7. How dare he have such good taste?
SEVEN
HOW DARE HE HAVE SUCH GOOD TASTE?
A part of me wants to hate it just because he’s so presumptuous.
But I can’t.
I don’t.
It’s darling.
I don’t even like that adjective, but it’s the one word that sums it up.
It isn’t perfect and there are definitely things I want to do to it to make it right, but the bones are beautiful.
The first floor consists of two living rooms, a dining room, an office, and a surprisingly large kitchen/breakfast room.
Upstairs, where the ceilings are a lot lower, enough that Maxim bitches every time he walks through a door because he has to duck his head, there are seven bedrooms.
Each has an original stove, the floors throughout are also original, and… I’m in love with this house.
Maxim’s sigh is put-upon.
Which tells me my appreciation has etched its way into my expression.
When I find him leaning against the doorjamb, I lick my lips.
He notices too.
“Which is the main bedroom?”
“Our bedroom, you mean?”
This is not a drill!
“Yes,” I croak.
His smirk tells me he notices that as well. “Whichever you want. I hate waking up to sunshine, but I get up early and will be commuting anyway so it doesn’t matter if your morning routine involves solar torture.”
“Isn’t that what blackout curtains are for?”
“I have four different sets of blackout shades and light still gets in.”
“What are you? A vampire?”
“In a past life.”
I snort. “Well, you’re in luck. I don’t like the sunshine in my face first thing in the morning either.” He perks up. “But I don’t need ten sets of blackout shades or for my bed to be coffin-shaped so I’m not sure if we’re even compatible.”
“Oh, pchelka, I can guarantee we are.”
I can feel the heat in my cheeks. “I hope you’re not all talk, Maxim. I’d be very disappointed if the action didn’t live up to the promise.”
A smile dances on his lips and I know, I just know, how much rope he gives me to hang myself.
Honestly, it’s the best part about him.
I love that he indulges me without making me feel less than. That he goes out of his way, in fact, to do the opposite.
My mom and dad’s relationship was the dictionary definition of toxic—hello, he arranged her freakin’ murder.
But my sisters’ marriages? My aunts’? The literal best examples.
Hope dances through my veins like someone dosed my blood with glitter.
I want that for myself, and it seems as if it’s within touching distance.
The thought’s a reminder of what happened earlier.
Touch.
If I take what I want, he gives it to me.
Bracing myself for future impact, I request, “Show me the bedrooms that aren’t east-facing.”
Straightening, he holds out his hand for mine.
I slide my fingers against his, forcing the urge to shiver down before he thinks I’m running a fever. Those calluses… Yeah, they’re going to star in my fantasies at some point.
There are two neighboring bedrooms at the end of the hall.
One’s painted in a sharp red that I instantly hate. There’s a four-poster bed in there, the brass type that no one in their right mind would find comfortable.
Not even the wingback chair in front of the stove fireplace inspires me enough to want to fall asleep in here.
He chuckles at my moue of distaste then guides me to the other one, the room with honey-colored walls from an antique type of wallpaper.
If he didn’t mention that the walls were reinforced, I’d think it was original.
It certainly looks faded enough in parts.
Not in a bad way—nothing’s peeling. Just old. Really old.
There’s a four-poster in here as well, Shaker-style, but the posts pierce the air and don’t form an overhead canopy. They’re tipped with beautifully engraved acorns that have me releasing a delighted giggle.
“Are they fairies?”
“Where?” When I point at the acorns, he shakes his head. “I think they’re…” He mutters the word in Russian.
“Ladybugs?”
“I think so.”
“Korovka, korovka, uleti na nebo, prinesi nam khleba.” When his brows lift, I smile. “‘Little cow, little cow, fly to heaven, bring us bread.’ Didn’t think I’d know that?”
“I didn’t.”
“I love ladybugs. Have ever since my mother told me the Russian word translated to ‘God’s little cow.’ Then they made me love them even more because they always sit on my hand if ever I’m near one.”
