8. Katerina
KATERINA
When I finally pick myself up off the floor, I head back to my room.
I don’t remember the walk back upstairs. I only remember the way the walls seem to close in around me with every step forward. Silence descends immediately the second my door clicks shut behind me.
The room is exactly as I left it—the bed made, curtains drawn to keep the floodlights from coming in after every sweep of the grounds.
I pace the length of my room until the carpet beneath my feet is flattened into dull, unforgiving lines.
I trace the same path over and over until it feels like I’m carving a trench into the floor.
Every few minutes, I stop and pull the burner phone out from its hiding place under my bed and stare at the screen to prove that my notes made it out.
That the information I risked potentially being killed for has made it into the right diplomatic channels and that my father is still alive somewhere beyond these walls moving pieces into place to get me out.
And every time I am sorely disappointed when I’m met with nothing.
No missed calls, no cryptic one-word replies, nothing awaits me by the time the screen finally comes on.
My thumb hovers over the screen as I contemplate sending another message anyway.
What terrifies me even more than not knowing if my father is okay is not knowing where exactly Aleksandr went tonight.
What if he had gone to meet my father?
My stomach twists violently as the dark possibilities bloom behind my eyes, each one worse than the last. Aleksandr is Bratva, a man who solves problems permanently with violence so long as it benefits him in the long run.
Denying me access to see my father was unsurprising.
Expected, even. Men like him don’t grant favors without extracting something meaningful in return.
Asking out of the blue right before he left the property with no leverage offered was a foolish hope on my part even if it had a spur of the moment distraction.
Whatever business he had to conduct so late at night, I could rationalize it.
Bratva meet with their contacts at ungodly hours all the time.
But it doesn’t escape me that I’ve given him more than enough ammunition to hurt me after striking him across the face.
What better way for a man like Aleksandr to make a point than to hurt the person I’m most afraid of losing?
My fingers tighten around the burner phone until the edges dig painfully into my skin.
The longer the hours stretch on with no signs of Aleksandr returning, the worse my paranoia creeps in. Every minute that ticks by adds another layer of dread and another grotesque scenario to keep my from slipping into sleep when I finally force myself into bed.
At this point, direct punishment is the best case scenario.
It’s all I can really hope for.
I wake to the weight of eyes on me.
Not the soft brush of dawn light creeping in past the heavy drapes covering my windows like I expect, but with something far more primal pulsating through my veins. The unmistakable threat of being watched.
My body registers it before my mind does, pulse jumping as every nerve inside me suddenly flares awake screaming predator. I keep my breathing even the way I’ve trained myself to do when cornered and slowly open my eyes.
Aleksandr Volkov stands motionless at the foot of my bed, half-swallowed by the fading shadow still clinging to the corners of my room.
The dim gray dawn slicing through the narrow gap in the curtains drags a pale line of light across one side of his face—sharp cheekbone, the edge of his jaw, the faint glint in an eye that should not look as calm as it does.
Even in near-darkness, he radiates power.
My fingers curl into the sheets as I slowly push myself upright, the silk strap of the nightgown I slipped into last night falls down my shoulder. I don’t bother fixing it. My throat is too tight to speak, though even if I managed to find any words, I know my voice would embarrass me by shaking.
For one long, suspended heartbeat, we simply stare at each other. Him silent and unreadable, me with my pulse hammering hard enough in my chest that it makes it hard to breathe. In that terrifying quiet, something unexpected flickers through my mind.
A memory of that amused smirk he so often wears. That small, mocking curve of his mouth when he enjoys cornering me with words instead of violence. The dangerous glint in his eye when he’s in the mood to provoke rather than punish me for my defiance.
I find myself missing it.
His arrogance and wicked hint of playfulness, as twisted as it is, has always felt human. Predictable in its own darkly-edged way.
But this? This is something else entirely.
Aleksandr stripped of theatrics, without the veneer of amusement to soften the monster I know him capable of underneath scares me. Aleksandr in his raw, unforgiving state he hides from everyone but the people he intends to break is the part of him I’d never hoped to cross paths with.
I feel a slight tremor roll through me. Not from fear, though it’s absolutely there, but from the crushing awareness that whatever Aleksandr came here to do, whatever decision solidified in his mind during the hours he disappeared into the night had made him come here resolved in his choice.
There is no changing his mind at this point. The window for bargaining closed long before he stepped into this room.
I swallow, my throat tight. Somehow the only thing that manages to escape me is a whisper-soft, stupidly small question, “Are you still angry?”
