Page 35 of Marrying the Pakhan

“You’re allowed to just feel good about it, Harper. Not everything has to come with a complicated feeling attached.”

“That’s very unlike you. Since when do you allow yourself simple?”

“Since about twenty minutes ago.” His hand traces slow, absent patterns along my shoulder, and I feel him smile against my hair rather than see it. “I’m willing to make an exception tonight.”

Neither of us says anything else for a long while, and I don’t need him to. Whatever this was before tonight, it isn’t that anymore, and for the first time since I walked into his club with a ridiculous proposal, I’m not afraid of what that actually means.

15

VIKTOR

I wake before she does, which isn’t unusual, except this time I don’t get up.

Harper’s curled toward me, one hand resting flat against my chest, hair loose across the pillow in a way I’ve only seen in the photographs Dimitri handed me months ago. The real thing is better than the photograph. It usually is.

Sunlight’s just starting to cut through the curtains, early enough that the house is still quiet, no sounds yet from Ginger’s room down the hall.

I should be doing a dozen things right now. Checking messages, running through whatever Dimitri’s turned up overnight, starting the day the way I start every day, moving before I’ve had time to think too hard about anything.

Instead I lie here, watching her breathe, and let myself do absolutely nothing for the first time in longer than I can remember.

It unsettles me, how easy this is. For fifteen years, I’ve built a life on not letting anything get close enough to matter this much, on treating comfort like a weakness waiting to be exploited by someone smarter than me.

And here I am, perfectly still, unwilling to move an inch and risk waking her before I have to, doing the exact thing I’ve spent a career training myself never to do around another person.

This isn’t the arrangement. The arrangement had an end date, terms, a clean exit built into the paperwork from day one. Nothing about lying in bed at dawn studying the specific way she breathes was ever part of that.

Harper stirs, blinking awake, and for a second she looks disoriented, somewhere between sleep and place, before her eyes focus on me and the tension in her face eases. “Morning,” she says, voice rough with sleep.

“Morning.”

“This is strange.”

“Which part?”

“Waking up here. Like this.” She props herself up on one elbow, studying me with an openness I’m not sure she’d allow herself in daylight if she’d had more than thirty seconds to think about it. “I keep waiting for it to feel like I did something wrong.”

“You didn’t.”

“I know. It still surprises me that I believe that.” She traces a lazy line along my forearm, not quite purposeful, more like she’s testing whether she’s allowed to. “Is this weird for you too, or are you just better at hiding it?”

“I’ve had fifteen years of practice at hiding things. This isn’t one of them.”

“That’s not an answer either.”

“Fine. No, it isn’t weird.” I catch her hand, still tracing patterns, and hold it still against my chest instead. “Technically, Harper, we’re already married. Whatever this is, it isn’t an affair, it isn’t a mistake, it isn’t something either of us needs to feel strange about.”

“That’s a very practical way to look at waking up in your bed.”

“I contain multitudes.”

She laughs, real and warm, and the sound warms my chest in a way I don’t have a clear explanation for, the same warmth that’s been building since a courthouse hallway months ago.

“For what it’s worth,” I add, “I’ve never actually done this before. Woken up next to someone and wanted them to stay instead of wanting them gone.”

Her expression sobers, quieter, more serious than the teasing a moment ago. “That’s nothing to admit.”

“No. It isn’t.”