Katerina #2
He looks at the image again before handing the phone back to me.
I grip the edge of the counter. “Then there’s one of his men in my father’s house.”
Roman’s expression doesn’t change, but something in him tightens. “Yes.”
“Do you think Papa knows?”
That question hangs there.
Roman doesn’t answer quickly, and the fact that he doesn’t answer at all is almost worse.
“I don’t know,” he says finally.
Which means he has thought of it too.
I take another breath and realize my hand is shaking.
I should be talking.
That’s the reason I came here. The guard. The tattoo. The shooting. My father. His father. All the things that feel rotten now that I can finally see the shape of them.
Instead, I’m standing in Roman’s kitchen with vodka warming my throat and his attention on me so completely that every sensible thought I had on the drive over is starting to come apart.
He tells me to start from the beginning, so I do.
I tell him about the guard. About never having seen him before. About the way he spoke to me like he belonged there already. About the tattoo under the cuff and the picture I took and how my skin went cold the second I saw it.
Roman listens without interrupting. He asks questions when he needs to.
Short ones. Precise ones. Times, places, what the man said exactly, whether he looked nervous, whether anyone else was nearby.
Mikhail disappears somewhere down the hall, giving us privacy without pretending It isn’t deliberate.
By the time I’m done, the vodka is half gone and so is my temper.
“So what now?” I ask. “Do I go back there and sit at breakfast like everything is normal?”
Roman leans one hand on the counter and looks at me. “No.”
“No?” I echo. “That’s a very comforting answer.”
“You came here because you know It isn’t normal.”
“I came here because men with guns nearly killed my children.”
His face changes a little at that. Not enough for anyone else to notice. Enough for me. “And because part of you already suspects your father knows more than he should,” he says.
“I don’t know what I think about my father,” I say.
“That’s not true.”
I laugh once, sharp and humorless. “Oh, you know me now?”
“I know that look.”
“What look?”
“The one you get when you already know the answer and are trying to decide whether you can live with it.”
I set the glass down too hard. “You don’t get to do that.”
“Do what?”
“Stand there and read me like I’m the easy part of this.”
His mouth hardens. “You’re not the easy part.”
“Good,” I say. “Because I’m getting very tired of men deciding they understand me.”
He pushes away from the counter then, slow and controlled, and the movement changes the air instantly. We are no longer discussing guards and shell casings and fathers. We are in the dangerous place again, the one we always seem to reach without meaning to and never leave cleanly.
“I’m not deciding anything,” he says. “I’m looking at what’s in front of me.”
“And what’s that?”
“A woman who is scared, furious, and still standing here.”
“A woman who made one stupid choice in Moscow and apparently hasn’t stopped paying for it.”
Roman’s eyes narrow. “One?”
I should not have said that.
The memory of the piano hits me hot and immediate. His mouth between my legs. His hand in my hair. My body shaking on the black lacquer while I tried and failed to hate him enough to stop.
Heat climbs my throat.
Roman sees it. “That’s what this is?” he asks quietly. “Regret?”
“Yes.” The lie comes easily.
He takes one step closer. “Look at me and say that again.”
I do. Or try to.
The problem is that he’s too close now, and my body has always betrayed me first where he’s concerned. I can smell him.
I can see the pulse at the base of his throat. I can see the exact moment he realizes I’m struggling and decides not to make it easier.
“Say it,” he says.
“I regret—”
My voice fails me.
His mouth almost moves.
Not a smile. Worse.
“Right,” he says softly.
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Look pleased with yourself.”
He steps closer until my hips touch the counter behind me. “Then stop giving me reasons.”
My hands flatten on the edge of the stone. “You’re impossible.”
“And you still came.”
“That was not for this.”
“No,” he says. “That’s what makes it interesting.”
I glare at him.
He lifts one hand and brushes his knuckles against my jaw. Just once. Light enough that I could pretend he never touched me at all if my whole body did not immediately tense under it.
I hate that. I hate him. I hate the part of me already leaning into the touch.
“This is a bad idea,” I whisper.
“Yes.”
“You keep agreeing with me.”
“That should tell you something.”
“What?”
“That I’m done pretending it matters.”
The words go through me before I can brace for them.
“You think because we’re alone in one of your safe apartments, you can say whatever you want?”
His eyes drop to my mouth. “No.”
