Chapter 18
ROMAN
Dawn thins the dark to a gray edge. I wake the way I always wake in a place that could turn on me. I lie still, fully awake, eyes closed for the first minute, just in case someone stands over me. This way, I can get the drop on them.
One part of me listens for weight on the boards. One part counts the small knocks of the tide on the pilings. The rest holds still and lets the room report.
There is nothing out of the ordinary in here. Nothing to be on high alert for. But I wake this way regardless of reality.
In films, I’ve seen scenes of drowsy people, slowly finding their way to being awake. When I was young, I always thought that was the oddest thing. Who wakes up like that, when sleeping is the most vulnerable time of your life, and enemies could be standing over you?
I was in my late teens when I found out that most people wake up like that. Normal people, that is.
Normal people don’t spring to alertness for fear of an attack.
They don’t listen for enemies in their bedroom.
They don’t wake with a jolt of adrenaline that spikes every sense just in case.
They don’t fall asleep with a gun under their pillow and a knife tucked between the mattress and the box spring.
The morning after I slept with Olga the first time, she gave me a slow, satisfied smile as she rolled over and wished me good morning.
I knew then that the movies weren’t always as fake as I thought they were.
She wasn’t on high alert. She wasn’t afraid the moment she woke, despite being in a hotel room instead of her own bed.
I was never so jealous of someone as I was of her that morning.
The bed is cold on Mina’s side of it. My eyes pop open, and she’s no longer there. On the nightstand sits a folded square of paper that was not there when I closed my eyes. I flip it open.
Went for a swim. Join me.
I cross the deck. The lagoon is flat and pale. For a breath I see only water. Then I find her. Thirty yards out, inside the ring of bungalows. Face down. Still. Perfectly still.
Two long shadows circle below her.
Sharks.
My chest goes cold. I take the short knife from the drawer by the slider and vault the rail.
Salt water closes over my head. Cold, then warm. The shadows dart. I cut toward her. Wake folds against her back. She lifts her face at the push of it. A snorkel tips from her mouth. Mask. Wet hair slicked back. Her eyes blink clear behind the lens and then she smiles like I am the surprise.
“You scared them,” she says through a laugh. She spits water and pushes the mask to her forehead. I stop hard, take a mouthful of lagoon, swallow wrong, and cough. The wrong word in my throat changes shape.
Not dead. Alive. She’s alive. Thank fuck.
“You were face down around a bunch of sharks—”
“Snorkeling,” she says, still amused, not unkind. She holds up the cheap snorkel like proof.
I tread water and let my brain catch up to the fact that she’s fine. Mina floats on her back now, hair fanning, the mask sitting like a tired crown. The sharks are gone to wherever old dogs go when a stranger claps. I reach and touch her hip with two fingers because my hands need to feel her.
“I’m sorry I broke up the party. What were they like?”
“Curious. Careful. One had a scar on the fin, one a pale blotch behind the gill. She let me pet her sometimes until you showed up.”
“I owe you for that.”
“You do,” she says, and the smile turns from amused to invitation.
The last of the cold drains out of my chest. A different heat takes its place. “Come on.” I slide a hand under her ribs and tow her toward the ladder. She lets me.
The bungalow rises above us, wood dark with pale morning light. At the ladder she grips a rung and climbs two steps. The view of her bikini-covered ass, wet and round, is exquisite.
“Sit right there on the edge.”
“Um, okay.”
I move my hands to the backs of her thighs and lift until her knees find the slats where the ladder kisses the lower deck. Water runs off her in thin lines. The snorkel dangles and drips. I stand in the lagoon and rest my palms on warm wood.
“Take your bikini bottom off.”
She snorts a laugh. “Are you serious? People could—”
“Off. Now.”
She bites her lip mischievously and takes it off, then leans back on her elbows.
I lay her legs over my shoulders and feast. The salt water adds its own flavor—clean and briny—to my breakfast. I mash my tongue against her clit until she’s purring for me.
Her fingers dive into my wet hair as she moans my name.
The lagoon is a quiet room. The water carries sound away. I keep one hand on her hip and one on her thigh to hold her steady. I make good on what I owe her and take my time.
I want her to remember this.
I listen to the small changes in breath and note the way her fingers tighten on my hair. When I go more to the left, her fingers grip and her breath goes still. That’s the spot. I center my focus there, and soon, her legs shake on my shoulders.
