57

Sasha
“We should go to Russia,” my mother says. It’s been two days since I saw Maxim at the Kremlin, and I haven’t left the hotel room. I’m sitting by the window looking out at the street below. I alternate sitting here with pacing around the small room.
I don’t know if I’m thinking, or I’ve just shut down.
“No.”
“Please, Sasha. Be reasonable. We can’t stay here forever. Soon Ravil will figure out the hotel is still charging his credit card, and we’ll be kicked out.”
“You did this,” I snap at her. “You took away the only person who ever really cared about me!”
My mother’s eyes widen. “What are you saying? I’m the only one who ever really cared about you.”
“No.” I’m so sick of the hot tears that keep leaking from my eyes. “Maxim really cared. He listened. He supported my dreams. And now he’s terribly hurt because he thinks I tried to trick him.”
She shakes her head dismissively.
“If you want to leave this hotel, you should help me figure out how to fix this.”
“Maxim said he would file for divorce?”
I glare at my mother. She loves that little nugget because it means she’ll get my money. “I don’t want a divorce. I want Maxim.”
My mother sighs. “What about the lawyer?”
“What lawyer?”
“Isn’t Ravil’s fiancee a lawyer? Maybe she’s drawing up the papers. You could go and talk to her.”
I blink at my mother. It’s not the worst idea.
I don’t know if Lucy likes me, but she was certainly kind before. I pick up the phone and call her law firm to book an appointment.
I will make this work. I have to make this work. I’m not going to sit around passively letting people move me around the chess board like a pawn. This is my life, and I have to fight for what I want.
Maxim
I’m at the bar for the third straight night in a row when Pavel plops down beside me on a barstool. He doesn’t look at me, just examines the bottles behind the bar with a cool indifference.
The bartender comes over and takes his order for a beer.
He sips it slowly, still not acknowledging me.
“Whatever you want to say, rethink it. I promise I don’t want to hear it.”
“Hmm.”
I pick up my rocks glass and gesture with it. “This time my aim will be better,” I threaten.
He says nothing, just takes another pull on his beer.
Fuck this. I throw down a fifty and start to get up from my seat.
“She was fighting with her mother,” Pavel offers.
I don’t want to stop.
Walk away. Just walk the fuck away.
Goddammit. I sit back down.
“Her mom was saying she should’ve let her burn.”
If Pavel wanted to pick the one thing to make me react, he chose wisely. A wash of cold and then red-hot rage burns through me. “Excuse me?”
“They were fighting,” he repeats. “I really don’t think Sasha had anything to do with the plan. She kept begging me to tell you that. And her mom was telling her she’d done it for her, but Sasha was calling bullshit. She said Galina was basically stealing her money.”
My heart flops around in my chest. Indecision makes it hard to breathe. “You’re just now telling me this?” I snarl, deciding all of this is now Pavel’s fault.
He’s wise enough to get off his stool and back away, hands held up in surrender. “I tried.”
I shake my head. “No, you didn’t.”
I may want to never see Sasha again, but the idea of her being in danger from her own mother gets me up and moving fast.
Thank fuck I killed Viktor and Alexei. Would they have killed my bride if she’d tried to leave?
I pull out my phone as I get in my car and call Ravil. “Where are they?” I bark into the phone.
He waits a beat before answering, showing me he’s still top dog. When he speaks, his voice is smooth as caramel. “I presume you mean Sasha and Galina?”
“Yes. I assume you’re keeping tabs on them?”
“They’re still in the hotel where I left them. Their tickets to Russia, booked under false names, went unused.”
“What hotel?”
“You should just come back here.”
“Don’t fucking tell me to come back there.”
“No, really, come back. If you’re looking for Sasha… she found a way in.”
It takes me several moments to think that through. Nothing gets by Ravil, he’s our pakhan. No one can make him do anything except…
“Lucy let her in.” I surmise.
“She’s in your room.”
My heartbeat calms. She’s in my room.
Safe.
No one can touch her there.
No one but me.
I’m still torn. Not sure what to believe. But Pavel’s report ties in with what she tried to tell me. And her actions. She didn’t stay dead. She hasn’t left the country.
I step on the gas, screeching into the parking garage below the Kremlin and taking the private elevator to the penthouse.
