Chapter 26
“The man is the head. The woman is the soul.”
ROMAN
And she fucking finished it.
“I heard the shot,” I say, moving closer, taking note of her flushed cheeks, her panting breaths, and the state of her body. She drops the knife and stares down at her palms.
I’d just arrived. Once Levka informed me Valentina had gone to the greenhouse, I was making my way there when the gun went off.
I examine my wife. No definable injuries I can make out, though it’s more difficult with all the blood covering her. She’s shaking, her hands trembling, but she doesn’t seem too worse for wear.
“I really liked this dress,” she murmurs, tugging at the long sleeves, soaked in blood. “And the coat.”
Kneeling beside her, I lift a single thumb to her blood-splattered cheek and say, “I will buy you enough dresses and coats to fill the manor, Moya Samotsvet. But I must know: are you injured in any way?”
I don’t give a damn if my hands roam. I check her throat for any knife slashes and then her chest. She shakes her head and whimpers when I cup her breasts, smearing away the red, discerning for any injuries.
“I think I may have sliced my hands a little…” She opens her quivering palms, and I draw them closer, smearing away the blood and finding the cuts. Not too deep. Mostly chafing from the handle. Good.
“I made a bit of a mess,” she shrugs, her blush shimmering right through all the blood.
“Let’s simply call it violent art.” I smile, tugging her dress back up with care. “Macabre, yes. But I’m not complaining about the view.”
She huffs a soft laugh, unsteady as she tries to rise to her feet. I catch her under the arms, lifting her easily. Her legs buckle anyway.
Without hesitation, I sweep her into my arms. She doesn’t protest. Just folds into me like she belongs there, her head nestling against my chest. I couldn’t give a fuck about the blood on my thousand-dollar suit.
My heart…fucking hell. It’s pounding so loud I’m sure she can hear it.
I glance down at the corpse, his blood puddling in the soil like wine. Then I tap my chip to summon Zina. No answer. I try again. Still nothing.
“I sort of…um…locked her and Mikhail in the study,” Valentina murmurs, eyes flicking up.
“You what?”
“They were bugging me,” she says with a shrug, one I feel more than see. “I took their phones and told them they couldn’t come out until they finished the vodka bottle I left with them.”
I tip my head back and bark out a laugh. Warmth spreads through me—amusement, pride, and the growing heat below my belt that this blood-soaked goddess has somehow made worse.
“I don’t know what impresses me more,” I say, looking down at her. “Your diabolical mind and ability to finally cut through the bullshit of those two…or how goddamn gorgeous you looked covered in blood, holding that knife like a queen of death.”
She wraps one arm around my neck, the other pressed to her chest like she’s holding in her own heartbeat. “Let’s just go with both.”
I chuckle low, leaning in to kiss her temple. “I’ll call Zina’s seconds to take care of the body. The last thing we need is a pack of wolves sniffing around.”
“Wolves are too good for that miserable piece of shit.”
I will learn more soon, but my wife’s well-being comes first.
“Where are we going?” she murmurs.
“To the hot spring,” I say, already moving. “It’s closer than the bedroom, and the minerals will do more for your skin than the shower. We’ll warm you up properly.”
And cleanse her.
Not just her skin—but whatever shadow clung to her tonight.
“Mmm, Roman,” she moans appreciatively as I slowly lower her head back, one hand stationed on the back of her neck while my other sinks her hair into the water. Blood swirls off her skin in ribbons, soon disappearing.
The night wind stirs, brushing our upper halves with its chill, but the hot spring wraps us in a cocoon of steam. Above, wispy clouds drift like gauze across the sky, delicate pulsing veils stretched over a thousand stars.
“How are you feeling?” I ask, bringing my wife back up, reveling in the heat of her nude body against mine.
Fuck if I don’t love how she clings to me as I lower myself onto the bench. Curling up in my lap, she nestles her head on my shoulder, legs dangling off the edge of the bench. I swear that ripe, little ass is purposefully rubbing against my hardness.
“Better,” she whispers.
Her lips touch my jaw, and she squeezes her arms around my back, but they hardly connect, given how broad I am.
Her need and that light kiss are enough to undo me.
It’s a miracle I haven’t rutted her up against the side of the spring, especially after a week-long absence.
But I require answers first. And…she deserves some.
“Tell me everything,” I urge her.
“Um…” she stiffens, her head popping up. “Whatever Emilian says, I promise I did not try to burn down the kitchen, Roman.”
I refrain from laughing as I picture her in an apron trying to cook. More mischief and mayhem from my fiery zhena. If I weren’t preoccupied by the latest event, I would bend her over my knee and give her a just spanking.
“Valentina,” I lower my voice, warning, then cup her chin, arresting those violet gems.
She heaves a sigh. “I went to the cemetery. It’s become a bit of a nightly ritual.” She shrugs, her lips pressing into a frown. I rub my thumb along the edge of her jaw. “But I heard a noise in the woods. I tried to run back to the manor, but Mr. Tall, Dark, and Asshole grabbed me before I could.”
“What did he want?”
“He wanted you,” she says, her voice cracking. My thumb stops. “He said you needed to pay for your sins and the lives you took from him.” My chest bulges, turning to iron as her palms settle above my heart, fingertips poised. “He asked if I even knew what my husband does.”
“What else, Maya Valya?” I cup her cheek now.
She shrugs, her eyes burning again. “He called me a whore. Made me strip. I was his bait, and he didn’t care if I was alive or dead when you came.”
“Hmm…curious how he called you bait.” I comb my fingers through her sodden waves while I trail my other hand along the top of her thigh. “What I saw was not bait, Valentina, but a lioness, an empress, dealing the highest order of reckoning to a worthless, wriggling worm.”
