Chapter 23
NORA
Itake the test in the estate bathroom with the door locked, which makes no sense, because there's nobody in the wing and I'm a grown married woman. I lock it anyway. Some things you do alone or not at all.
I bought it three days ago at a drugstore in Encino, Grigor parked out front in the big quiet car, pretending with great dignity that he hadn't seen what I came out holding.
"You don't have to tell Isaak everywhere I go," I'd said, getting back in, the bag crushed in my fist.
"I tell him you went to a pharmacy." Grigor pulled into traffic, eyes front, nine years of knowing exactly when to look away living in his face. "I don't tell him what is in the bag. A man is entitled to buy aspirin without a report."
"It's not aspirin, Grigor."
"I know what it isn't." He'd let a small silence ride. "My sister had four. Every time, the same little stick. Every time, terrified. Every time, fine."
"Four," I'd said, because it was easier than feeling the thing in my chest. "How'd she survive four?"
"She didn't survive them. They survived her. There is a difference, she says." A red light. He'd looked at me then, once, in the rearview, the way he never does. "Whatever the stick says, Mrs. Radulov, you will be all right. You are harder to scare than the boss, and he isn't scared of anything."
He said it to the windshield, gruff, like it embarrassed him. Then he drove me home and never told a soul.
I didn't say anything for a block. Then, quiet, "You said that on purpose, Grigor. The part about the boss not being scared of anything."
"Did I." He watched the road. His face in the mirror said he knew perfectly well.
"Why?"
"Because you looked like you needed to hear it. Also because it's true." He pulled onto the freeway, signaled, changed lanes. "And because my sister, the first time, sat in the parking lot of a Walgreens for forty minutes. She came out fine."
I didn't answer. He didn't need me to. We drove the rest of the way in the easy quiet that means he's already finished the conversation.
I loved him a little for it.
I slipped the box into my jacket like contraband, like the poppers, except nothing about this is funny.
The coffee tasting like pennies. The tiredness that sleep doesn't touch.
The fact that I haven't bled in longer than I've let myself count, because counting would make it real, and I have been very busy not making it real.
Now I'm sitting on the edge of a marble tub that costs more than my truck, watching a plastic stick on the counter, and I'm not breathing.
Two lines.
I knew. I already knew. Knowing in your body and seeing it in pink dye are two different countries. I cross the border sitting on a rich man's bathtub with my hand over my mouth, and the sound that comes out of me is one I don't recognize.
I'm pregnant.
I married a man to save a ranch, to find out if he killed my father, and now I'm carrying his baby.
The first thing I feel, before the fear, before any of the very good reasons this is complicated, is a joy so big it scares me worse than the gray car does.
I want it. The wanting takes my legs out from under me.
I didn't decide to want it. It arrived the way the wanting for him arrived, aimed and total, with no permission asked.
I sit on the floor for a while. The kitten finds me under the door and reaches a paw through the gap.
I let him bat at my fingers, and I count back the weeks I've been refusing to count.
Wedding night. Twelve weeks, near enough.
There's a person the size of a lime who is half me and half the man whole rooms of armed people go quiet around.
I have to decide what I'm doing with the rest of my life in the next little while.
I'm not ready, and it doesn't matter that I'm not ready, because ready was never on the table.
I don't tell him. Not yet. I want one night of knowing it by myself before I hand it to him and watch it become real in his face. Once he knows, everything changes, and I'm greedy for one more night of just us before it does.
He finds me that evening in our room. I've washed my face and put myself back together, sitting on the bed in one of his shirts. He takes one look at me and knows something's moved in me, because he always knows.
"You're somewhere," he says, closing the door. "What is it?"
"Nothing bad." It's the truth, and it comes out shaky. "Come here. I don't want to talk. I want you to do something for me."
He crosses the room slow, watching me the careful way, and sits on the edge of the bed close enough that his knee touches mine. He doesn't reach for me. He waits, hands open on his own knees, letting me set the pace.
"Tell me what you want," he says.
What I want is to not think. What I want is to feel something I chose, completely, with the one person I've decided I trust, before the thinking starts and doesn't stop.