I stalk into the suite without a word to anyone, rolling my shirtsleeves up as I go. As if I’m about to take care of my errant wife with a good old-fashioned spanking.
Which… actually sounds fun.
Some of the weight that’s been crushing my chest since I thought she was dead lifts. I push open the door, then step inside and quickly close it when I see what’s waiting for me.
Sasha’s naked in the middle of the bed. Naked except for a pair of red stilettos. Apart from the shoes, she’s the spitting image of the picture she’d made six years ago when I’d found her in my yacht cabin, offering herself up to me on a platter.
I don’t like the scene. I didn’t like it then, and I like it even less now. It feels like another manipulation. But then I notice how unsure she looks. It’s that, more than anything, that breaks down my resistance.
I lean my back against the door and scrub a hand across my face. “What are you doing?”
She swallows. I don’t like to see her so nervous. “I left my heels on,” she offers. “For punishment.”
The fact that she’s thinking the same thing I was when I came in busts down even more resistance. But I don’t want to think with my dick here. I can’t let her fool me if this is another trick.
“No tricks,” she promises, reading my mind. Without trying to look sexy, she scoots off the edge of the bed and then shocks the hell out of me by dropping to her knees in front of me. Her fingers reach up like she’s going to unbutton my pants, but then seems to think better of it, and they flutter back down.
We’re not there yet.
She holds her hands together in her lap, instead, gazing up with those brilliant blue eyes. “I’m not playing you. I wasn’t then. I’m not now.” Tears shimmer and release, falling down her cheeks.
My resistance gets blown to smithereens.
“I’m here to give myself to you. Because my heart and body and soul belong to you. They always have.”
“Sasha,” I choke and drop to my knees in front of her. I lean my forehead against hers and cup the back of her head. “Sasha… you broke my heart,” I admit.
She holds back a sob, her bare belly fluttering. “You’re breaking mine.”
Aw, fuck.
“Maxim, I got out of the car before it blew up because my mom opened my door and told me to… I didn’t know their plan in advance. I wasn’t part of it. I don’t want to be dead to you-or divorced. Please believe me.”
“Sasha,” I croak. I’m broken now. Completely broken. Utterly demolished. Sasha tore me apart and left me gasping for breath on that sidewalk and in that hotel room.
I stroke her hair.
“My mom just cared about the money.” Her voice breaks.
“I know,” I admit.
“She tried to tell me you were planning to kill me, but she was the one with the plans.”
I thumb the tears away, but they keep falling.
“You’re the only person who ever cared about me. I can’t lose you, Maxim. Please.”
“You have me,” I say quickly before she begs more. “You’ll always have me. I’m sorry I didn’t believe you.”
I claim her mouth with the kiss to end all kisses. Searingly passionate. Ravenous. Possessive. I need this woman like I need oxygen. “I’m sorry, sugar,” I rasp against her lips. “I should have trusted you. I should have trusted you back then, and I should have trusted you now. I just-”
“I know. Your mom did a number on you. You think women manipulate. I promise I’ll never trick you. Not ever.”
Hearing my deepest wound spoken aloud by my bride-hearing it understood, held in compassion, does something crazy to me.
All the devastation Sasha wrought on my heart suddenly seems worth it. To be remade this way. With trust between us. With this vulnerability and allowance.
“Sasha, forgive me,” I choke. Now I’m the one begging. “I’m sorry I didn’t believe you. I know you. I should have hung onto that. I know the heart of you. Who you are beneath all the posturing. You’re sweet, and caring and kind. You lift and take care of everyone around you. And, caxapok, I consider taking care of you to be the biggest honor ever bestowed on me. My debt to Igor will never end.”
“Maxim.” Sasha breaks down completely, covering her mouth to hide her sobs.
“Come here, beautiful.” I help her up and kiss her again, pushing her onto her back on the bed.
I go slowly. Like tonight’s our wedding night, and she’s the virgin who waited all these years for me. I kiss from her jaw down her throat. Between her breasts. I squeeze one breast roughly as lust kicks impatiently through my veins, but I force myself to take my time, sucking one nipple into my mouth while I squeeze and massage the breast. “My beautiful wife.” I murmur, switching to the other nipple. I squeeze and pinch the first nipple as I suck the second one.
Sasha’s sobs have calmed, and she moans, thrusting her glorious breasts in the air. I kiss between her breasts and down her belly, flicking my tongue occasionally to make her gasp. I skip her sex, working around one hip and down her inner thigh.