Curses pour from her lips now, and as much as that makes me happy, smiling would take me off course. Instead, I add two fingers inside of her to raise the stakes. Her keening whine pierces the quiet. “There, oh god, right there!”
Her orgasm has a taste all its own as she gushes on my face. Waves squeeze around my fingers and different waves slap at my waist, but I keep going until she starts to pull away and squeaks, “Too sensitive!”
It’s impossible not to feel proud of that.
I climb the ladder and lie down beside her as she pulls up her bikini. “Was that worth losing the sharks?”
“Yeah,” she says with a giggle. “You ruin things well.” Her voice scrapes and smooths in the same breath. She looks blissful.
I am no longer sorry I chased away the sharks.
“I know why you panicked,” she says without turning. “You have your own ghosts.”
“I do.”
She goes inside and returns with two towels and the bottle of water we left on the table.
She wraps me up, and the towel smells like sun and soap.
A small wet curl tucks under her ear. “I have ghosts too, so to speak. But I think mine are more metaphorical than yours. What happened to Bridgette? Vitaly told me his mother was dead.”
“That’s hardly appropriate pillow talk.”
“Well, there aren’t any pillows out here. So talk.”
I chuckle at that and shrug. If my stubborn bride wants the story, so be it. “Ironically, food poisoning.”
She blinks. “Someone poisoned her food?”
“No, E. coli. We slept separately, due to the fact that I expected her to kill me in my sleep. I didn’t know she was sick until she was too weak to leave her bed one morning.
I called in our family physician, and he demanded we take her to the hospital immediately.
We did, but it was too late. Sepsis. She died within hours of getting to the hospital. ”
“Why didn’t she tell anyone she was sick before it got that bad?”
“Bridgette hated doctors. Her mother had died in childbirth when she was a little girl, and she blamed them her whole life. If she hadn’t been too weak to fight me, she would have fought me about going to the hospital.”
Mina shakes her head. “That’s crazy.”
“That was Bridgette.”
Breakfast waits when we walk into the bungalow. No idea who was watching us to ensure it’d be hot when we walked in. But it is. So, I take first taste of everything to be sure. “Not from him. From the resort.”
We sit and eat, and there’s a comfortable silence. I don’t get many of those in my life, and the underlying tension of waiting for Vitaly to rear his head is always there, but as things go, the moment is…for lack of a better word, cozy.
I have never been this comfortable with another person in my entire life.
Not even Olga. With her, I was always worried about being good enough to deserve her.
I didn’t want to be my father—he was a cruel man who enjoyed making others suffer.
That’s never been my way, so I thought I might have been worthy of someone as kind and sweet as Olga Valivova.
Funny. Mina is nothing like her, yet she has me wrapped around her finger all the same.
She is kind, but there’s a world wariness beneath it that says her kindness comes with boundaries. She has a good heart, but she’s also seen things and been places Olga would have never experienced. It’s not fair to compare the two of them, but it’s impossible not to.
Olga would have been the perfect wife, had I not become pakhan.
Mina may be the perfect wife for a pakhan.
Between bites of mango, she says, “I’m not fragile, you know. The sharks wouldn’t have hurt me.”
“I daresay they should fear you, not the other way around.”
She quirks a glance my way. “Oh?”
“You’re right—they wouldn’t have hurt you. I should have known that all along, but seeing you in the water face down like that with them circling you, I panicked. I won’t make that mistake again.”
“You promise?”
I nod. “I know you can handle yourself. I’ll still protect you when things get hairy, but under normal circumstances, I know you’ll be okay.”
She kisses my cheek and continues with breakfast.
“But next time you decide to go swimming in the morning, wake me. I’d like to join you.”
“I’d like that too.”
The foundation of our marriage might be fraught with complications, but this is simple.
I trust her. I’m not sure I’ve ever trusted a partner more.
Olga was too fragile, and our love was young and foolish.
Bridgette was too volatile, and we never had love.
All we ever had together was Vitaly, and he was entirely her creature when he was young.
She taught him too much too young, and he never learned to value other people because of it.
To him, other people are toys, waiting for him to play with. Their humanity means nothing to him. There is no line he won’t cross to get what he wants.
And there is no line I won’t cross to protect Mina and our sons.