8. I only put out for my wife
EIGHT
I ONLY PUT OUT FOR MY WIFE
When she throws the top on the floor, I grit my teeth at the strap-free expanse of her back.
Rationally, I knew she wasn’t wearing a bra. But seeing is believing.
“I need to burn your clothes,” I tell her gruffly. “If there’s blood on them, I don’t want you wearing them again.”
“Over a hundred people witnessed me kill someone, Maxim. I think if my cookie is baked, then I just have to accept it and you can whisk me away to the Dalmatian Coast.”
I grimace. “You’d make a terrible criminal.”
She barks out a laugh. “Why, thank you.”
Her hands cup her breasts, as if she regrets tossing her modesty to the wind, then she sticks up her chin, gives a little self-aimed nod, and lets go.
My gaze drops to the pert tips that bud under my attention. The urge to bite them has me clenching my jaw.
She ignores me and walks over to the door she found earlier that leads to a bathroom. The sound of antique plumbing groans to life, in turn making me groan.
“Why did all the houses in this area have to be from the eighteen-fucking-hundreds?” I wonder.
“Did you say something?” she calls.
“Nyet.”
I didn’t intend on bringing her here yet. That she needed a distraction from the evening’s entertainment was a given and I knew this would intrigue her. But it’s put me in a precarious position.
She’s likely naked in the bathroom.
Our bathroom.
With as much water as she’s running, I imagine she’s filling the cast-iron clawfoot tub.
So many urges… tamped down for too long.
I dig my thumb and forefinger into my eyes.
She’s already taken more than I thought she would tonight. By word and by deed, she’s proven that she’s ready.
But I want more.
She’s not just some fuck.
She’s my future wife.
That matters to me.
It might not to her, with the strange upbringing she’s had—half traditional that insisted she conserve her virginity for the highest bidder, half modern with all those aunts of hers filling her head with feminism.
But to this brat raised on the streets, it counts.
To the man who clawed his way up the ladder one murder at a time, it counts.
To the leader who seized New York, it counts.
Sullying her now would mean tainting the future gift I’ll be giving myself. I know this. But…
Fuck.
I stride over to the bathroom, just in time to see her stick her toe into the water.
She’s completely bare.
Bruises are already popping up on her torso, bruises that make me wish I’d killed Harrington this morning before the meeting.
Why am I allowing her to think she can be independent again? When this is the thanks I get for it? Seeing bruises and welts pop up on that pristine skin of hers.
“Stop glowering at me.” She heaves a delighted sigh as she slides into the tub.
“You’re bruised.”
“They’ll heal.”
Because her dismissiveness annoys the shit out of me, I snarl, “I don’t want you scarred like I am.”
The water surges and falls, splashing over the rim as she sits upright. “Holy fuck! I’m so sorry—I just forgot. Are you still bleeding, Maxim?!”
“Victoria, you barely broke the skin.”
“It was barbaric,” she spits. “This whole thing is insane.”
“You can always pull out,” I tease, just to see her nose scrunch.
Her chin tips up again. “A Vasov never concedes.”
I think about how her father’s skull conceded to Camille’s attack, the one that ended him, but keep my mouth shut.
Unfastening my jacket, I hook it on the back of the door, leaving it for the staff to clean and press.
“Oh, Maxim.” She moans, hands clutching her face as she stares at what she can see of my shirt from behind the vest. “I can’t believe I did that to you!”
“Pchelka, listen to me—you caused me no pain.”
“That’s worse. How didn’t that hurt? Look at you. Your whole shirt’s— Blyad. Is there any peroxide in the bathroom cabinet?”
“I’m a mobster, zaya. What do you think?”
Her eyes narrow. “Then pass it to me. Gauze too.”
“A queen in her bath,” I taunt, but I pass her both the bottle of peroxide and a stack of sealed gauze.
She pats the tub. “Sit.”
I toe out of my shoes then sit on the edge of the bath. But I go one further and twist so that I’m facing her. One foot goes in the water, and the other stays flat on the floor.
“Isn’t that uncomfortable?”
With a shrug, I unfasten my vest next and toss that aside, then work off the top few buttons of my shirt and grab the back of the collar to tug it overhead. The patch of wet blood clings to my skin, staining it red. It lands with a soggy splat on the tile.
When she releases a shuddery breath, I tut. “Katyonok, it’s fine—”
“Why do you insist on calling me sweet animal names?”
“Would you prefer I call you ‘sloth?’”
She splashes her hand against the water’s surface. “You’re so annoying.”
