Chapter 28 Galina
Galina
Laszlo settles me in the guest room, but I can’t sleep. Dawn breaks, and I feel annoyed that I’ve spent another night without my husband next to me. It’s becoming a habit, but maybe that’s Bratva married life, and I’d better get used to it.
A soft knock makes me sit up and comb my fingers through my hair. Leonid without a doubt.
“Come in,” I call, my voice rough with too little sleep and too much adrenaline.
The door opens, and Leonid enters with a tray balanced in his hands and the look of a man who has spent the night managing idiots with guns and would now like one uninterrupted hour to himself.
“Tea,” he says. “Toast. Eggs. Fruit. You need all of it.”
I eye the tray. “You really do think tea and food fix everything.”
“No,” he says crisply, setting it down on the bedside table. “But starvation and shock make people dramatic.”
“I was shot at. I think I’ve earned a little drama.”
“You have earned breakfast,” he corrects. “Before you ask, Mr Voronov is downstairs.”
That gets my full attention. “Is he okay?”
Leonid gives me a long look that suggests he is deciding whether I am being foolish or merely predictable. “He is alive. He is angry. He has had coffee and steak. So, in that order, yes, yes, and thank God, yes.”
“Did he sleep at all?”
Leonid’s mouth does something disapproving. “Briefly. In a chair. Like a psychopath.”
Despite everything, a laugh slips out of me. It feels wrong and necessary at the same time.
He points at the tray. “Eat.”
“Yes, sir.”
He gives me a look that could wither a houseplant and leaves.
The second the door shuts, the quiet comes back. Softer now. Morning quiet, not the kind that follows gunfire. I stare at the tea for a few seconds before I pick it up. My hand shakes a little. Less than last night. Enough to piss me off.
I force myself to eat. Leonid is right, irritatingly. Shock on an empty stomach is a bad combination. The eggs are buttery and soft. The toast is still warm. I get through half of it before my body remembers it actually wants food.
By the time I finish the tea, I feel almost human again.
I wash quickly in the en suite, brush my teeth with my toothbrush that Laszlo moved in here with some more toiletries, and stare at myself in the mirror. I look pale. My eyes are too bright.
Married. Shot at. Still here.
I pull on fresh clothes from the wardrobe that Laszlo filled, so I have no excuses to go back into the main bedroom. Black leggings. A soft cream jumper. Thick socks. No jewellery except my ring. I touch it once before I leave the room.
The hallway is quiet, but not relaxed. You can tell when a house is on alert. The air feels different. Controlled. Waiting.
Grisha is gone from the top of the stairs, replaced by one of my father’s men, who gives me a respectful nod and says nothing. He lets me pass, which is good for him and me.
I go down slowly and stop at the bottom, staring at the fortified windows and doors.
I move to the hall table and open the drawer to see my knife staring back at me.
I pick it up and toss it from hand to hand as I follow the smell of coffee and food into the dining room and find Laszlo at the table in a black shirt with the sleeves rolled to his forearms, a mug in one hand and his phone in the other.
The thick velvet curtains are pulled tight.
Laszlo looks up the second I step in.
His gaze goes over me once, quick and clinical. Unhurt. Upright. Dressed. When he finishes checking, something in his face loosens by a fraction.
“You should still be in bed,” he says.
“Couldn’t sleep.” I sit and take his coffee from him because tea is all well and good, but I need a shot of caffeine to kick-start my system.
He lets me.
I take a sip and nearly moan. “Jesus. Leonid gave me tea.”
“You say that like he poisoned you.”
“He practically did.”
His mouth shifts, not quite a smile. Tired. Tight. “He fed you?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
I watch him over the rim of the mug. His hair is damp again, like he has showered twice in one night to get blood and rage off him, and neither worked. There is a fresh cut along one knuckle. His jaw is dark with stubble. His phone lies face down by his plate, close enough to grab in a second.
“You look awful,” I say. “You can sleep, you know. Specifically, next to your new wife.”
“Last time I did that, you nearly got killed.”
“So what? You’re never going to sleep again?”
