Page 26 of Arranged for the Russian Pakhan

Falling from his curled lips, the moniker is no better than a curse word. He throws it in my face like an ace up his sleeve. This man has another thing coming. I am not one to lose my cool, truly—but it has been a trying day, to say the least. I’ve got no doubts I can best him at whatever game he’s trying to play. I’m just too tired to want to spar with him.

I roll my eyes at him. “In your dreams.”

“No. I can’t say I’ve dreamt about that,” Anton replies, and he sounds so casual about it, almost droll—in such a wild departure from his flinty attitude all day—that my hands fall slack to my sides. A couple of pins plummet to the ground.

I blink up at him.

It’s all I can do as he begins to shed his jacket. He walks across the room and drapes the jacket over the back of an armchair. One wrist after the other, he plucks off his cufflinks and drops them atop the fireplace mantle. The muted clink of the action rings through me.

Anton rolls up his sleeves, forearms etched with ink. I glimpse at barbed wire ensnaring a wrist, with playing cards hanging from it like blooms from a vine. I spot a block of intricate script I’d need to peer close to read. Even a few paces away, I can tell the words are in Russian.

“What”—I have to force myself to breathe—“the fuck do you think you’re doing right now?”

All he spares me is a glance.

“I’m getting ready to go to bed,” he says matter-of-factly.

Frustration crackles like static on my very skin. “Not here, you aren’t. And if this is your bedroom, fine. Tell me where to go. I’ll leave.”

He has the audacity to laugh at me a second time, and he’s lucky he didn’t hedge his bets on Yuri Daughter Number One—because Nadya would’ve lobbed a high-heeled shoe at his stupid head right about now. I myself narrowly resist the urge.

He takes off his shoes and neatly lines them up by the stairs leading up to the mezzanine area, which I can only imagine houses a closet or something. Anton says, “Don’t be ridiculous. Since the whole point of this marriage is to show a strengthening of this alliance, your taking up residence in a separate bedroom would render the point moot. We are husband and wife now. We’ll share this room. My staff has already unpacked your things. Anything else you’d like, you can let anyone know. It’ll be arranged for you.”

Palpably, I feel it. I feel the moment my patience runs out.

A rising tide of ire warms my face, and I shake my head at him with a grim, furious smile. Are you fucking joking? “Let me make something exceedingly clear to you, husband.” The way I say it, the moniker is definitely a curse word. “I’ve dealt gracefully with you all day. I have been an incredible sport, mostly because I can see the big picture, and I’ve got a series of plans to make your life absolute hell that cheer me up to think about. But you—oh, you have no claim to me beyond what paperwork stipulates. And since the subtlety of my grace is clearly wasted on you, I’ll speak plainly: we are not true husband and wife. What would you know of being a husband, a sexless robot that you are? Maybe your first wife was some doe-eyed virgin who couldn’t clock that. But, sorry to break it to you, I’m not. And I do not share a bed with any man who cannot please me in it.”

Even on the carpet, you can hear a pin drop now.

There. That should send my point home.

Satisfied that he’s gotten the damn point, I whirl away from him. I’ll even let him leave with his tail tucked between his legs without another word. All I really want is to go to bed and let tomorrow be tomorrow’s problem.

Hopefully, “the staff” put the stuff to remove all this makeup somewhere around here, too. A palatial room like this is obviously fitted with an ensuite bathroom.

A passing perusal also unveils a dresser and an attached mirror on the opposite side of the fireplace. It’ll have to do. Refusing to listen to his footsteps recede, I return to picking out the pins from my hair and unwinding the braids. My scalp aches with relief, making my eyes slip shut.

They open with a shriek when the solid wall of his chest is behind me. I yell, “What the—”

His hand curls around my jaw and forces me around to face him. My heart hammers inside my chest, slamming itself against my ribs. The sudden fury radiating from him gives me the strong urge to back away. There’s no place to go. The edge of the dresser digs into my back.

“You didn’t kiss me like I was a sexless robot, Darya.”

“I—”

His grip tightens. “That wasn’t a question, wife.”

Not even this compromising position can keep me from bristling. “Fuck off.”

“Interesting, saying that to a sexless robot,” Anton drawls. My heart just about stops in my chest when his head dips, the tip of his nose dragging down the column of my throat. I feel him inhale more than I hear him. My heart rate soars. “It’s also the second time you’ve mentioned your previous suitors to me. You really want me to know about them. I wonder why that is.”

The implication alone makes my stomach drop.

“Hold your breath, please,” I hiss.

No sooner does the idea strike me that I move, my knee raising—

And doesn’t meet its target. It can’t when, in a flinch of an instant, the side of his shoe meets the opposite ankle, and I lose my balance just enough for him to whip me back around. It knocks the breath out of my lungs. Only when my eyes meet themselves in the mirror do I realize it’s because he has me bent over the wood, my wrists in his hand, held behind my back, and used to shove me down.