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His eyes blacken like a storm is coming. It’s enough to make me shy away. “A man who tried to get me killed. But that’s not why I hit him.” He shakes his hand out, making a loose fist. “He was one of Yevgeniy’s brigadiers.”
“That sounds like a good enough reason to me,” I mumble.
Arsen’s scowl shifts the spectrum until he’s eyeing me with concern again. “Tell me what happened at the safe house Josh sent you to.”
Pulling my knees to my chest, I sit up. He’s worried. Of course he is. I should have expected this sooner. I can insist until I’m blue in the face that I’m fine. But if I were Arsen, I wouldn’t believe me either. It would be simple to close myself off more. I can shrug off his questions, tell him to leave me alone, and drop the topic.
But I can’t.
Peering at his face, I read his emotions as easily as words on a page. Arsen is genuinely concerned. This isn’t a farce. I’ve convinced myself all over again that I can’t trust him. That might be true, but ... there’s no denying that he loves me. That, amidst all this chaos, is real.
“Yevgeniy showed up out of the blue,” I whisper, hugging my legs harder. “He brought backup, men with guns who could see us through the windows. He told us that there was no other choice but to go with him.”
“Of course he did,” Arsen says, sitting on the bed. His hand drops to my ankle. The touch sends a jolt of electricity coursing through me. He pauses, clearly feeling it too. “You had no choice. He would have killed you for fighting back.”
I shudder at the memory of that awful day. I crawled on the floor, wishing for a weapon, for some way to attack Yevgeniy. I hate how pathetic my rebellion turned out to be.
But above all else, I hate the fact that I’m out of his clutches, but Mom isn’t.
“I can’t stop thinking about the terrible things he’s doing to my mother right now,” I whisper. “How are we going to get her back, Arsen?”
“We’ll find a way. I promise.” His grip slips up my calf to squeeze my knee.
I swallow the knot in my throat. “You know what I was thinking when he had us on the floor of that kitchen?” Black terror swarms my vision and I close my eyes tight. “I was wishing you’d appear out of thin air. I prayed you’d save us.”
He leans against me, circling me in a hug that could suffocate me if he did it wrong. Against my ear, he growls, “I wish I had. I should’ve never agreed to let you go.” His breath rattles in his chest. “When I found these at the house, I worried that maybe you’d left them behind as a way to say I’d let you down, and you were done with me for good.”
Something round and hard is pressed against my palm. I look down and spot the familiar prayer beads. He leans back to give me room to stare at them.
“No, Arsen. I left them behind accidentally.”
His smile doesn’t last long—not because his happiness vanishes, but because his lips crash against mine in a hungry kiss instead.
“I was afraid I’d lost you,” he admits in a cracking voice, speaking between rapid kisses that get more insistent by the second. “Forever.”
“You didn’t.” Cradling his jaw, I rub my forehead on his.
The sensation of our skin pressing together lights up my soul. He was worried for me ... not just the baby, but me. The next kiss begins, and my heartbeat grows faster as we deepen the kiss.
His fingers stroke my hair, and I think helplessly about the question I want to ask him. I’m desperate to know about Pyotr. But I’m too taken up in the moment, too paralyzed by our intermingling desire to bring it up.
I know that if I do, this moment will end.
And I need this too much to give it up.
For now … our problems can wait.
7
ARSEN
If I could live the rest of my life with my hands never leaving Galina’s body, I would. The space between us—tiny as it is—is pure agony. It leaves me feeling cold, as if I’m being covered in black frost. But I have to endure the distance for a few seconds longer, just enough time that I can slip the prayer beads onto her wrist again.
Galina lifts her arm and looks at the wooden beads with an inscrutable expression in her eyes. Seeing them on her wrist again slows my heartbeat somewhat. It looks right. It feels right. And I can’t help feeling the same thought that rushed through my head during our wedding:
Somewhere along the way, Galina became mine.
Not just as something to possess, but as someone to treasure.
