DADDY NIKO APPROVES #2
I want nothing more than to strip her of her clothes with my teeth.
She gapes at me, then a soft snicker bursts from her. “So, the way to your heart isn’t through sexy lingerie, but by stealing your clothes?”
“You already have my heart, kotik. Didn’t you figure that out yet?”
Her gaze softens, as does her amusement. A dusting of color brushes along her cheeks. But she never drops eye contact.
“I felt like it’s been one-sided for a long time,” she confesses, voice husky. “I-I didn’t see that changing much.”
I step closer to her so I can cup her cheek. She tilts her head back, letting me carry the weight as I press my lips to the corner of her mouth before crossing to her ear, where I whisper, “It hasn’t been one-sided. It just wasn’t politically correct.”
She snorts. “Since when do you care about that?”
“With you, I did. After what happened when I was a kid, I’d never prey on a child—”
“Were you… abused?”
“No. But people close to me were.” I watch her throat quiver rather than look at her expression.
“I’d never hurt a child like that. And you were a child.
For the longest time. At first, you were an ideal.
Something to claim,” I admit, then Nikolai’s earlier words come back to haunt me.
“Then you were something to protect. You became someone soon after.
I recognized that fire in you, Victoria. I recognized it because it burns in me.
“Someone who isn’t happy with accepting the status quo just because that’s how it’s done. Someone who’ll fight for more, risk everything for more—that’s you.
“You said something the other day to your sisters and it resonated with me—”
“Not enough for you to stop sulking at me!”
I click my tongue. “We’re alike, you and I. We may not know everything about each other, but we’re cut from the same cloth.” My fingers smooth over her neck. “Do you know the last person I said ‘I love you’ to was my grandmother?”
She releases the quietest, “Oh.”
“Da. Emotions… they’re to be locked down. Misha told me that first night you came to the brownstone you were a liability. And he was right.” When she protests, I tut. “He was. Everyone tells me that. Nikolai included. But they don’t know that you’re also my greatest strength.
“Seeing you host tonight, it reminded me of your past. Of your upbringing. I know of no other woman who would have handled that scene as well as you just did. You made me proud to be your husband, kotik. Very proud.”
She ducks her chin. “I didn’t want to let you down.”
“And you didn’t. Ilya is a pest. He pisses off everyone for fun.
Even the Krestniy Otets only puts up with him because he’s his nephew.
You handled him with aplomb.” I stroke my thumb over her jaw.
“As for Nikolai, I didn’t need his approval, but I know I got it anyway. I knew when he called you ‘meita.’”
“What does it mean?”
“Daughter. In Latgalian.”
With a shaky sigh, she pushes her forehead into my chest. “Maxim?”
“Yes, Victoria?”
“I love you. Ot vsei dushi,” she whispers. With all my soul. Her hand clutches at my shirt. “I have since… forever.”
I slot my fingers through hers above my heart. “We are kindred spirits.”
“How did you know?”
“I need you to understand that when we met, I knew you were a child. I wasn’t sexually attracted to you. I never—”
“Maxim, I know. Maybe it’s weird and maybe we won’t tell our daughter how Mommy and Daddy met, but I know. If anyone does, it’s me. Only chaperones in the 1800s insisted on as much propriety as you did.”
“I was protecting you!”
“You protected me for so long that I turned eighteen and then nineteen and then twenty…” Her brow arches as I feel myself blush. “Now, we agree. You’re not a pedo like our president. We’ve established that so… carry on.”
“When I made a deal with Camille to marry you, she didn’t take into account the hours I’d spent taxiing you around the city.
“I knew that your father ignored you. I knew that he was distant and cruel and likely to punish you if you got caught with a hair out of place. I knew that you hated choir practice and that he’d make you read the Bible for hours if you displeased him…
“But you never let it get you down. Ever. It made you determined. This little brat, the pampered princess, reared in the same house as Inessa, who was spoiled by comparison… you were so different. You were a kid. A job. But I overheard your conversations with friends—”
“Some friends! They all dropped me when he died!”
That she protests then has me snorting. “Can I continue?”
“Sorry,” she says sheepishly.
“I saw the fight in you. It was the same fight that I had in me. It’s what made it so easy to roll over with this Veronian bullshit. I wanted more. I recognized that in you then, and now you’re living up to that promise.
“I stand here now because of the kid who dreamed of more for himself. Who refused to die on the streets. Who vowed for another, better life. How could I stop you from having that? From ever letting you be in a position of weakness again?”
“We get each other,” she rasps, then, simultaneously, we invoke:
“Ne lezhit dusha.*”
We stand there, reveling in this connection. A connection that few outside of the Russian diaspora can begin to comprehend. The soul transcends all and lies down only to one person.
“As much as I used to long for a time when we would be equals, a part of me dreaded it. I wanted you to be my wife more than I wanted to be shukher some days.
“I fought my conscience when I received reports of you dating, or of how many friends you had that were boys…
“You deserved the chance to grow up. To be free. And I didn’t want to take that from you, but I still dreaded it.
I knew that if you asked me to cut contact, that if you told me you loved someone else and that you wanted to marry them, I’d let you go.
” At her gasp, I snag her hand, turn it, and press a kiss to her palm.
“I loved you enough to let you go, Victoria.”
“I didn’t want you to let me go, Maxim. I never want that. Please, don’t let go of me. Ever.” Her eyes remain glued to mine. “Please.”
“You’re my business, Victoria.”
The hope in her expression shatters, replaced with a coyness that has me hiding a smirk. “About time you realized it.”
She takes a step back, dislodging herself from my hold. With those all-knowing eyes of hers still fixed on mine, she reaches for the hem of my sweater and, in a flurry of movement, throws it overhead.
I get a look at her bare tits and my boxer briefs on her before she cackles and takes off running up the stairs.
Hiding a grin, I shuck off the irritations of the day, rumble her name, and make chase…
I have a wife to claim.
* Footnote: My soul doesn’t lie down