The moment the words leave my mouth, regret punches through me. Of all the things to ask… why that? Why poke the wolf with bare hands when he’s already staring at you like he’s deciding where to sink his teeth first?
I brace myself for the cold, clipped reprimand. For the hand around my throat, clenched hard enough to bruise and remind me just exactly who owns the air in my lungs and allows me the privilege of breathing it purely because he hasn’t decided to take it away yet.
What I get instead confuses me immediately. A flicker of surprise flashes across his face.
It’s the only thing in the world that could have disarmed me more than rage.
He steps closer, one measured stride at a time. When he reaches the side of the bed he stops again, close enough that I can see him better now. His eyes are practically black in this lighting, bottomless in their depths and devouring whatever light manages to touch them.
I miss the blue. The blue meant he was still human, this darkness reminds me he is not.
My heart kicks hard against my ribs with one jarring thud that makes the rest of my body feel weightless.
The quiet is worse than shouting. It forces me to hear the tremor in my own breath and feel the bare edge of panic creeping up my throat. To confront the possibility—no, the certainty—that he will inevitably kill me by the time the sun rises beyond my windows.
His gaze suddenly moves to follow the path of the thin strap of my nightgown that’s slipped down my shoulder, lingering long enough for my skin to prickle with awareness.
It drifts lower down across my chest to my stomach.
Every inch he traces feels like a brand, my body being marked by a touch that doesn’t even have to be corporeal.
My hands tighten around the sheets pooled in my lap.
I hate that he can do this to me without even touching me. That my body responds despite the threat looming overhead. Heat pools low in my belly, forcing me to press my thighs together beneath the sheet like that could hide the way he’s already unraveling me.
When his eyes finally return to my face, something in them shifts. His lips parting slightly with a soft inhalation as if he’s steadying himself or savoring something he hasn’t yet claimed. A traitorous flutter I can’t smother no matter how hard I try tightens my gut.
“Is that what you thought,” he murmurs, lashes lowering just enough to magnify the darkness of his gaze. “That I was angry with you?”
I shift unconsciously. “Yes.”
A low rumble leaves him, a sound of disapproval.
He leans down, folding into my space with predatory grace.
One hand braces on the mattress beside my hip, sinking the bed slightly beneath his weight.
The other lifts, catching my chin between his thumb and forefinger.
The hold is not gentle, firm enough to tell me he wants me still, looking at him and nowhere else.
His thumb strokes once along the line of my jaw, deceptively soft. “Do you need my approval that badly?”
Anger flares inside me, immediately burning away the remnants of fear he brought into this room with him and leaves only defiance in its wake. “I couldn’t give a single fuck about your approval.”
His chuckle is low and husky, sliding down my spine like warm oil. His eyes brighten with a wicked, delighted spark that chases away the darkness as his grip tightens the barest fraction. He’s pleased. Thrilled, even. As if my anger is the exact offering he came here to collect.
“Is that so,” he drawls, voice dripping with dangerous amusement.
I should fight him.
I should shove him away, curse him out, remind him I am not some fragile little thing he can command or manipulate whenever boredom strikes or whenever the shadows of Moscow stop being entertaining for him.
I should… but I don’t.
Instead, my hands—traitorous things—grab the front of his shirt.
I haul him toward me with more force than I thought I had left in me.
His balance tips at the same time mine does.
The mattress gives beneath us as I pull him down with me, my legs instinctively tightening around his waist, locking him into place before I can remember why I shouldn’t be doing any of this in the first place.
Surprise flashes across his face again in that rare, unguarded way that unsettles me. But it vanishes just as quickly, swallowed by something darker.
Desire.
His mouth crashes against mine in a kiss that feels more like a claim than anything resembling affection. It’s fierce, all-consuming as his hand slides back to cradle my head with unmistakable dominance, holding me exactly where he wants me.
I gasp into him and grind my hips up against his, shocking myself.
His kiss deepens instantly, coaxing and commanding all at once, testing how far I’ll bend before I break. It sparks through me like electricity, a rush of heat and something dangerously close to surrender convincing me to give in to his demands.
This isn’t what I prepared for.
I braced for cruelty, for punishment, for the ruthless enforcer I had come to fear in the hours leading up to now. This isn’t at all the monster I’d prepared myself to face once he finally came back to me.
The world narrows to the hot press of his mouth devouring mine, to the shocking dominance of his tongue as it forces past my lips and drags against mine with a possessive hunger I am completely unprepared for. In one single heartbeat, everything I thought I knew about him completely shatters.
It isn’t his violence I should have been afraid of.
I realize much too late that the thing I should have been most afraid of is how easily he could dismantle me without it.