I look away. I need to think straight, and he’s making that very hard right now. But I’d already decided that he had to know the truth. I couldn’t stop running anymore. That ends tonight.
I have spent five years being the only person carrying this truth, and tonight, all at once, I can’t bear the weight of it anymore.
Roman waits. He always did know when silence would make me speak.
I set the glass down very carefully because my hand is starting to shake. “The children,” I say, and then stop.
His face changes a little, though he says nothing.
My mouth is dry.
“What about them?” he asks.
I look at him and think, This is the moment. After this, nothing is the same. After this, I don’t get to pretend I was only ever protecting them from some vague danger with no face and no name.
I force the words out. “They’re yours.”
Roman doesn’t move.
For a second the whole apartment goes silent.
Roman looks at me the way men look at a wound they didn’t know they had until someone put a knife through the skin and showed it to them.
“What did you say?”
My throat tightens, but I make myself hold his gaze. “The twins are yours.”
He goes absolutely still.
It should frighten me more than it does. The anger I could have handled. Shouting, questions, accusation. This stillness is worse because I don’t know what’s inside it yet.
I see the math hit him. Moscow. The plane. The hotel. The weeks after. All the ways he could have counted this himself if he had known where to start.
He drags a hand over his mouth. “And you never told me.”
“I told you before,” I say. “I didn’t want your shadow anywhere near them.”
His jaw tightens. “Then what changed now?”
“I think I was being unfair to you,” I say. “I had decided before the shooting happened, and that just made my decision firm. I couldn’t stop running from my past anymore, maybe I never could.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asks softly while he closes the distance between us.
“Because I knew sooner or later, you would find me,” I say truthfully. “And I couldn’t run anymore.”
“So sweet Katerina,” he murmurs, leaning in, inhaling me deeply. “Is this you surrendering to me?”
“Then why do you sound so sure of yourself?”
“Because you’re still here.”
That should make me angry, and it does.
But it also makes me wet.
He must see it in my face, because the last piece of restraint leaves him then. One hand goes to my waist, the other to the back of my neck, and then his mouth is on mine.
Just heat and possession and all the frustration between us finally getting somewhere to go.
I gasp into the kiss, and he takes it deeper immediately, his tongue pushing past mine, his hand tightening at my waist until I feel each finger through my coat. My hands fly to his shoulders, not to push him away, not really, but because I need somewhere to put the force of wanting him.
God.
He tastes like vodka and anger and something darker beneath both.
I kiss him back just as hard.
The sound he makes is low and rough, and it goes straight between my legs. He turns us in one quick movement, pinning me between his body and the counter, and I feel the thick line of his cock against my hip.
My whole body lights up.
His mouth leaves mine only long enough to drag down my throat. I arch without meaning to, giving him more skin, and he takes it, kissing, biting, licking that one place under my ear that always makes me weak.
“Still regret it?” he murmurs against my neck.
I dig my fingers into his shoulders. “I hate you.”
“No, you don’t.”
“I should.”
“You should do a lot of things.”
His hand slides down over my hip, around to my ass, then back to the front where his palm presses low against my stomach. My breath catches. He keeps going, fingers slipping beneath the hem of my dress, up the inside of my thigh.
I’m not wearing anything underneath.
His hand stills.
For one beat, the room goes silent.
Then he lifts his head and looks at me.
I should be embarrassed.
Instead I say, because I’m already too far gone for dignity, “You stole my panties.”
His mouth twitches.
“You came here without them.”
“That’s your fault.”
“Then we agree.”
He pushes his hand higher and finds me wet and bare for him.
I choke on the sound that comes out of me.
“Christ,” he says, and this time he really does sound pleased with himself.
“Don’t.”
“You’re soaked.”
I close my eyes. “Roman.”
He rubs two fingers through me, slow, thorough, like he’s reminding himself exactly how my body works. Maybe he is. I can barely think long enough to care.
“You walked in here like this,” he says.
“I didn’t walk in here for you.”
“No?” He circles my clit once, and my knees almost give. “That’s not what your body’s saying.”
I make the mistake of opening my eyes.
He’s watching my face. That always feels more intimate than it should.
I reach for his belt because if I keep standing here being touched while he’s still mostly dressed, I may lose my mind entirely. He catches my wrist before I get far.
“Bedroom,” he says.
I barely have time to process the word before he’s lifting me.