Chapter 33
Irelynn
It’s with shock and surprise that I greet Tara with a stuttered, “G-good morning,” as soon as I enter the kitchen. Ilya’s strong arm is laced around my waist, holding me close. I can’t miss the way her dark eyes drift over the two of us standing intimately together, like a real couple.
We’d slept like a real couple, too. A tangle of limbs and twisted hearts.
Every inch of my skin flushes at the way I’d woken to Ilya’s hot mouth on my skin, his fingers playing between my legs. Like the first time he made me come unstitched at the seams, Ilya didn’t enter me, didn’t demand more from me. With one hand around his cock, the other pleasuring me, he came.
When he’d come the time before, he’d been drenched in darkness. This time, morning light had illuminated him in a soft, December glow of pale white. Pleasure, and something like pain, twisted his expression in the moments before a glorious roar had ripped from his throat.
Ilya is not a loud man. In fact, he’s impossibly quiet, stealthy even. He does not scream or yell or bark orders in a command everyone hears and obeys. He speaks quietly, the undercurrents of a deadly threat ever-present in his quiet tones. His eyes are never wild, unless he’s looking at me, that is.
I seem to bring out something in him that otherwise is not there. It’s in my presence that a little of his still, deadly calm, unravels.
Tara smiles a soft, knowingly pleased smile as she lifts a thick, well-buttered piece of fresh banana bread. “Do you want a piece?”
My banana bread. I totally forgot about it.
Thank goodness someone had the presence of mind to take it out of the oven.
I force myself to speak, blushing even harder when it comes out as a croak. “Yes. I think I will.” I feel shy for utterly no reason as I look up at Ilya. “Can I get you one?”
“Did you make it, or my mother?”
Tucking a strand of hair behind my ear, I mutter, “It was a joint effort.”
Ilya chuckles, but it’s gone quickly. His hard blue eyes, filled with so many jagged shards of ice, turn soft and warm as he studies my face. Then, he says gently, “Yes, please.”
I step past an Abu who is gnawing happily on a bone on a little cushion that’s been set in the corner. He eyeballs me but doesn’t stop nibbling to give me a yap of hello.
It’s odd for Polina to not be in the kitchen, but I find it nice to be able to gather my own coffee and bread. It feels more like home, doing these simple things for myself.
Home…
Don’t think about home, Irelynn. This isn’t your home. This will never be your home.
But maybe…
I shove the thoughts from my mind as I bring Ilya a cup of coffee and his bread. Then I return for my own, noting the chair he’d pulled from the table beside his own. I sit next to him as nervous butterflies swarm my belly.
“I trust you had a good night, talking of your differences.” Tara takes a bite of her bread. Her eyes twinkle. “And a very good morning.”
Horror strikes me. She knows.
She knows me and Ilya—she knows I—he—we came.
How does she know?Realization hits me like a blow. Ilya’s roar.
“Stop taunting her,” Ilya commands around a sip of coffee. “It took hours last night to undo the damage your truth caused.”
“She needed to know.” Tara’s eyes settle coolly on her son. “You should have told her.”
“I would have, in time.”
They’re talking about her little—or rather big—Bratva revelation.
I want to melt into my chair. I want to sink into a nondescript puddle on the floor. I do not want to be here for this.
Ilya had frightened me before. Now, knowing what he is and what he’s capable of—he terrifies me.
Even still, I’m oddly curious about him. Oddly, uncomfortably drawn to him, and shamefully responsive.
“It is imperative to hers, and your safety, that she know.” Tara doesn’t give up, doesn’t back down to the cool snap of Ilya’s blue eyes.
She’s got stones, I’ll give her that. If Ilya looked at me like he was looking at her, I think I’d turn to ice and burst into a million shards under the pressure. I shift nervously in my seat.
I wonder, if I were to bolt right now, would he chase me?
Good Lord—why does the idea make me feel all warm and tingly and hopeful? What is wrong with me?
“Can I trust you with her, or do I need to call Mikhail?”
Tara returns Ilya’s glare with one of her own. “Do not threaten to kick me out of your home, Ilya Volkov. The world may think you heartless, but you’re my son. I raised you better than that.”
“Answer me,” Ilya responds coolly.
Tara sighs. “Of course, you can trust me with her.”
“Good.” Ilya stands. He’s hardly touched the bread on his plate or the coffee in his cup when he turns to me. “I have work.”
“Oh, I—” I get not another word out before his big hand is around the back of my neck, and he’s leaned down to cover my mouth with his. His kiss is entirely inappropriate in front of his mother, and even as I do my best to push him away, his invasion becomes deeper, more insistent, until I finally relent.
