When the rain tapers off and the sun comes out, I’m lying spent in Mal’s arms, drunk with afterglow.
Beneath my ear, his heart thuds a strong, steady beat. My arm is flung over his chest. One of my legs is twined between his. I’m tucked snugly into his side, shimmering with happiness.
My head rises as he inhales deeply. Stirring, he presses a kiss to my hair.
“How’s your pain today?”
I laugh softly. “You would’ve made a good grandmother.”
“I’ll pretend you never said that. How’s your pain?”
“Right now, I can honestly say I’m pain free.”
He grumbles in discontent. “And the rest of the time?”
I turn my nose to his chest and inhale. My exhalation is a soft, satisfied sigh. “Only the occasional twinge.”
He insists, “Like when for instance?”
So bossy. “I sat up in bed too fast last night, and that hurt a little.”
“When I came in?”
“No. Before that. I had a nightmare.”
He kisses my head again, stroking his open palm up my back. “Was it bad?”
It was horrible, but I’m not about to admit it and ruin the mood. “I used your trick to wake myself up. I told myself it was only a dream, and it worked. I couldn’t believe it.”
“It’s called lucid dreaming. If you want, now you can make a sword appear that you can use to chop off the head of your enemy.”
“Or, murder boy, I could snap my fingers and turn my enemy into a bunny rabbit so I don’t have to do any chopping.”
“Hmpf. What if the bunny was ten feet tall and rabid?”
“Then I’d snap my fingers again and make him fall in love with me.”
“Yes, you have a gift for that.” After a moment, he murmurs, “You just started shivering.”
“Shut up.”
“Are you cold?”
“Will you shut up, please? You know I’m not cold.”
He rolls me to my back, props himself up onto an elbow, and smiles down into my face.
The morning light worships him, highlighting the angle of his cheekbones, burnishing his dark hair richest bronze, glinting copper off the curving tips of his lashes.
And those eyes! For fuck’s sake, they might as well be priceless emeralds!
I whisper, “God, you’re beautiful. It’s sick.”
He throws back his head and laughs.
“I’m glad you find me so hilarious.”
Still chuckling, he kisses the tip of my nose. “I’m supposed to be the one paying the compliments.”
“You know what? You’re right. Go ahead. I’m waiting.”
Framing my face in his hands, he looks into my eyes and says softly, “There’s not a compliment in the world that could do you justice.”
I make the sound of a buzzer. “Wrong answer. Try again.”
Pressing his lips together to stifle his laughter, he drops his head and hides his face in my neck.
“Oh, my god. You suck at this!”
“I’m not used to giving compliments on demand.”
“Well, get used to it! I need a compliment, Mal. Like, now!”
He rolls to his back, drags me on top of his body, holds my hair back from my face, and looks into my eyes.
“All right,” he says, voice gruff. “Here it is. You make me wish I’d lived a different life. You make me wish I could go back in time and start over again. You make me think the world isn’t a shitty place after all, that goodness exists and happiness isn’t make-believe and true love is possible. You make me believe in miracles, Riley Rose. When I’m with you, I feel like my life hasn’t been such a waste.”
After a long, silent moment, I burst into tears.
“Oh, fuck,” he says, appalled. “It was that bad?”
I pound a fist on his shoulder and drop my face to his chest, sobbing.
“Sweetheart. Sweetheart, stop crying.” He wraps his arms around me and holds me tight.
“I never cried before I met you! I swear to god, I never cried once! And now look at me! I’m a wreck!”
“You’re not a wreck.”
“I’m wailing like a banshee!”
He chuckles, making his chest shake. “It’s good to see the exaggeration didn’t disappear in my absence.”
“Stop laughing at me, you jerk!”
He exhales, murmuring, “Ah, my little bird.”
Then he simply holds me while I cry it out until only the occasional sniffle is left.
Embarrassed by the outburst, I decide to pretend like nothing happened. I wipe my face and change the subject. “Is there still a dead bear outside?”
“I don’t know. Did you move it?”
“Ha. No, I didn’t move it.”
“Then there’s still a dead bear outside. I’ll take care of it today.”
“I lost my glasses when it attacked me, but I found another pair in that giant sack you brought.”
“That’s good.”
“Where did you get that, anyway?”
“I robbed an optometrist.”
I lift my head and look at him. “Is that a joke?”
“No.”
“You robbed an optometrist?”
“A store, not a person. No one was there at the time.”
“Oh. Okay.”
He smiles at my befuddlement. “You’re so fucking adorable. Why does that make you crinkle your nose?”
“Because people only use the word ‘adorable’ when they’re talking about small animals. Do I look like a small animal to you?”
He narrows his eyes and considers me. “A little like a chevrotain.”
“What the fuckety-fuck is a chevrotain?”
“It looks like a woodland creature from a fairy tale. It’s about the size of a rabbit, but resembles a deer. They have big ears, skinny legs, and cute little noses. Instead of antlers, the males have tiny fang-like tusks. Some people call it the mouse deer.”