I don’t bother hiding my amusement as she upends too much peroxide onto some gauze and gingerly pats at my chest.
I work my neck from side to side, satisfied when it cracks. It’s been a long day and I’m tired. My eyes shutter as her fingers flutter over the wound.
“You’re not even cringing. It must sting.”
My eyes pop open at the accusation. “One time, I got shot—” I tilt my bicep so she can see the scar. “—right here. It went straight through so Misha—you know him, da?”
“You used to bicker on the phone with him all the time.”
“Yes. He’s my brother. So anyway, he got it into his head that the only way to treat it was to pack peroxide-laced gauze into the wound.”
“Tell me you’re joking.”
“No. We had to hide it from Nikolai—he’s older than us—because he told us not to play with guns and the first thing we did when we found one on the street was play with it.
” I grimace. “Now that stung like a motherfucker. I howled so loud that Misha started a rumor there was a wolf roaming the streets.”
“People believed him?”
“I don’t know.” I snicker. “Whenever he changed the dressing, I howled again so it rammed the idea home.”
“It got infected?”
“Of course. Pain is life and life is pain, kotik.”
“What if I want to be called your ‘knife?’”
I pull a face. “What about that is an endearment?”
“Better than calling me ‘kitty’ or ‘hare!’” She pouts. “Tiger. Shark—”
“Shark?!”
“I’ll take anything but something fluffy.”
“Ah, but I can’t help that I associate you with all things fluffy.”
“Ugh!”
I twirl a strand of her hair around my finger. “I thought you’d be shy.”
“Modesty fell to the wayside when I remembered how I hurt you.” She hitches a shoulder. “You showed me you in the shower last night. Only right that we keep things equal.”
“Equality.” I savor the taste of that one word. “That’s how you want to go about it?”
“Go about what?”
“Us.”
“Well, I’m not going to let you keep me barefoot in the kitchen!”
“I don’t feel like eating burnt offerings for the rest of my life, so that’s good.”
“I can cook just fine. I’d only prefer to have a chef.”
A chef. Not a cook.
I had to pick the woman with expensive tastes…
Amused nonetheless, I reiterate, “Set a date, Victoria.”
“Is it as simple as that?”
“It’s as simple as you want it to be.”
“And what if I want to wait until I’m done with college?”
“Then I don’t put out.” I laugh at her outraged expression. “I know. I’m so irresistible. How will you keep your hands off me?”
“You jerk!”
“I’m so evil. Wanting to cherish your innocence.”
“Maybe I don’t want to be innocent anymore. It’s my choice whom I share my body with and when.”
Any flicker of amusement fades. “Don’t think you can punish me for my old-fashioned outlook by dancing around other boys, korovka.”
“God, you make me so angry. I wasn’t implying that I’d go and fuck anything with a dick on campus. Just that it was up to me when I did so.”
“And doesn’t that work both ways?”
“Like you aren’t fucking anyone that throws themselves at you!”
Her cheeks flush from anger but also the warmth of the water.
She’s never looked more beautiful to me than she does in the pique of unnecessary jealousy.
She wants me.
How is that fucking possible?
“I haven’t screwed anyone since you came of age. Of the two of us, Victoria, I’m the one suffering, not you.” When she sits tall, water dousing her, beading her skin so it glitters like diamonds, I persevere, “I value you. Is that such a crime?”
Her rejoinder is to slouch back, indolently sprawling those loose limbs, revealing every inch of her to me.
And she’s perfection.
From the slight silvery marks at the sides of her breasts and where hip meets thigh to the smooth expanse of her belly. There’s the faintest pooch there and it makes me think of when she’ll carry my baby—the urge to press my hand to it is unbearable.
I’m used to pneumatic blondes with more plastic in them than is healthy—Victoria is the opposite and all the more desirable for it.
I can tell when she realizes I’m studying her because her hand twitches, fluttering about her neckline before she forces it down.
“Krasivaya,” I whisper.
Her throat bobs and her insecurities rise and fall. I see the moment she chooses to embrace them and she dips her chin. “Yes, I’m beautiful, but so are you.”
“What pretty babies we’ll make together,” I coo, just to hear her indignant screech. “Ah, now the neighbors will think the wolf in Moscow has come here.”
She spatters me with enough bathwater that, smirking, I stand and unbuckle my belt. Her eyes remain glued to the buckle, and I see that ever-so-faint relieved puff of breath escape her when I discard it on the floor.
