Chapter 17
MINA
My body does not care that the room is quiet and the ocean is a soft shush under the boards. It knows who is missing. My breasts ache like a bruise that warms and sharpens by turns.
I stand in the bathroom with the fan on.
I turn the shower to a steady run so I have cover noise.
It’s not that I’m embarrassed—I just don’t want to wake Roman.
He’s sleeping well, and I think that is a rare thing for him.
The pump hums. Pull, release. Pull, release.
The relief crawls in and then breaks open.
I brace my palm on the tile until the ache eases and the sting gives way to a loose, tired ache.
After dumping the milk, which feels like such a waste, I walk into the main space of the bungalow. Outside, late sun turns the water copper and then dark. The deck boards hold the day’s warmth. Roman sits up. Guess I woke him anyway. His eyes read my face without making a project of it.
“Better?”
“Yeah.”
“Dinner,” he says. “We should eat.”
Food feels like a dare. In my head I see a silver tray and a single cup that could have killed us. My stomach flips. “If Vitaly is here, won’t he try again? The food could be poisoned.”
“He tried that once and failed. Vitaly doesn’t try the same failed tactic twice.”
“Promise?”
“I promise. And I taste the food first. No arguments.”
The walk to the main lodge is short. Torches line the walkways. Somewhere a guitar strums peacefully. We sit at a corner table that reads as romantic and lets him see the door, the water, the boardwalk. He’s observant, my Roman.
Odd to think of him as mine, but he is my husband, so it counts.
Odd to think of myself as married too.
The server brings water in frosted bottle. Roman opens it himself. He drinks first. He makes a face that says it’s fine. I let out a breath. He keeps it simple. “Soup. Grilled fish. Rice. Fruit for dessert. Nothing that needs a sauce.” The server races away for our order.
“You picked some simple dishes.”
He nods. “Any idea why?”
It’s a test, so I think about my answer. “Because simple is fast, and fast is good, if we need to take off suddenly. And because it’s harder to hide poison in simple dishes.”
His proud smile hits somewhere low in my spine. “Precisely.”
True to his word, he tastes every dish before letting me eat. It feels ridiculous, especially because the restaurant is full enough for this to be awkward. But I’d rather be awkward and safe than normal and dead.
I’m curious about my husband. It’s weird to think of him as a stranger, but we practically are in most ways. “Tell me something about you. Something I don’t know.”
He turns the stem of his glass once and sets it in the sand-filled candle tray. “You deserve a gentle story. I do not have one for this.”
“Gentle stories never interested me, Roman. Not even when I was a kid. I always preferred the truth. History, mythology, that kind of thing. Try me.”
He folds his napkin in his lap and takes a deep breath, before knocking back more wine. “Very well. Do you know I was married before?”
“Vitaly’s mother?”
He nods. “Did he ever tell you about her?”
“He said he had more in common with her than you, and that’s why you didn’t want him to take over your role.”
His laugh is short and bitter. “He’s not far off. Bridgette was her name. My father’s favorite assassin had daughters. The assassin, who went by Caine, had been hired by my father’s rivals to take him out. He said I could save his life if I married Bridgette.”
“You married her to save his life?”
“He was my father. He was pakhan. I did what any good son in the Bratva would do.”
“That’s nuts.”
He smiles. “I married you to save four lives. Our sons, yours, and mine. Is it all that different?”
The realization makes me laugh. “I guess not. What was Bridgette like?”
“She was never asked what she wanted. I think that grated on her more than anything. She was raised by an assassin to be one herself. Powders. Tinctures. Timing. She was a sharpshooter, as well. And skilled with knives, both throwing and standard. Sitting next to her was like sitting in a tiger’s cage. ”
The thought makes me cringe, and sarcasm comes naturally. “Sounds like fun.”
A mirthless laugh. “Worse still, the threat was a story. My father and Caine made it up between them. They wanted me married, settled. They wanted a line old men could call legitimate.”
A breath blows out of me. “That’s messed up.”
“Indeed.” He sighs, gazing over the darkening water.
“I didn’t find out until after Vitaly was born and my father was considered to be “safe.” Upon Vitaly’s birth, he and Caine had a big laugh, telling me how my father had never been in any danger—it was all just a story to form a blood bond between our families and make the other pakhans fear us.
After all, who would attack a pakhan with an assassin in his family? ”
“Damn.”
He sips his wine, as if he needs it to get through the story. “Bridgette wanted power with her name on it. She hated that I held the power between the two of us. She had the training to make me fear sleep. I watched my back. For years.”
“Did you ever love her?”
“No,” he says with weight. I can’t tell if he feels guilty about it.
“I loved another. Olga. A rival’s daughter.
We were young and foolish and thought we might be able to bridge the rivalry with our love.
” His eye roll makes me smile, despite the sadness of the tale.
“And then I married Bridgette to save my father. Olga hated me for it, not that I blame her for that. I hated myself too, after I found out the truth.”
“I hope you don’t hate yourself anymore.”
