IT WAS AN INNOCENT QUESTION.
One that exploded in my face like a tripwire.
That was all it took for me to lose my grip completely. Now, I was drowning in the deep, in the blue, and it was too late to save myself.
“I made an appointment to get on the pill next week,” I told him one night while lying in bed, my heart still racing and my skin sweaty from a previous and vigorous round of sex.
I’d been slacking with getting on birth control because I was sensitive to medication and the options I’d tried when I was younger all came with an annoying side effect. The pill made me gain weight, and now at twenty-eight, with a slower metabolism, I knew that was the last thing I needed. Though it seemed I was going to have to take the contraceptive situation into my own hands by Christian’s indifferent attitude about it.
“Why?”
I sighed. “Either you have a hundred children from Russia to Seattle, or you’re being deliberately abstruse.”
He chuckled, correcting softly, “Obtuse, malyshka.”
The sound of his soft laugh made my body light up with warmth. “Well? Do you have a litter of children you haven’t told me about?”
His silence touched my skin, putting my nerve endings on edge.
“I don’t have any children,” he said eventually.
“How do you know that if you’re going around without using condoms?”
“Because I’m not going around without using condoms,” he said, tension in his voice. “You’re the only one I’m sleeping with, Gianna. I thought I’d made that pretty fucking clear.”
I should have stopped here. I should have sensed the strain in the air that stretched the oxygen thin. But I couldn’t. Because I was tired of being a coward, of toeing the edge of Christian Allister, while I let him touch me, kiss me, screw me, and own me.
“Before me, then. I’m sure you haven’t always worn condoms. You seem too blasé about not doing so.”
He ran a hand across his face. “Drop it, malyshka.”
Jealousy rose up in me, piercing a hole through my chest and fueling my blood with bitterness. He’d never been that serious with any of the women I’d seen him with, yet he’d been with one—or several?—without wearing a condom. It made what we were doing feel meaningless. Cheap. The most serious relationship I’d ever seen him in was with Portia, and even then, it hadn’t lasted much longer than the rest.
“Did you use a condom with Portia?”
“Yes.” It was a vehement response. The truth.
Maybe it had been with someone when he was younger. Some teenage Russian hussy. I hated her. Though, I doubted he would’ve had much time for girls while being locked in a prison for most of his teenage years.
I was growing resentful of the questions piling up on themselves, being answered with, “Drop it, malyshka,” and complete evasions. The man had even heard the story of how I’d lost my virginity from my own husband’s lips. It seemed only fair I should hear the same.
“How did you lose your virginity?”
The temperature dipped into the negatives, my breath freezing in my lungs. The air turned bitter, as caustic as the sting of a bee against my skin.
He sat up on the side of the bed and rested his elbows on his knees. Tension pulled tight in his shoulders, his voice emotionless.
“Get out.”
My stomach went cold. “What?”
“I said, get out.”
My throat tightened with humiliation and betrayal.
I got to my feet, picked up a shirt from the floor, slipped it over my head, and headed to the door. I stopped, every cell in my body rebelling at the idea of leaving.
“If you make me walk out this door, I won’t come back, Christian. Not until you have an answer for me.”
He didn’t look at me.
Neither did he stop me.
I shut my apartment door behind me and leaned against it, the emptiness of the place touching my skin. Regret fed on my resolve, until I wanted to turn around and take back the final words that had left my mouth. I wanted to—needed to—go back and fix everything that had gone wrong. Apologize or beg, whatever it took. Thankfully, my pride held steady; I wasn’t going to let him turn me into something so pathetic.
I slept in my own bed that night, for the first time in weeks. It was quiet. A little cold. A tear ran down my cheek, and I told myself I hated him for making me feel this way.
But I didn’t hate him at all.
That elusive feeling, close to panic yet far enough away, was something else entirely.
And, as my heart ached with every breath, I suddenly knew what it was.
“Levàntate!”
I sputtered, shooting up to a sitting position as cold water poured onto my face.
“It is four o’clock, querida! Eres una vaga!”
She’d just called me a bum, but I couldn’t find any energy to complain. I was depressed. And not even because I hadn’t seen or spoken to Christian in two days, but because I thought I loved him. And I wasn’t sure how to deal with the feeling. Where it was supposed to go when it grew too big for my chest. How I would get rid of it if he’d finally realized we weren’t compatible in the end.
He and I were polar opposites. We didn’t make much sense.
But, suddenly, nothing felt right without him either.
Magdalena opened the window. “I told you not to get involved with that man, señorita. You did not listen.”
She hadn’t said anything of the sort. Before he and I had started this relationship, she’d gotten one look at him while I’d been kicking her out of my apartment. Her eyes had gone wide, and then she’d told me to marry him. That I’d have the most beautiful babies, and everyone would be jealous. He’d heard every word of it. Though, it must have been a normal thing for him to overhear because his dry expression didn’t falter.
“Do you know what the best thing for a broken heart is?”
“What?”
“Fresh air. It cured mis hermanas cancer, too.”
It was then I realized I hadn’t moped like this since Antonio. And that was a dark part of my life I never wanted to return to. I was not going to let Christian turn me into another one of his heartsick castaways. I crawled out of bed, showered, and then got dressed in something more suited for a club than a walk around the city.
On my way out of the lobby doors, my gaze caught with another’s. My stomach dipped to my toes. Just the sight of him—every straight line, polished silver watch and cufflinks, blue—it felt like a hit of a drug I’d been withdrawing from.
He wasn’t so professional beneath his clothes. Not so cold in the bedroom, with his hand around my throat and the heat of his body against mine. And not so heartless, with his malyshkas and rough Russian words in my ear.
