Anya
The dress fits like it was made for me.
Iris adjusted it last night, taking in the waist half an inch and letting out the bust just enough that I can breathe, and when I look at myself in the full-length mirror in the guest room, I see my mother.
Not her face. But the shape of her. The way the ivory silk catches the light the same way it must have caught it twenty-five years ago when Marina Agapova stood in front of a different mirror and smoothed her hands over the same fabric and tried to steady her nerves.
I press my palm flat against my stomach and breathe.
"You look incredible," Grace says from behind me. She's sitting on the edge of the bed with Lorcan on her lap, already dressed in a soft blue dress with her hair pinned up. Lorcan is in a tiny suit looks more adorable than ever.
"She's right." Iris appears in the mirror behind me, holding a pin between her teeth. She's in dark green, her hair loose, looking so much like Connor that it makes my chest ache. "That dress was waiting for you."
"Don't make me cry," I say. "I just did my makeup."
"She's been doing her makeup for an hour," Katya calls from the bathroom, where she's been sitting on the edge of the tub eating a cinnamon roll and supervising. "If she cries now, we start over, and I am not sitting in this bathroom for another hour."
"You've been eating, not supervising," Tanya says, leaning against the doorframe with her arms crossed. She's in a deep burgundy dress that makes her look sharp and elegant, which is exactly what Tanya always looks like.
"I can do both."
There's a knock at the door and Saoirse steps in, and the room goes quiet.
She's wearing pale pink. Her eyes are bright and glassy, and when she sees me, her hand comes up to cover her mouth.
"Oh, Anya."
"Don't," I say, blinking hard. "If you cry, I cry, and Katya will kill us both."
"I will," Katya confirms, hoisting herself from the side of the tub and appearing in the doorway.
Saoirse crosses the room and takes my hands. She looks at me the way I imagine she looked at my mother on her wedding day, with love and pride and a grief that's gentle enough to sit alongside the joy without ruining it.
"Your mother is here," she says softly. "I can feel her. She's in every stitch of this dress."
My throat closes. I squeeze Saoirse's hands and nod because I can't speak.
"Right." Saoirse straightens, gathering herself with the efficiency of a woman who has managed a Bratva family for decades. "The sapphire bracelet?"
I hold up my wrist. It catches the light from the window.
"Grace's veil?"
Grace produces a short, simple veil from behind her and stands to pin it gently at the crown of my head. It's delicate and pretty and perfect.
"And Iris's contribution?" Saoirse raises an eyebrow at her daughter; her mouth pulled in a tight line of mock disdain.
Iris grins. "Handled."
I don't elaborate on what's underneath the dress.
Iris chose well. White lace, simple, the kind of thing that looks innocent until it's all you're wearing.
I put it on this morning and stared at myself in the mirror and thought about Connor's hands and how big they are and how carefully he touched my face last night and how I want him to stop being careful and tear this lace to confetti.
"Then we're ready," Saoirse says. "Diomid is waiting downstairs."
My brother is standing in the foyer in a charcoal suit, looking like he slept about as well as I did, which is to say barely.
Beside him is Elizabeth, his wife, dark-haired and beautiful and so heavily pregnant that she's holding her lower back with one hand and their daughter's hand with the other.
Yelena is two, with Diomid's serious dark eyes and Elizabeth's soft mouth, and she's wearing a white dress with tiny flowers embroidered on the hem that she's already managed to get grass stains on.
"Yelena, don't eat the flowers," Elizabeth says, gently extracting a petal from her daughter's fist.
Diomid looks up when I reach the bottom of the stairs. His expression goes through about six things in two seconds, pride and grief and protectiveness. He clears his throat and adjusts his cufflinks.
"You look like Mom," he says.
"Yeah," I agree on a breath, because I do, and I’ve never felt more beautiful.
He offers me his arm.
"Are you sure?" he asks quietly. One last time.
"One-hundred-percent."
He nods. Covers my hand with his. And walks me out.
The ceremony is on the grounds, an old, somewhat dilapidated church.
All of the Orlova women have turned the space into something out of a dream.
White peonies line a short aisle between two groups of chairs.
Candles in glass holders line the path despite the afternoon light.