“No. But it’s hard not to blame myself for Olga’s death.”
“What happened?”
“She married an ambitious man in New York, who thought he could use a pakhan’s daughter to bolster his image in the Bratva. A bomb took her car apart in the first year of their marriage.”
I cover his hand on the table. “I’m sorry.”
“So am I. It was a bad end, but at the very least, it was a quick one. She would have been ground down by this life. Olga had a kind heart. She was a genuinely good person who lit up every room she entered. It was impossible not to love her.” His sigh is heavy.
“She would have suffered a slow demise if we had been together. She had no taste for what I do, too many morals and qualms, not enough ruthlessness.”
“Am I anything like her?” I ask. It’s not a fair question, but I can’t hold it in.
He squeezes my fingers once. “No. You know where to stand, when to move. You do not break when men tell you that you will. You are defiant and strong-willed. A good person, but one with enough seasoning to know how to watch her own back and protect her children. That is the difference.”
My throat burns. So do my eyes. He does not look away. He rubs his thumb over my knuckles once, then lets me fix my face without forcing comfort on me.
I’m not used to being seen that way. “Vitaly said I was weak. He said I needed him. He said I was lucky he would take care of me. He said I wouldn’t last a week alone.”
“And yet, a year later, here you are,” Roman says. “Vitaly sees what he wants to see. Tries to manipulate people into seeing it too. He is not as smart as he thinks he is.”
The server brings fruit. Pineapple and papaya arranged like a sun, and I nibble at the papaya. “Thank you for telling me. For not sanding the edges off.”
“I won’t lie to you, Mina. I’ll give you the unvarnished truth, if you’ll do the same for me.”
“Deal.”
We walk along the water’s edge after dinner.
The torches on the sand make small circles of light.
The path to our bungalow is a line of boards and shadow.
Marcus and Tanner trail us at a distance.
They look like men killing time, not personal bodyguards.
Not that it matters—no one else is around this part of the beach.
I want them gone. The want is not smart. It is hot and simple and lives low in my spine. I stop. Roman stops because I stop. He follows my eyes to the guards. “Tell them to give us the beach.”
“Why would I do that?”
“I want my husband to have his way with me here. Now.”
The word husband puts heat in his eyes. He looks at the men and back at me. He hates that he wants what I want, because he knows how irresponsible it is to send them away.
“Marcus, back to the boardwalk,” he calls. “Tanner, eyes on the path. Any sound from the water, you call the dock.”
No smirks. No jokes. Positions shift. Space opens.
We step into a clearing between some of the clustered palm trees.
They’re tight enough to provide the illusion of privacy.
They tick in the breeze like quiet applause.
My back finds a warm, mostly smooth trunk at a perfect angle for leaning against, with my legs spread wide. I lift the hem of my dress for him.
He looks at me, splayed there for him. “You’re definitely trouble.”
I giggle as he steps up to me, lowering his linen trousers. He toys with me a moment, ensuring I’m ready for him. “Mm, yes, just like that.”
His fingers leave me wanting for only a breath before his cock fills me up.
I’m tender from before, and that heightens the sensations.
“You said you want me to have my way with you.” He pulls me onto him, so I wrap my legs around his body.
“This is my way.” He bounces me on his cock so hard that I see stars.
No wait—those are the actual stars.
My head tipped back at some point, evidently. When I make eye contact with him again, I take his mouth as he fucks me roughly. This is stupid—he isn’t wearing a condom. But I don’t care.
I have never felt so seen in my life. Roman understands me. He knows what I’ve been through and sees the person it has made me into, and he likes me anyway. There’s something alluring about that. I can’t explain it.
I think I’m falling for my husband.
He kisses me in a way that leaves a mark. He listens to my breath and answers it. I hook my fingers in his hair and tug until he laughs into my throat. His palm lands above my head on the bark. His other hand finds my hip.
The resort is not empty. Life hums. Far away, someone sings. The guards are shadows. I stop caring. This is ours. I press into him. The tree holds. The sand gives, but he’s steady on his feet anyway.
Roman drives harder and deeper, and my orgasm strikes without warning.
When I cry out, he kisses me savagely, biting my tongue.
The pain makes my orgasm into something more primal, more animal.
My whole body jerks and throbs and soars inside my skin.
The moment I find myself again, he lays me on the tree, pulls out, and shoots onto the sand with a snarl.
When the world sharpens again, the night is deeper. He finds my sandal half-buried and kneels to slide it on. Didn’t realize I’d lost it. It’s a small gesture that almost breaks me. He tears me apart and puts me back together again, and I’ve never had that.
We head back to the bungalow on shaking legs, and our shadows reappear, still seeming like fellow tourists instead of guards.
We’re quiet on the walk back, so my mind drifts.
He said Olga was too nice for this life.
He said I am not. He meant it as respect, and I take it that way.
I was not built for dinner parties with polite chitchat or a house with a dog and a white picket fence.
I am built for this night and the morning after.
I will survive this and he sees that in me.
I won’t let him down.