Page 67 of Lord of the Underworld

"Well, now you're not even trying to get a look down my sweater," she chuckles.

"This is good, too," I murmur. Her lush mouth is curved in a shy grin. The chilly light from the snow outside gives her eyes a silvery sheen. She looks almost otherworldly. We kiss as I feel her melt against me, opening her mouth with a little sigh.

We dance and kiss for three or four songs until the quiet is shattered by my phone. Not wanting us to be disturbed tonight, I'd programmed my phone to accept only urgent calls.

She steps back, her hands slipping slowly down my chest. "You better check it."

"Sir? I'm sorry to disturb you." Yegor is my head of security at the manufacturing plant, one of my most experienced men. "I must alert you that the same helicopter has flown over the facility six times today. I've isolated the tail number and I'm running a registration search now."

This time last year, I would have immediately left and headed out to the facility, making a plan to find whoever sent the chopper to spy on us and kill them.

"I trust you to handle it," I say.

"Sir?" Yegor's startled. Never once have I left something this important to a member of my team.

"This is what you do," I remind him. "I trust you to handle it."

"Of course, my Vor." He recovers quickly. "Standard protocol, then. Track the number, find out who sent it, and send you the information."

"You have your plan," I say, my gaze still on my wife, who's swaying back and forth to the music, eyes closed.

"I'll double the guard rotation, and send up a couple of surveillance drones," he adds.

"Good work." Before he hangs up, I add, "Merry Christmas."

Why the hell did I say that?

His tone changes from shock to cautiously gratified. "Thank you. Merry Christmas to you and Mrs. Turgeneva as well."

Oksana is watching me with a smile as I hang up, still swaying to the music. "Are you trusting your head of security to handle something?" she asks, pressing her hand over her chest. "I'm touched. A little stunned. Also, wondering who might be inhabiting my husband's body."

Taking her hands, I wrap them around my neck again. "Just me. All of me, here with you."

I finally understand that my wife is the center of my universe. Before Oksana, everything revolved around duty. But now, my world - the Bratva, my role as Vor, the work - is eclipsed by my wife.

"You beautiful man," she says in a choked little voice, kissing my jaw. "Thank you."

"I want to ask you something," I say, my heart thumping harder than I like.

"Of course," she says, running her fingers through my hair.

"Did you ever think of using your escape network to disappear yourself? Before the wedding, perhaps?" My tone is dark. "You had heard all the stories about me."

Oksana's breath catches, her smile dropping. "No," she says, her eyes searching mine. "It never even crossed my mind. I knew…" We sway together as she gathers her thoughts. "Even before I remembered, you were familiar to me in a way I couldn't explain. No." She shakes her head decisively. "Never once."

"I'm glad," I say, kissing her. Now that the question no longer lurks in the back of my mind, I feel like I've set down a burden I'd carried too long.

I had noticed earlier that she'd laid out a thick quilt in front of the fireplace here in the library earlier, but I didn't mention it. Now, she's pulling me toward it with another shy little grin.

"It's almost midnight," she says.

"Yes."

"I think that we should celebrate our first Christmas here in this house, by christening the library," she says.

I don't bother to mention to her that we have christened the library many times.

On the couch.