I make no comment—Papa used one on me before. Rarely, but enough for it to leave a lasting impression. I imagine her father did the same at some point.
I almost resent Camille for murdering the cunt.
Kicking my leg out of the water, I unfasten my fly and drag my pants off. While she’s gulping at my body’s reaction to her, I sit down opposite her in the tub.
The heat sinks into my aching bones, urging a sigh out of me. Spying that her feet are a respectable distance from my dick, I snag them and position them atop my thighs.
Her eyes widen, switching between my face and my cock and her feet, then she sags when I dig my thumb into her arch.
“O-oh,” she whimpers, the sound unbearably sexual.
I want to hear my name shatter when she screams it. I cannot fucking wait—
When her other foot settles beside my dick, I tense but don’t stop her, nor do I give up on the foot rub. As I take note that her pedicure matches her bloodred fingernails, I simply warn, “Play with fire and you’ll get burned.”
“I’m safe though, aren’t I? Seeing as you’re so old-fashioned.”
I dig deep into her arch to make her hiss. “Sounds like someone wants a spanking.”
“I’m too old for that!”
“Are you ever too old, though?”
Her lips soften into a moue. “Does that feel good… spanking?”
I shrug. “We can learn together.”
“I didn’t say I’d let you do it!”
“Sounds like it to me.”
“Maxim!”
“Victoria!” I laugh when she slaps the water.
Again. “You are such a brat. You’d probably like it.
When you really piss me off, I could strip you so you’re bare from the waist down, then I’d take you over my knee.
If I did it just right, every time I hit your ass, my fingers would glance off your pussy. ”
“Doesn’t that hurt?” she whispers, her toes curling. Right. Beside. My. Dick.
Double fuck.
“I won’t spank to bruise.” I like her bruiseless. Her silken skin creamy and ready for my bites.
“Do you want to hit me?”
I don’t tense at her question. How could I when I saw her reaction to the belt? “I will never hit you in anger.”
“You just said when you’re pissed—”
“Yes, there’s a difference. You could never annoy me enough that I raise a hand to you.
A tap to the tush if you got off on it, I could manage.
” I push my fingers through the gaps between her toes and spread them wide.
As her butt clenches and lifts her from the water, gravity sends droplets trickling over her form, taking a path my tongue wishes to follow. “I’m not your father, Victoria.”
My reminder turns her mulish. “I never thought you were.”
“I saw your reaction to the belt buckle. Did he hit you with one?”
“Once.” She bites her bottom lip. “For snooping. Most of the time, he pretended I didn’t exist.”
“What did you snoop on?”
“Him talking to the Krestniy Otets.”
My brows lift at the mention of the Bratva’s leader in Russia. “You remember that?”
“The words were indelibly imprinted in my memory after he beat me,” is her bitter comeback.
“You heard both sides of the conversation?”
“It’s why he hit me. He had him on speaker.”
I narrow my eyes. “What did he say?”
“You know Magdalena—Eoghan and Brennan’s Mom?”
“I know her.”
“She was kidnapped by the Aryans.”
“Before her husband decimated them. Their numbers still haven’t recouped all these years later.”
“Oh, dear, how sad, never mind.” She sticks her tongue out at me.
“Victoria,” I mutter impatiently. “What about Magdalena’s kidnapping?”
“It was a Russian plot to unseat the Irish.”
“Have you told them?”
She shakes her head. “Why would I rake up the past? It’s not like it’d change anything. It was ancient history when I overheard the conversation. You won’t tell them, will you?”
“No. Of course not.” I run my thumb over the padded skin of her big toe. “That’s a burden to carry.”
“Hardly.”
“Did you learn your lesson?”
“About snooping? What do you think?”
“I think you got better at hiding.”
“Damn straight.” Her foot wiggles in my grasp.
“If you didn’t mean to hurt me… then maybe I’d let you try.
” My dick stirs, thickening before her eyes.
“Maybe I’d let you put me over your knee, just so that I could feel your cock against my side.
I’d know if I affected you as much as you affected me then, wouldn’t I? ”
“There’s no timeline where you and I coexist where you don’t affect me, kotik.”
“Why me? What makes me so special?”
I lean forward and cup her cheeks. “The fact you ask is what makes you unique. One day, your strength will bear me a son or a daughter and—”
“You have a breeding kink, don’t you?”
“See what it does to me, thinking of you round with my child?”
Her eyes bulge. “Huh. Can I touch it?”
“I told you that you can have whatever you want, Victoria.”
“Including you?”
“Including me.”