“If that’s what it takes.”
“Consider this, then. You are so exhausted from lack of sleep that you cock up and get me killed. How does that look right now?”
He growls and snatches his coffee back. “Like you need to stop interfering and go sew something.”
“Ooh,” I say, not offended, more amused. “Someone is in a bad mood.”
“Galina,” he warns. “Don’t push me.”
“I’m not pushing you,” I say mildly. “I’m trying to stop you turning into some sleepless psycho with a martyr complex.”
His eyes narrow over the rim of the mug. “Careful.”
“Or what? You’ll send me upstairs and tell me to embroider my feelings?”
He sets the mug down with a controlled sort of precision that makes me instantly aware I’m skating near a line. “I’m not in the mood.”
“And I’m not in the mood to sit quietly while you punish yourself for something Petyr did.”
That lands. Hard.
For a second, all I hear is the low hum of the house and the faint movement of men outside the dining room. Security. Always security now. More than before. More than yesterday. My life measured in rings of armed men and closed curtains.
Laszlo drags a hand through his hair and looks away. “I should’ve killed him earlier.”
“Yes,” I say. “Probably.”
His gaze snaps back to mine.
I shrug and steal his coffee again. “What? I’m not going to lie to make you feel better. You should have. But you didn’t know he’d be this stupid.”
His jaw tightens. “I should have known.”
“Maybe.” I take another sip. “You still can’t go back in time, can you?”
“No.”
“Then stop talking like you can.”
I rise and place the coffee down and cup his face, making him look up at me.
He scoots his chair back, and I crawl onto his lap, grinding down on him, wanting him so badly, needing to feel him inside me so that I know I’m still alive and I’m not going anywhere, and neither is he.
His hands slide up my jumper, and he touches my bare skin, and I moan into his mouth.
He stands up suddenly, cradling my arse and sweeps everything off the dining table with an almighty crash.
“Fuck off,” Laszlo grits out, his lips still pressed to mine as Grisha comes running before he spins so fast and goes back the way he came.
I giggle as my husband places me on the cleared dining table, already pulling my leggings down.
My breath catches as he hooks his fingers into my knickers, and they’re dragged down and dumped on the floor with my leggings.
He undoes his pants and pulls his cock out. “Need you,” he murmurs.
He grips the backs of my thighs and drags me closer to the edge until I’m right where he wants me. He runs the blunt head of his cock over my clit, and I feel my whole body tense for him.
“Eyes on me,” he says.
We lock gazes, and he thrusts deep.
I gasp hard, clutching at his shirt, and he swears under his breath as he fills me in one slow, heavy stroke that knocks every coherent thought out of my head.
Last night was fear and adrenaline and survival wrapped around each other so tightly I couldn’t separate them.
This is different. This is need. This is me climbing onto my husband’s lap because I refuse to let blood and bullets be the only thing that marks the start of our marriage.
He buries himself balls deep and stays there for one second, breathing hard, his hands hard on my thighs.
His mouth crashes against mine. He withdraws and then slams into me so hard, I cry out.
I wrap my legs around his hips and take it, every brutal thrust driving the breath out of me.
“Yes,” I gasp, because I can’t say anything else. His hand fists in my hair, pulling my head back, and his mouth drags down my throat while he fucks me on the dining table like he needs to erase the memory of last night with his body.
“Tell me,” he says, voice ragged and low.
“I’m here.”
His whole body goes tight at that. He lifts his head and looks at me, blue eyes dark and wrecked, then drives into me harder, like the words hit something raw inside him.
“You’re here,” he says. “And nobody touches you again.”
I nearly come from that alone.
He reaches between us and rubs my clit with rough, exact pressure, and I break apart with a cry that I know echoes through the entire fucking house. I don’t care.
Laszlo follows with a rough curse, thrusting deep and holding me there while he empties inside me. His forehead drops to mine. We both breathe hard. My hands shake where they grip his shirt.
For a second, neither of us moves.
Then he kisses me once, hard and filthy and final, before pulling back just enough to look at me.