Only then, as my tongue swipes against his and his taste seeps deep to taunt my soul, does he pull away. He leaves the room then, leaving me utterly breathless, and entirely confused.
When I gather myself enough to lift my coffee and take a sip, Tara says, “They are not easy men to love. Volkov men are hard and ruthless. Ilya is even more so than Alexei. But I can tell you from experience, that if you let yourself love him, you won’t regret it.”
I’m silent for a long moment. Then, quietly, I ask, “How?”
“How, what?”
“How did you let yourself love Alexei after he stole you from your life? How were you able to forgive him so you could even get to that point?”
Tara sits back in her chair, her thoughts drifting behind the prison of dark, nearly black eyes. Ilya must have gotten his eyes from his father.
Finally, Tara says, “I was not easy for Alexei to win. I was younger than you are now, and not as mature as you clearly are.”
How does she know how old I am?
A grin slides across her lips, and as though she can read my thoughts, explains, “I may have interrogated everyone who would allow it last night, about you. I’ve learned enough to know that you haven’t been nearly as hard on Ilya as I’d been on Alexei.” She ponders those words a moment, and adds, “If I’m being honest, for you, that is probably best.”
“What does that mean?” My heart kicks. “If I’d been more difficult, he would have hurt me?”
“No, not hurt.”
My heart stills in my chest. “Did Alexei hurt you?”
Her smile softens as her eyes grow distant again. She’s thinking of the past—of her early days with her now husband. When she takes a deep breath, I brace myself. “Alexei took me when I was eighteen.” I nod, because she’d already told me as much. “Although I’d noted he was immensely handsome, and when I’d been serving him in my father’s café, I had been attracted to him—I admit he was much older than me.”
“How much older?”
Tara appraises me for a moment. “He was a year older than my own father.”
My mouth drops. “Wh—what?”
“When Alexei took me, he was forty-one years old.”
“That’s a twenty-three-year age gap!”
“It is.” She nods. She already knows, of course. “And there is a twenty-one-year age gap between you and Ilya.”
It’s just as bad, I know this logically, but somehow it seems less so.
“It’s wrong,” I blubber, more because I think I should than I feel the truth of the statement. Yes, there is something very wrong with me.
“Alexei was not a soft or patient man, but he tried to be with me. I did not make it easy for him, and he lost his temper more than once in return. But he never really hurt me. He did things he shouldn’t, of course. But he was, and is, a ruthless man. Ruthless men live by another code, one I did not—could not comprehend at the tender age of only eighteen.” She laughs. “I was, for lack of a better word, a brat.”
“You had every right to be a brat. He took you.” I snap. “What did he expect?”
Her smile falls just a little. “Have you been a brat, Irelynn?”
I stiffen in my chair. “Maybe a little.”
Her smile grows just a bit, that twinkle in her eyes brightening. “Good.”
“Good?”
“Ilya deserves it. Just a bit, don’t you think?”
I gape. Then I breathe, “I’m so confused right now.”
She laughs, and Abu lifts his head. “I tested Alexei at every turn. I spit vile things at him, threw tantrums I never would have thrown had I known the way others had died at his hands. I taunted him. Through it all, he remained determined to possess me. All of me. I was with him for only six months before he succeeded in stealing my heart. It was with that, I finally handed him my innocence. My first son, Kirill, was born nine months after that. And I was irrevocably, willingly, completely captured by him.”
“And you’re happy?” My heart is a wild thing in my chest. A phoenix burning, flying to break free.
“I am happier than I can possibly explain. The love I have for Alexei grows every day, as does his love for me. I am his Queen. I am the thing he cherishes most, and for me, his hard hands are always, always soft.”
“Why are you telling me all this?”
“Because I can sense the battle that rages within you. The strings of your heart pull you relentlessly toward Ilya, the fall inevitable. But your mind is telling you it’s wrong and dirty, shameful to feel the things you do. But it’s not.”
“He stole me.” My voice rattles. So does the coffee between my hands.
“Volkov men have a talent. Or perhaps it’s a curse. They love one woman, fiercely. They fall for her at first sight, and they fall completely. They will do whatever it takes, anything, to possess her.” She watches me steadily. “And the women always, always fall.”
“What if I don’t?”
“He will chase you until the day he dies, Irelynn. For both your sakes, I pray you reject the wrongs of society and instead, listen to the rights inside your heart. I pray you find it within yourself to forgive him, so that you can move forward and accept the undying love that a bad man who will only ever be good for you, has.”