It's small and intimate and nothing like the grand cathedral affair the Baron probably would have demanded, but it's perfect.
The Orlov men are standing near the altar.
Liam, broad and composed. Killian, one arm around Katya's chair because she obviously sat down the second she arrived and isn't getting back up.
Aidan, standing slightly behind Liam with his hands in his pockets and an easy expression that makes him look like he's at a garden party rather than a Bratva wedding.
And Connor.
My breath stops.
He's in a dark suit, fitted close to his broad shoulders and chest, with a white shirt open at the collar.
No tie. His dark hair is pushed back from his face, and for the first time since I met him, he's not hiding.
He's not turning his head to favor his good side.
He's not angling his jaw to minimize the scar.
He's standing at the altar facing forward, both eyes visible, the green one blazing in the afternoon light and the milky one catching it differently, softer, like clouded glass.
He's looking at me like I'm the only thing in the world.
My hand tightens on Diomid's arm.
"Breathe," my brother murmurs.
I try. It doesn't really work.
Just as I realize there’s no music, Iris begins to sing. Beautiful strains of an old Irish ballad fill the space, and even Katya stands.
We walk. The aisle is short, maybe thirty feet, but it feels like it takes an hour.
Every step brings Connor into sharper focus.
The breadth of his chest. The way his jaw is set tight, like he's holding something in.
His hands at his sides, fingers flexing, and I realize with a jolt that he's nervous.
This enormous, fierce, scarred man is nervous because I'm walking toward him.
When Diomid and I reach the altar, my brother stops.
He looks at Connor, and something passes between them that I can't fully read.
A transaction. A transfer. The oldest, most loaded exchange two men can make.
Then Diomid takes my hand from his arm and places it in Connor's, and Connor's fingers close around mine, and my brother steps back.
Connor's hand is warm and rough and shaking, just slightly, just enough that I can feel it.
"Hi," I whisper as Iris comes to the end of the song, and moves to stand beside her mother.
"Hi." His voice is low and wrecked and his gaze hasn't left my face.
The priest begins. I hear the words the way you hear rain on a window, present but distant, background to the thing that actually matters, which is Connor's hand holding mine and the heat of him standing so close.
I think about last night. The kiss in the garden.
The way he caught my face in his hands like I was something precious and then kissed me like I was something he needed.
The way his body felt against mine, solid and warm and vibrating with restraint, like he was holding himself back from the edge with everything he had.
I don't want him to hold back tonight.
The thought sends a flush of heat through me so intense that I'm glad the veil partially covers my face.
"Do you, Connor Orlov, take Anya Marina Agapova to be your wife?"
"I do." No hesitation. The same way I said yes in the conservatory. Like the answer was decided before the question was asked.
"And do you, Anya Marina Agapova, take Connor Orlov to be your husband?"
I look at him. The scar. The dead eye. The good eye, green and burning and fixed on me with an intensity that makes my knees soft.
"I do."
Then the words that seal everything that came before. "You may kiss the bride."
Connor doesn't move immediately. He looks at me for a beat, and I see it happen in real time, the wall he keeps between himself and the world shifting, cracking, a piece of it falling away. He cups my face with both hands, tilts my head back, and kisses me.
His mouth moves over mine with a hunger that sends a bolt of heat straight down my spine, and I grab the front of his jacket and pull him into me because I don't know what else to do with the way my body is responding.
His tongue slides against mine and I make a sound against his mouth that I should be embarrassed about and I'm not, because his grip tightens on my face and he groans back, low in his chest, and the vibration of it travels through me like an electric current.
Someone whistles. Killian, probably. Iris hoots. Katya is clapping and whooping.
Connor pulls back just enough to breathe, his forehead against mine, his thumbs tracing my cheekbones. His breathing is ragged, and so is mine.
"My wife," he murmurs, and the way he says it, rough and possessive and wondering, makes something inside me catch fire.
"My husband," I say back.
The reception is a blur of warmth. Saoirse cries and holds me and tells me my mother would be so proud.
Grace puts Lorcan in my arms and he stares at me with wide eyes and then grabs a fistful of my veil and shrieks with delight.