I glare at him. “Do you have a death wish?”
“They’re adorable!”
“Say that word one more time. I dare you.”
“I think if you could see the tiny fang-like tusks, you’d have a change of heart.”
“Yeah, the tusks and the big fucking ears sound super charming!”
He dissolves into laughter, lying with his eyes closed, his head canted back on the pillow, and his arms squeezing me tightly. He laughs so hard, it shakes us both and the bed.
I grumble, “Laugh it up, jerk. Get it all out of your system. Because as soon as I get my hands on a machete, you won’t be laughing anymore.”
He rolls me to my back and plants a big kiss on my mouth. Grinning from ear to ear, he says, “You’re not going to chop me up.”
“Oh, yeah? Give me one good reason!”
His eyes soften. So does his voice when he says, “You like me too much.”
The look on his face makes my heart skip a beat and my stomach clench. I glance away so he can’t see me melt. “You’re okay. I guess.”
He peppers soft kisses all along my neck and collarbone. “I guess you’re okay, too,” he whispers into my ear.
Only we both know what he’s really saying.
He rolls back onto his side, tucking me into his shoulder and twining his legs through mine. I wrap my toes around his muscular calf and sigh in contentment.
“I have something to say now.”
His chuckle stirs the hair near my ear. “Really? I can’t imagine.”
“A couple of things, actually.”
“Hold on. I need to prepare myself mentally. Okay, go ahead.”
“It’s a good thing you’re so pretty. That personality of yours is a deal breaker. As I was saying…Spider.”
All the warmth goes out of him like he’s been thrown into a vat of ice water. His body stiffens, and his voice turns hard.
“I don’t ever want to hear you speak another man’s name in my bed again.”
I know it’s all kinds of wrong that I find it hot when he’s possessive. Wrong, wrong, wrong, and yet so very fucking right.
And here I thought I was liberated.
“Fine. I’ll refer to him as The Arachnid from now on. Satisfied?”
He growls, “I’ve taken it easy on you so far, baby, because you’re not completely healed. But I’ll remember all this mouthiness when you are. Then you’ll be sorry.”
Or maybe I won’t. Judging by the heat in his voice, I’ll be getting plenty of pleasure from whatever punishment he has planned.
Bypassing his sexy threat, I say, “You told me you drugged him. Is he okay?”
“Yes.”
It’s terse. Angry. Basically a three letter fuck you.
I tilt up my head and kiss his jaw. “I’m sorry. I’m not trying to make you mad.”
“You’re doing a crap job of it.”
“Are you jealous of Spi—The Arachnid? Because there’s no need to be.”
“Anyone who wants what’s mine is on my shit list.”
What’s mine.
I close my eyes for a moment, letting that sink through me. “There’s nothing between us. There never was.”
“Maybe not for you.”
I’m curious what makes him so certain, but don’t dare ask. I mean, I’m brave, but that’s definitely not the hill I want to die on.
He snaps, “Next fucking subject.”
“Okay. Um…”
He lifts his head and glowers at me. “What?”
“Oh, pipe down, Hulk. It doesn’t have to do with another man.”
He doesn’t look like he believes me. He still hasn’t blinked.
Sighing, I say, “I thought you might like to know that I’m on Depo-Provera.”
“Is that a medication?”
Before I can answer, he lifts to an elbow and stares down at me, saying loudly, “Are you on a prescription I don’t know about? Why didn’t you tell me? I could’ve gotten it for you! You could’ve been taking it this whole time!”
“Mal—”
“Christ, Riley, you have to tell me what you need, or I can’t give it to you. Despite what you think, I’m not a mind reader!”
I reach up and stroke his beard, smiling. “You’re a psychopath.”
“Don’t try to flirt your way out of this.”
That makes me smile wider. “Only you would think a woman calling you a psychopath is flirting.”
He scowls at me with flattened lips and flared nostrils, waiting for an explanation.
I say softly, “It’s birth control. A shot. I’m just telling you that so you don’t have to worry about getting me pregnant.”
The anger disappears. What it’s replaced by, I couldn’t say, because I’ve never seen this particular expression before.
After a moment, he only says, “Oh.”
“Okay, the way you just said that? It makes me think maybe you have genetically engineered super sperm who laugh at birth control as they fly past it on their way to inseminate eggs.”
“No. I mean, yes, my sperm are obviously super, but no to the rest of it.”
After a moment of examining his expression, I say, “Because your sperm don’t laugh is what you’re saying. Your sperm have resting bitch face, like you.”
His brows shoot up. “Excuse me?”
“Don’t get all in a kerfuffle.”
“Kerfuffle?”
“If you’d like a definition, it’s exactly what you’re doing now.”
“I’m not in a fucking kerfuffle!”
“Sure. Let me just wait a sec while my ruptured eardrums heal and we can continue this discussion.”
His face goes through a few expressions—fury, amusement, disbelief—then he flips me onto my belly and spanks my bare ass five times in quick succession.
