Page 94 of Marrying the Savage

Her pulse jumps at her throat.

She hates that I see it.

I like that I do.

For a moment, she doesn’t move. Then she gathers what remains of her dignity, which is impressive considering her dress is torn, her lips are swollen, and her legs are still not entirely steady, and walks toward the door.

When she passes me, I don’t touch her.

That costs more than it should.

Her scent lingers anyway, warm skin and arousal and that faint trace of soap from my house now clinging to her. The study no longer smells only of leather, paper, smoke, and old secrets.

It smells like Sofia.

My hand tightens at my side.

She stops at the door and looks back. I stand beside the desk, Elena’s photograph face down beneath my hand, my expression locked into something I know she can’t read. Good. There are too many things in this room she has already seen.

“Tell your guards,” she says, lifting her chin, “that next time they pretend not to follow me, they should choose better places to hide behind.”

My mouth almost curves.

She leaves before I can decide whether to call her back.

15

DAMIR

I can’t sleep.

I have slept through worse than a woman in my house. I have slept after funerals, after shootings, after negotiations where men smiled at me over dinner while their sons waited outside with guns. I have slept in hospital chairs, safe houses, cars, and once on the floor of an abandoned warehouse with a bullet wound in my shoulder and Mikhail arguing with a doctor over whether removing it would kill me faster than leaving it in.

But tonight, sleep refuses me because Sofia Volodina is three doors down the hall.

My wife.

The word should not still have weight.

A priest said it. Papers will be filed. Men will rage. Sergei will plan. Sokolov will limp and bleed and curse my name until his throat gives out. None of that is unusual. Marriage in our world is often no more than ink, leverage, and a public lie dressed in white.

But Sofia is not ink.

She is not quiet enough to be leverage.

And she’s a terrible liar when her body speaks first.

I stand beneath the shower with one hand braced against the dark tile, hot water running over the back of my neck, and try not to think about her.

This is pointless.

I think about her anyway. Her back against my study wall. Her dress torn open under my hand. Her mouth trying to insult me while her hips moved against my fingers. The shock on her face when she came, as if pleasure had betrayed her personally. The wet heat of her around my fingers. The soft, broken way she said my name when her body finally stopped fighting what it wanted.

My cock hardens again.

Christ.

I close my eyes and let the water beat against my shoulders. This is not a problem I have had before.