Elizabeth, somehow still graceful at eight months pregnant, hugs me carefully and says, "I’m so happy for you," while Yelena attaches herself to Connor's leg and refuses to let go, which is the first time I see genuine confusion on his face.
He looks down at this tiny girl gripping his trouser leg and then looks at me like I might have instructions.
"Pick her up," I say.
He does, carefully, holding her against his chest with one massive arm like she weighs nothing. Yelena stares at his face, fascinated, reaches out one chubby hand and pats his scarred cheek, and says, "Boo boo?"
The table goes quiet.
Connor blinks. Something passes over his face that I can't name, something raw and startled and painfully tender. "Yeah," he says after a moment. "Boo boo."
"Kiss it better," Yelena says firmly, and plants a wet, sloppy kiss on his scar.
Iris makes a choked sound. Saoirse presses her hand to her mouth. Elizabeth mouths sorry at Connor, but he shakes his head once, and when he looks at me over Yelena's dark curls, his good eye is bright in a way that has nothing to do with the candlelight.
Diomid watches the whole thing from his chair with his arm around Elizabeth, and the tension in his shoulder’s eases by a fraction. Not all the way. Probably never all the way. But enough.
The evening stretches warm and long. Food and champagne and toasts.
Iris gives a speech that's half roast, half love letter, and by the end of it, she's crying and denying it aggressively.
Liam says something brief and formal that somehow manages to be deeply moving.
Killian raises a glass and says, "To the woman brave enough to marry my brother," and Connor throws a bread roll at him.
Through all of it, Connor stays close to me. His hand on the back of my chair. His thigh pressed against mine under the table. His fingers finding the inside of my wrist when no one is looking, tracing circles on my pulse point that make it increasingly difficult to concentrate on conversation.
Every time I look at him, he's already looking at me. And every time our eyes meet, the heat between us tightens another notch.
By ten o'clock, the party has thinned. Katya fell asleep on Killian's knee and he carried her upstairs twenty minutes ago.
Elizabeth and Diomid left with a sleeping Yelena draped over Diomid's shoulder, Elizabeth pressing a kiss to my cheek and whispering, "Be happy.
" Grace and Liam are cleaning up, waving off my attempts to help.
Aidan and Tanya disappeared quietly, the way they always seem to.
Iris catches my eye from across the room and raises her glass with a look that says go, and a grin that says she knows exactly what’s going to happen next.
I turn to Connor.
He's watching me. His jaw is tight. His hand is gripping the edge of the table, knuckles white, and I can see the restraint in every line of his body.
He's been holding himself in check all night, all week, and the effort is visible now, in the tension of his shoulders, in the way his breathing has gone shallow, in the way he won't let his eyes drop below my face because if he does, we both know what happens next.
"Connor," I say softly.
"Yeah."
"Take me upstairs."
Something ignites in his eye. He stands, and the chair scrapes back, and he reaches for my hand, and I think he's going to lead me to the stairs.
He doesn't.
He bends down, slides one arm behind my back and the other under my knees, and lifts me off the ground like I weigh nothing.
I gasp and grab his shoulder and he pulls me against his chest and starts walking, and I can feel his heart pounding through the fabric of his jacket, a frantic, driving rhythm that matches my own.
"I can walk," I say.
"I know." His voice is rough and almost strained. "I don't want you to."
He carries me through the foyer and up the stairs and down the hallway, past the guest room where I've been sleeping and toward the end of the corridor where his room is. He kicks the door open without putting me down, walks us through, and kicks it shut behind us.
The room is dark except for moonlight through the window, silver and pale, catching the edge of the bed and the planes of his face when he looks down at me.
He sets me on my feet, slowly, letting my body slide against his on the way down.
Every point of contact burns. His hands stay on my waist, wide and warm, fingers pressing into the silk of the dress, and I can feel how much he wants me.
It's right there, hard and unmistakable against my hip, and the knowledge of it sends a rush of liquid heat through my core.
"Anya." His voice is barely a whisper. "Tell me to stop and I'll stop."
I reach up and put my hands on his face. Both sides. My right palm on his smooth cheek, my left on the scarred one, holding him steady, making him look at me.
"Don't stop," I say. “Don’t ever stop.”