It’s shocking.
Hard, stinging, and shocking, primarily because of how much it turns me on.
Heat blooms over my skin. My bottom feels like it’s on fire. Then the rest of me does, too, because Mal is looking at my wide-eyed face with hunger in his eyes.
“You liked that.”
His voice has gone low and gravelly. He watches me, licking his lips like a predator before a juicy meal.
My heart thrumming, I say breathlessly, “I’ll have to break my answer into two parts, because first, no, I didn’t like it. My brain is judging us both very harshly. My women’s studies professor from college is, too. But secondly, holy fuck, that was hot.”
“You’ve never been spanked before?”
I give him an incredulous look. “Who would dare spank the mouse deer with the tiny tusk-like fangs?”
The smile that spreads over his face is utterly debauched. He drawls, “What else have you never done?”
“None of your business, Romeo.”
He smooths his palm over my burning backside and kisses me gently on the shoulder. Turning his mouth to my ear, he murmurs, “You liked it when I had my hand around your throat, yes?”
I think of when we had sex on the living room floor. I attributed the intensity of that experience to the bear attack, but maybe having him squeeze my neck had something to do with it, too.
I came so hard, I saw stars.
He also did that when he broke into the safe house in Boston. Put his big rough hand around my throat and squeezed, threatening to choke me.
Right about then is when I stopped being scared and started acting feisty.
Holy shit.
Are Twizzlers not my only kink?
Biting my lower lip, I look at him and nod.
He lowers his head to brush his lips against mine. “Okay. That’s a good starting place.”
Do I die now, or wait until later when we’re doing whatever kinky fuckery I suspect he’s got planned?
I don’t have time to ponder it, because he rises from bed, picks me up, carries me into the bathroom, and fucks me again in the shower. He holds me up against the wall as he drives into me, biting my neck.
Maybe being adorable isn’t so bad after all.
Days go by. Mal doesn’t leave for the city again.
Our nightly bath ritual continues, only now Mal speaks in English instead of Russian as he washes me. He tells me about his childhood. His family. His friends. His pets.
His brother, Mikhail.
He tells me how he saw a Clint Eastwood movie when he was little and decided he’d be a cowboy when he grew up. Then, later, he got into boxing and thought he might have a chance to do it professionally.
Until that night at the bar. Until that fateful punch.
Until he met Pakhan, and all his dreams were crushed.
He paints a picture of a man living wholly alone, in both mind and body, existing only to carry out orders handed down from above. He never had children or married, because it wasn’t allowed.
His life wasn’t his own.
Bratva first and forever.
Duty or death.
Sometimes I go cold as I listen to his stories. Sometimes I want to cry. But always I wonder what he might have been, had his life taken a different path.
But I’m perversely glad things went the way they did, because if his life had taken a different path, we never would have met.
I feel guilty about it, and I know it’s wrong, but it’s the truth. I’m glad for all his dark, twisted roads, because they led him to me.
It’s a secret I guard carefully.
One day as we’re finishing breakfast, he asks me out of the blue if I’d like to learn how to shoot a gun.
It frightens me. His answer doesn’t reassure.
“Why would I need to know how to shoot a gun?”
“Better to know how and not need to than need to and not know how.”
It sounds like sage advice, but it also sounds like a warning. Like at any moment, our little slice of heaven in the wilderness could be torn in two.
So I learn how to shoot a gun.
Then I learn how to shoot a rifle.
When we discover that not only am I very good at hitting stationary targets, I actually enjoy it, too, Mal suggests I go hunting with him and try to hit something that moves.
“I could never shoot an animal,” is my immediate response.
“If you had my shotgun in your hands when that bear charged at you, would you have pulled the trigger?”
“Self-defense isn’t the same thing as going out and looking for something to kill.”
Mal gazes at me in silence for a moment. His eyes are endless and dark.
“Killing is killing, no matter the intent behind it. Moralizing doesn’t change the fact that you made something alive be unalive.”
He leaves it at that.
Since he’s an expert on the subject, I’m wise enough not to argue with him.
Then, late one evening, he gets a call that changes everything.
We’re in bed, lying back to front, his legs drawn up behind mine. I’m drifting off to sleep when a buzzing noise jerks me back into consciousness.
It’s his cell phone, ringing in the pocket of his coat.
“Are you going to answer that?”
“I should.” He doesn’t move.
“It’s okay if you have to. I don’t mind.”
He squeezes me, murmuring, “You should.”
But then he sighs, rolls out of bed, and retrieves the phone. He holds it to his ear and says curtly, “Da.”
He’s silent for several moments, listening. Then he lowers his head and says “Da” again, only this time it sounds resigned.
When he turns to look at me, his eyes have shuttered like blinds drawn over windows.
“What is it? Is everything okay?”
“You need to pack a bag. Right now.”
My heartbeat picking up pace, I sit up. “Why?”
“We’re going to the city.”