She smiles up at me and kisses my cheek. Fuck, my cock throbs as she rubs against me and says, “I like that. Especially since worms are bait. Or fish food in this case.”
“Indeed.” I smirk, considering how his body has likely been tossed to the sea at this point. “Did he say anything else?”
She bites her lower lip, her eyes darting to each corner.
I tense, a dark suspicion prowling along my spine.
I can’t be certain, but I believe she’s keeping something from me—holding back.
But then, she shakes her head, and those eyes seem to melt with longing and need.
I imagine she wishes to forget what happened, what she did.
No matter how spirited and strong my wife is, Valentina is still a woman, flesh and bone, heart and soul. Human.
“How are you here, Valentina?” I tap the side of her head, then lower my palm to her heart. “And here?”
She scrunches her brows, a dark melancholy in her eyes.
But a moment later, she gives me an impish smile and shifts her body until she’s chest to chest with me, rubbing that tight pussy along my pelvis.
“You should ask how my vagina is doing. You’ve been gone for seven days.
What does a girl gotta do to get some big, bad Russian dick around here? ”
As tantalizing as she is, this is a mask. I won’t let her wear one tonight.
“Valentina Makarova,” I deepen my voice and grip her hips. “We’re not done.”
“Ugh,” she groans, tipping her head back. “What do you mean? We haven’t even started.”
Christ, this girl. My jaw clenches. “I’d slam your upper half down on the ice and spank you if I didn’t know it would only reward you. But I know you have questions, Moya Samotsvet. And I’d say you’ve earned a few answers.”
“Sins against him. The lives you took. Politics adjacent. Military adjacent,” she says both in low, mocking terms with a roll of her eyes.
“I already connected the dots, Roman.” My muscles flex as she tiptoes her fingers along the side of my neck, before coiling her hand around the back, slipping it under my hair, and tapping my tattoo.
“I did some research on your ink. And after tonight, I have an educated guess. Not a stab in the dark. Well, you probably do a lot of stabbing in the dark.” She laughs.
“Valentina,” I growl, jerking her closer. My dick is damn near raging. This shrewd, little vixen with her sharp tongue and dark wit.
“Enforcer. Mafia,” she finalizes, going so far as to touch her nose to mine. And naughty girl grinds her cunt against the edge of my cock. “Am I right?”
Goddammit, she opens her mouth, scraping her teeth along my jaw until she arrives at my ear, whispering, “Am. I. Right?”
Need some fucking control. So, I seize her neck, a firm grip around her throat, and stare her down with the depth of a man who will raze the world to keep her. I’ve bled for less. Killed for even less. And now she’s everything—my fucking reason, my vow made in hell, my edge of madness.
“You’re more than right,” I say, low and deep. “Assassin, Valentina. The best goddamn assassin they ever bred, trained, and unleashed. You’re mine. And I’ll bury a city under ash and bone before I let anyone take you from me.”
“Thank fuck!” she rasps, practically gulping, then arching her throat, which only restricts her breath more.
Now, I kiss her. Now, I attack her mouth.
Crushing and sucking and biting and licking her exquisite mouth before picking her up, rising from the spring, and dumping her onto the icy moss.
She opens her mouth, taking my tongue, twirling it with hers.
My pulse ignites. Blood thunders in my ears.
My cock is starved for her, but I want more, need more.
We’ve crossed the threshold. Now, she knows who I am, what I am.
I burned my way into her soul. Now, she’s clawed her way inside mine.
Her hips roll, her body rising to mine. But the moment she touches my hair and grips the back of my neck to kiss me harder, I growl, seize her wrists, and thrust them above her head. Her breath heaves and cleaves, and she glares up at me. Such a feisty, hungry little queen.
“Give me your thoughts, wife,” I command, locking her in my gaze. “Your feelings. When you killed him.”
“Really? Now?” she fumes, bucking her hips, trying to hump me, the little vixen.
“Now.”
“It felt good. So good.” She takes a deep breath, her smile spreading.
I can imagine her with fangs. “Not even power. It wasn’t about that.
It was just adrenaline and endorphins. It was seeing red and feeling it more.
It was needing and wanting to protect you.
And to show that son of a bitch what happens when he touches what’s not his. ”
Bloody Jesus Christ, this woman. “Muzh - golová, zhená - dushá,” I tell her, lowering one hand from her wrists to trace the flaming jewel at the base of her throat. When she tilts her head with an adorable smile, I translate, “The man is the head. The woman is the soul.”
And she is.
She’s the fire beneath my ribs, the thing that breathes rage into my blood and turns it into something holy.
I am an abyss of a man who has forged my empire from bone and blood.
But she stares up at me now, defiant as ever, her lips curling into something between a smile and a snarl. Ready to forge more with me.
Then she says it. “Ya drozhashchaya tvoreniye… ili u menya yest’ na eto pravo, Roman?” Am I a trembling creature… or do I have the right? Like a knife unsheathed beneath velvet. She’s been practicing.
Not a plea. A demand. A fucking dare.
She’s not asking for reassurance. She’s forcing me to claim it. If I dare call myself the head, I prove I’m worthy to command a soul like hers, to prove she is my soul.
God help me. This woman is my perfect match. She will never temper me. She will always sharpen me.
My Queen. My fury. My fucking reckoning.
“You think I chose you by accident?” I growl, gripping her throat again. “My soul hunted yours before I knew your name. You weren’t recruited. You were anointed. You have the heart of a queen and the soul of an empress—you were created to rule this world at my side.”
I crush my mouth to hers, tasting her defiance like a sacrament. And hover the words like a prayer above her trembling lips. “You are not a trembling creature,” I snarl. “You are my right.”