“Maybe it’s because you sing that song to them.”
“Maybe. Shay says in England, they call them lady birds. I always preferred that name.” With a dreamy smile, I continue my perusal, though the ladybugs go a long way to making me love it.
Cozy—that sums up the bedroom. This one has a dresser that matches the bed and a vanity, with a large mirror, complete with little age spots, in one corner.
It’s somewhere I could imagine my grandparents living back in their day. The nostalgia’s distracting. So unlike the modern sacrifices to interior decoration that Inessa’s studying at school.
This is warm and… a home.
“This one?”
I should probably be annoyed that he can read me this well.
The windows are small in here, but I can see from the distant lights that it overlooks a lake and a—
“Is that a stable?”
“Yes. Empty for now.”
For now…
That if I want horses, I can have horses goes unspoken.
I peer at him over my shoulder, for long enough that he frowns.
It takes a lot to unnerve a man like him…
Grabbing my earlier confidence, I stride over to him, turn to face the bed when I’m a half foot away, and ask, “Unfasten my buttons?”
Deathly silence is my only answer.
Then…
“Did O’Donnelly fasten them?”
That low, pissed grumble would terrify anyone else.
But not me.
“He’s like a brother. Do you want to fuck your brothers?”
His lip curls in a sneer as he grouses in Russian while unfastening the small buttons that run down the length of my top.
The relief as the band around my neck releases comes as a shock.
That Harrington could have used my clothes against me has me tensing up. Maxim misreads it, though, and clucks his tongue.
“Calm down, korovka. I won’t bite.”
I tilt my head so I can look over my shoulder again, amused that he’s switched his endearment out. “Truthfully? I wish you would.” His pupils dilate. That fast. “But I’m not scared of you. I was thinking how Harrington could have yanked on the neck band and choked me if he had wanted to.”
“First blood,” is all he says.
“I know, and choking doesn’t count. He could have used it to incapacitate me. I-I’d have thought… My hands are dirty. I didn’t think you’d want that.”
His knuckles run along my spine, glancing over the nodules and making me shiver—again—in the process.
“When I learned about the rites, my initial response was to ask you to pull out.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because if anyone understands the need for a purpose, it’s me.”
Whatever I expected him to say, it wasn’t that.
“You think the Veronians will give me that?”
“I know the O’Donnellys want that boy in power.” He says boy in the same vein others would say pervert. “I know you like him.” Another sneer. “It fits that you’d go out of your way to help. You have a good soul, pchelka.”
“Not so good now,” I rasp, the words breaking.
“Do you believe in heaven?”
I think about the sermons I’ve attended with the very Catholic O’Donnellys. Though, to me, they’re not Catholic at all. They go through the motions for Lena, their mom, and their wives get dragged along before they can feast on a family roast dinner while gathering to bitch about their week.
Honestly, I put up with it, too, for Aunt Aoife’s roasted potatoes and Lena’s beef—depending on who’s hosting us.
“No. I don’t believe in heaven.”
“So, does it matter if your soul is good or bad?”
“To me? Yes.”
“Then don’t be a cold-blooded murderer.”
Annoyed, I snap, “It’s not as simple as that.”
“Da, it is. You have choices. You didn’t have to do that tonight. You chose to do it. The rituals tie you to them but not forever.
“Once you become a brother, leaving is no longer an option. This is still your choice.” Both hands cup my shoulders, the fingers digging in as he vows, “You have ‘a cold-blooded murderer’ at your command, Victoria. I don’t mind taking lives if it gives you what you want.
I will shed blood to make sure that you always have a say in whatever it is you do.
“It’s my honor and my duty to protect your right to consent to whatever life throws in your path. Understood?”
His words swirl over the traumas of my past and the uncertainty of my future like a soothing balm on unhealed wounds.
It’s not enough but… “Thank you, Maxim.”
“Anything for you, korovka.”
And the craziest part?
He means anything.