I've never said this part out loud to anyone, never trusted anyone enough, and the fact that I'm about to is its own answer to the question I came into this marriage to ask.
"I want to stop running things for one night," I tell him. "I'm always the one holding it together, deciding, watching the door. I want to give that to you. Just for tonight. I want to not be in charge of anything, and I want it to be you, because you're the only person alive I'd hand it to."
I want to stop talking about it and start.
He's quiet for a long moment. He takes it seriously, the way he takes anything I hand him.
"You understand what you're asking me?" He says it low, then waits, and doesn't move until I answer.
"I understand exactly what I'm asking you."
"You've spent your whole life refusing to let anyone hold the reins.
Your father. Brandon. Me, in a sauna two weeks ago.
You damn near climbed out a window over it.
" His eyes don't leave mine. "And now you want to hand them to me on purpose.
I need to know that's not you running from something.
I won't be a place you go to stop feeling whatever happened today. "
It's so exactly the thing I was doing, and so exactly the thing he won't let me get away with, that my throat goes tight.
"It's not running," I say, and I mean it down to the floor.
"It's the opposite. I trust you. That's the whole reason I can.
I wouldn't hand this to a single other person who's ever lived, and I'm handing it to you.
That's not me hiding. That's me telling you something I don't have the words for any other way. "
Something goes through his face, grave and serious. He doesn't make it a joke. He doesn't make it cheap.
"You're sure?" He keeps his voice even, no push in it, just the question, the room, his eyes on me. "You can stop it with a word. One word, you pick it, and everything stops. I mean everything. Say you understand that part."
"I understand. You taught me you don't move without the ask." My voice steadies, because this, at least, I'm sure of. "I'm giving you the ask. Camellia. That's the word. Now stop asking and take it."
He does.
He stands and looks down at me for a long moment, the air in the room pressing close. Then he reaches for the hem of my shirt. Pulls it up and over my head in one smooth motion. Cool air touches my skin. His eyes stay on me, dark and steady.
"Lie back," he says, voice low and even. "Arms above your head."
I do it. The sheets are cool under my spine.
My pulse is loud, but my body is already loosening into the choice.
He watches me settle, then strips the rest of the way.
Slow. Deliberate. The scar low on his ribs catches the light.
Muscle shifts across his chest and stomach.
The line of dark hair leads down to his cock, already thickening as he looks at me spread out and waiting.
He picks up the belt he just stepped out of. The leather whispers through his hands as he folds it once, testing the length. He climbs onto the bed, knees between my thighs, and reaches for my wrists.
"Together," he says.
I offer them. He wraps the belt around both wrists, firm but not tight, then threads the end through the headboard slats and secures it. The leather is warm from his body. I test the give once. Barely any. Something in my chest loosens at the same time something else tightens low in my belly.
He sits back on his heels and looks at me bound like that. His voice stays calm. "You stay still. You take what I give you. If it's too much, you use the word. Otherwise you let me have this."
"Yes," I breathe. The surrender is already making me wet.
He starts with his hands. Slow. Thorough.
Mapping every inch while I can't reach for him.
Palms over my breasts, thumbs circling until my nipples tighten and I have to bite my lip to keep from arching.
Down my stomach, over my hips, between my legs.
He strokes through my slickness, makes a quiet sound of approval, and pushes two fingers inside me.
Slow. Curling. I twitch before I can stop it.
His free hand comes down flat on my hip, pinning me harder to the mattress.
"Still," he reminds, calm and firm. "Let me."
I force myself still, breathing through the slow drag of his fingers, the curl of them finding that spot inside me until my thighs are shaking with the effort of holding still.
When his mouth finds my clit at the same time, the pleasure spikes so sharp I almost break. He stops immediately, lifts his head.
"Camellia if you need it," he says, checking. "But if you can hold it, stay still for me."
"I can," I manage. "Please don't stop."
He doesn't. He goes back to it, tongue and fingers in that same unhurried rhythm, until I'm trembling, soaked, the effort of staying still its own kind of heat. Something in me is unclenching that I didn't know was still locked.