Stefania
I don't know how long we lie there before either of us speaks.
His arm is around me. My back is against his chest, his hand is spread flat across my stomach and his breathing is slow and steady behind me.
I wonder for a moment why I don’t feel trapped or exposed.
A man I've known for less than a day has his body wrapped around mine and he knows the most dangerous thing about me and every rule I've built for survival is screaming at me to get out of his bed.
I don't move.
"Tell me about you," I say.
His hand stills on my stomach. A beat of silence. Then his thumb resumes its slow, absent stroke across my skin.
"What do you want to know?"
"Everything. You know things about me that no one else knows. I want something back."
He exhales against my hair.
"You met my family today," he says. "What’s left of them at least. Before Artem took over, Lev was the one we all looked to.
He was loud. Reckless, sometimes. The kind of man who walked into a room and made everyone in it feel like the volume had been turned up.
He loved music and art and being creative.
It used to drive our father bonkers when we were kids. "
"What happened?"
"Elena happened." There's no bitterness in his voice.
Just fact. "Lev and Elena were best friends.
It was never romantic. Lev was so free spirited and she was a balance to that.
More serious and quiet. He snuck out to see her one night, was upset after a fight about going to music school.
Her brother didn't approve when he found them talking in the garden in the middle of the night, she was only in her night dress.
I guess it looked suspicious. He thought Lev was taking advantage.
They got into a fight and Elena's brother knocked Lev down. "
He stops. I feel his jaw tighten against the top of my head.
"He landed wrong. Hit his head. And that was it."
The simplicity of it is the worst part. A misunderstanding, a shove, a bad angle. A man's life ending because he fell the wrong way.
"Elena's brother?"
"Destroyed by it. He wasn't a bad man. He was a protective brother who threw one punch and killed someone. Artem wanted revenge. He was going to take it too, took Elena and planned to kill her."
"But he didn't."
"No. Because it was an accident. And because Artem is the kind of man who can tell the difference between a murder and a tragedy.
" He pauses. "He and Elena found each other after.
In the grief. She was carrying guilt for her brother's actions, and Artem was carrying a family that had just lost its North star.
They learned from each other and vengeance turned into something else. "
"The baby," I say. "They named him Lev."
"Yes."
I think about the round-cheeked boy at the reception. The way Yevgeny held him. The way his face changed.
"You've killed men," I say. It's not a question.
"Yes." His fingers are tracing swirling lines over my skin in a way that’s calming and arousing all at once.
"For business?" I probe.
"For business. For revenge. For survival. I'm not a good man, Stefania. I'm a man who does what's required and doesn't lose sleep over it."
"Do you regret any of it?" I ask, knowing he could ask me the very same question.
"Some of it. The ones that needed doing, no.
The ones where I had a choice and chose violence anyway.
.." He shifts behind me. "I won't lie to you about what I am.
I've never pretended to be anything other than what I am.
The difference between us is that I do it for the family and you do it for strangers. "
The words settle between us. He says it so simply. Like what I've told him is just another fact about me, no different from my name or my age.
"It started with my aunt," I say.
His hand stills again.
"Aunt Yana raised us after my parents died. She was the best person I've ever known. When I was eighteen, a man attacked her outside a grocery store. Raped her. Killed her. The police had nothing. A grainy security camera and a description that fit half the men in the city."
I don't feel the usual tightness in my chest when I talk about Yana. Maybe it's the dark or the warmth of him behind me.
"I found him in three weeks. Tracked him through pawn shop records where he'd sold her ring.
Broke into his apartment." I touch my thigh without thinking.
The scar under my fingers. "He grabbed a knife.
I didn't plan for that. He cut me and I thought I was going to die in that apartment, but I didn't. He did. "
Yevgeny's arm tightens around me, pulling me closer.
"It was messy," I say. "Sloppy. I was eighteen and running on rage and I did everything wrong. But after it was over, I knew I was never going to be powerless again. So I got serious. I trained. I learned. And I started finding other men like him."
"Eleven of them so far," he says quietly.
"And there’s so many more I wanted to get to before I had to stop."
"Who said you have to stop? As long as your careful, and don’t put yourself in danger when you’re pregnant, I think this is something we could easily continue. Maybe even do together?"
My entire body begins to tingle as I roll over to face him.
"Seriously?"
He presses his lips to the tip of my nose. "I married you knowing there was a darker side to you. I told you that."
"I thought it was over," I say. "Getting married. Being watched. Living on the estate. I thought I'd never be able to do it again."
"You thought wrong." He kisses me again, pressing his pelvis forward, his hard length grinding against my hip.
"What are you saying?"
"I'm saying you don't have to stop. I'm saying I have resources and reach and a wife who's apparently better at disappearing than professionals I pay very well. You want to keep hunting?" His hand comes up and cups the side of my face. "Then hunt. I'll make sure you have what you need."
I stare at him. Six years I've carried this alone. Six years of hiding and lying and burying the truest part of myself under silence, and this man is lying in bed with me on our wedding night telling me he'll help me keep doing it.
I kiss him. Hard and sudden and messy. He makes a surprised sound against my mouth and then he's kissing me back, his hand sliding into my hair and gripping.
When I pull back, we're both breathing harder.
"So," I say. "What about you? What should I know about being your wife?"
Something shifts in his expression. Warmer. Almost amused. "What do you want to know?"
"Expectations. Rules. Whatever this is going to look like day to day."
"No rules. You're not my prisoner, you're my partner." He traces his thumb along my cheekbone. "But I am possessive. I won't apologize for that. What's mine stays mine and I don't share."
"Noted."
"And I want children. When you're ready. That's important to me."
The word children warms me in a way I wasn't expecting.
"Okay," I say. "What else?"
He watches me for a moment. That careful, assessing look. "In bed," he says, his voice dropping lower, "I like telling you when you're doing something right. And I like hearing you respond to it."
I think about the way he murmured against my skin earlier. The way his voice went low and specific when he told me to let go. The way my body responded to the command like a current.
"I noticed," I say. "I liked it."
"Good girl."
Two words. My stomach drops. Heat rushes up my spine and pools low in my belly and I feel my breath catch in a way that is completely involuntary and entirely obvious.
He sees it.
"Interesting," he says, and the warmth in his voice has an edge now. Something dark and pleased.
"I don't know what I like yet," I admit. "This is all new. I don't have a list of things to hand you."
"I don't need a list." He pulls me closer, his mouth brushing my ear. "I'll learn you, Stefania. The same way I learned everything else about you. Carefully. Thoroughly." His teeth graze my earlobe. "And when I find something that makes you shake, I'll do it again until you can't breathe."
My pulse is hammering. My skin is flushed and I can feel the heat between us building again, coiling tight in the space where his body meets mine.
"That sounds like a threat," I say.
"It's a promise." He rolls onto his back and pulls me over him. "And I always keep my promises."