Her legs and belly tremble.
“Let’s see that pretty pussy of yours.” I push her knees wide and just stare, drinking in the sight of her pink, glistening flesh. “You’re always so wet for me, aren’t you, sugar?” I barely brush my thumb over her clit, and she jerks and shivers.
“Y-yes.”
“You saved yourself for me.” I’m a fool, but I want to hear it. That she saved herself for me not because Igor told her to.
“Yes,” she admits. “I always wanted it to be you.”
I lick into her, parting her labia with my tongue, tracing around the inside.
She clamps her knees around my ears.
“Naughty girl.” I give her pussy a little spank. “Keep those knees wide for me.”
“Oh,” she moans.
I apply my tongue with a little more vigor, sucking on her nether lips, nipping. I push her clitoral hood back to get my lips around her little nubbin.
Her hands fly to my head, and she pulls at my hair.
I suck harder and sink my thumb into her channel, pumping it in and out.
“Please, Maxim. I need you.” She pulls my hair, trying to tug my mouth off her.
“You need my cock?”
I’ve never had a woman look at me the way she does now. Like I’m her entire world. Like the sun rises and sets by my word. She nods, never taking her gaze from it’s lock with mine.
“Please,” she begs again.
Well, who the fuck am I to deny my bride anything?
I step off the bed to strip out of my clothes and then climb over her. I don’t want to wear a condom. I want to claim her completely-put babies in that belly of hers and keep her on her back for the rest of her days, but I know it’s not right. She has career dreams that she’s just getting started on. We have plenty of time for a family later. If that’s what she wants.
I roll a condom on and line myself up with her entrance. “I love you,” I say as I push in.
She gasps and tears up. “I love you, Max.” She grabs my hips and pulls me in deeper, wrapping her legs around my back.
I lean down and bite her ear as I slowly rock into her, trying to hold back from pounding like a fiend.
“I need you,” she weeps. “I want this. With you. Forever.”
I grin, thrusting in a little harder. “Good thing I’ve already got you locked down, then.”
A relieved laugh tumbles out of her. “Will you marry me again? I want to do it over. For real.”
My heart squeezes. Of course she wants that. My good girl who kept her innocence for the man she married. She was denied the white dress and flowers. The celebration. All she had was a funeral, a forced union, and dick of a husband who threw her over his shoulder and carried her off to the airport.
I slow my thrusts to lean down and take her lips tenderly, sipping from them. Exploring their softness. “Sasha, will you do me the honor of marrying me?”
“Yes.” She laugh-cries.
“Let’s have a destination wedding,” I say. “We can fly all your friends to Bali or something.”
“Yes, yes, yes!” she exclaims. “I love that.”
I smile down at her, and she’s so radiant it hurts. My control slips. I brace my hands on either side of her head, bracing her shoulders as I thrust in deeper and harder.
She rocks her hips to meet mine like she’s eager for even more.
“Who’s going to make you scream when you come, sugar?”
“You are,” she gasps. “Maxim. My husband.”
“Blyat.” I lose my head, slamming into her with enough force to rock the bed against the wall.
She receives me-moaning louder and louder, urging me on until we both shout out our releases at the exact same moment.
I shower her with a hundred kisses, cover her beautiful face with them, her neck, her ears, her forehead. Then I drop all my weight on her to blanket her completely.
“Oof,” she laughs.
I roll us both to our sides, staying inside her.
“Maxim…” Sasha sounds serious again.
I stroke her hair back from her face and cradle her cheek. “What is it, caxapok?”
“What are you going to do with my mother?”
I immediately understand her anxiety. “I’ll take care of her, Sasha,” I promise. “I mean, I don’t plan to invite her here to live with us, but…”
“Right.” Sasha gives a relieved laugh.
“Maybe we should split your inheritance-give your mom half. That way she won’t be acting out of powerlessness and desperation. How do you feel about that?”
“Wow. Yes. Is that okay with you?”
“I didn’t marry you for your money. I’ve told you that. The question is whether it’s okay with you.”
“Yes. I love that.” She returns the shower of kisses, landing them on my face and tattooed chest. “You’re a good man, Maxim. Thank you for your forgiveness.”
I cradle her face in both hands. “There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you, sugar. Believe that.”