who needed to test the merchandise.
Kirill laughed quietly and broke the kiss, withdrawing his hand that was underneath my skirt.
My cheeks were on fire, and I was still panting.
It was dark, but I could see him assessing me. Then, deliberately, he sucked my juices from his fingers.
Kirill was a filthy man, and I didn’t know how to react.
Because this man wasted no time and didn’t bother with finesse.
“Come on, let’s go back to the table before Dom or your dad sends a search party.”
He picked up my hand and rested it in the crook of his elbow.
“I need to check my face.”
Kirill glanced down at me, his familiar smirk curving his lips. “You look like you’ve been thoroughly kissed.”
I tried to pull my hand away, but he held on. “Oh no. This is the perfect time to prove to the men in your family that we couldn’t keep our hands off each other.”
“So that was your intent all along?”
“It’s good to show them we have chemistry, no?”
“I don’t know, Kirill.”
“I could have made you come, but you haven’t earned it yet.”
“What?” I snapped. “I don’t like games.”
We were at the entrance of the dining room. “Oh, you will like my games.”
There was no time to retort because Kirill dragged me into the room. My entire face still felt flushed and I could feel my swollen lips from Kirill’s ravaging kiss. The men in my family couldn’t look at me while Sloane had a knowing smile on her face.
There was no doubt what transpired between Kirill and me, and that devil had to draw attention to it.
Kill me now.