Something deep and immeasurable flickered through his eyes before he looked away. We passed each other, almost shoulder-to-shoulder. I could even smell a trace of his custom-made cologne.
He didn’t stop me.
And neither did I him.
Maybe this was really over.
My stomach twisted into a knot at the thought. My lungs tightened with every breath.
When I’d first met this man, his presence annoyed me. How did I get here, tearing up at the smell of his cologne?
I walked around the city, absently dodging potholes and cyclists, in thigh-high boots. I ate a hot dog from a food truck. Sat on a bench, watched the sunset, and pretended I was in control of my life. When that was so far from the truth.
I’d never felt so lost.
The low lights scattered and reflected the red of my underwear into the clear water as I waded in the pool.
It was late, past midnight. The pool was technically closed, but it hadn’t taken much to coax Trevor the pool boy to slip me an extra key.
I went under, holding my breath until my lungs burned, until it was all I could feel. When I came back up, a prickling sense that I wasn’t alone touched my back. My head swung to see someone sitting on the edge of a chaise, elbows on his knees.
Eyes of melted ice and polished steel looked back at me.
My heart stilled and then filled with a desperate hum.
“I was fifteen,” he said.
Confusion flickered through me, but then I realized what he was telling me. How he’d lost his virginity.
“I’d been in Butyrka for a few months by then. I was in on murder, but trust me, malyshka, they fucking deserved it.”
I’d seen him kill a man for annoying him, but, by the vehemence in his tone, I believed him.
“They could only convict me on one, and I was a minor, so I got off lightly with five years. Ronan was a year younger and only got four. But he dealt with prison better than I ever could.” His eyes grew grim. “I fucking hated that place.”
I waded to the side of the pool and held onto the ledge, water dripping off my eyelashes.
“The most sun I’d get some days was a few shafts of light through a ventilation window. We’d only get a shower three days a week. And even then, you had to fight for any soap provided.”
I suddenly didn’t mind how much he washed my hair.
“One of the correctional nurses noticed I’d read all the books on the shelf. She started to bring me new ones every week. Getting attention from a woman there . . . it started shit with the other men. A lot of them were wary of me. They called me kholodnyye glaza. Said there was something missing in my eyes.”
Now, I knew his worst days were before he’d even gone to prison.
“They usually left me alone, but one day, someone worked up the nerve to rip all the pages out of one of my books. They were the only thing that kept me sane in that place, the only thing with a little bit of order. I saw red. Beat him unconscious. I would have killed him if someone hadn’t pulled me off him. I remember looking down at myself, covered in his blood and mine from a cut on my arm.” He let out a bitter laugh. “And all for a fucking book.
“That’s when I promised myself I was leaving. I was going to build a life for myself, somewhere far from that prison, and somewhere no one would dare touch my shit. I planned out everything from that moment on.” His eyes met mine. “Even down to the type of woman I would marry.”
I swallowed, knowing I wasn’t what he’d envisioned.
“Looking back, I realize the fight started a riot. The place had always been a chaotic mess in my mind that I hadn’t even noticed at the time. I picked up the book and pages, preoccupied with figuring out how to tell the nurse what happened and dreading she wouldn’t bring me more.
“I don’t know her name. I can’t even tell you what color hair she had, malyshka. That’s how little I looked at her.”
The fact he’d always noticed when I changed my hair seemed so much more significant now. A heaviness tugged at my chest.
“I returned her book. And she stitched up my arm. Her hand was shaking slightly. I thought she was nervous to be alone with me—there wasn’t a guard at the door due to the riot. But I soon learned that wasn’t the case when she rested her hand on my dick.”
My breathing slowed, my heart wanting to stop him and my brain demanding he continue.
“She leaned in to kiss me, but I turned my head. I thought for sure she wouldn’t be interested after that. But it didn’t seem to sway her.” He ran a hand across his jaw. “I didn’t use a condom with her, malyshka. And I can’t even say she was the only one. A few days later, when one of the guards escorted me to the medical ward, pushed me in the room, and shut the door, she wasn’t alone. Another woman was with her—”
“Okay, I’ve heard enough.”
Only this man would be offered a threesome in prison at fifteen. I wanted to rip those women’s hair out. They must have been significantly older than him.
“I’m clean, Gianna. I’ll show you the paperwork if you want to see it. As for children, I don’t have any that I know of.”
I was slightly overwhelmed with what he’d shared with me, even though I knew he was still holding something back. This wasn’t what he’d been hiding from me two days ago. He was merely offering an olive branch. I didn’t believe I had it in me to demand more from him right now, not with that slightly desperate look in his eyes, begging me to accept what he was telling me. I knew he hated delving into his past. It was messy, and he liked all his things lined up neat in a row. And he’d gone in deep for me.
I pulled myself out of the pool, water sluicing down my skin as I padded over to stand between his legs. I ran a hand into his hair, and a rough noise sounded low in his throat. He grabbed my hips, pulled me closer, and pressed his face against my stomach.
“Fuck, I missed you, malyshka.”
Water dripped off my body, soaking his suit. My throat felt tight as warmth and relief coalesced in my chest.
“I apologize for making you leave.”
“Don’t ever do it again.”
“I won’t.”
He gripped the backs of my thighs, lifting me up to straddle him. It brought our faces close together.
I leaned closer, until our lips were a hair’s breadth apart.
“Why do you kiss me?”
I sighed into his mouth when he kissed me with a sweet pull. “Because you’re the only woman who’s ever tempted me.” His lips brushed mine. “Because you love it.” The last one was soft, with a possessive bite. “Because every part of you is mine.”
