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“Did our vows mean nothing to you?” I demanded in a quiet, seething voice. My heart slammed against my ribs, and it wasn’t heartbreak there, not yet. It was rage. Endless possessive rage.
I turned to look him in the eye, and said, “They meant something to me, Damien Marshall.”
CHAPTER 2
DAMIEN
She trembled with rage, something dangerously broken just under her anger, and I didn’t know where it had come from. For a too-long moment I just stared at my wife, dumbstruck. Words escaped my grasp, my mind too slow. Since she burst in the door, my emotions were a rollercoaster of panic, fear, relief, rage, and now confusion.What the fuck?My vows meanteverything.I was her shield, and I was so fucking proud of that title.
“I meant every single word,” I swore, stunned by the abruptness of her question. Vasilisa thought I lied when I swore to protect her? “Where’s this coming from?”
She sucked in a rough breath, her nostrils flaring, and her rage seemed to burn hotter when I met her furious stare. I didn’t like any of this—the world fucking shifted under my feet—butgodshe looked gorgeous when she was mad. I wondered if she’d point her gun at me again, and almost groaned.
She scowled out the window. “I know you’re repulsed by me but you could have the decency of waiting until we’ve been married longer than a month to go out and fuck someone else.”
I recoiled. Her words echoed through my head, each one more damning than the last. A furious, helpless sound shook my throat and I had my wife backed up against the window before I’d processed the intention to act.
“Firstly,” I breathed, tremors moving through my arms to my hands where they curled around her shoulders, “you are the most beautiful woman I have ever—ever—seen, in my entire life. Repulsed by you? I amruinedby you. I would kill just to be beside you. I’d die for a single kiss.”
Vasilisa’s mouth fell open in surprise, her eyes round.
I was far from done.
“As for fucking someone else, if anyone dared to put their hands on me, I’d cut those handsoff.Without hesitation. My body is yours. My hand is yours; I gave you it in marriage and I was deadly serious, Vasilisa. My heart is yours. It has been for weeks now, but I didn’t want to pressure you by telling you my feelings. You’re mine, my queen, my whole fucking life, and I am yours for the rest of my existence. I’d rather die than touch someone else.”
Vasilisa blinked at me, her rich brown eyes full of tears. “But—but you go out every night, and you won’t come anywhere near me unless I touch you first, and you won’t have sex with me. At all. So you—you must be getting that with someone else.”
“Nyet,”I blurted. Nervousness made my blood pump faster as I rushed out, “I love you,” in clumsy, awkward Russian.
Vasilisa stared at me. Unmoving. She blinked and tears spilled free.
My ears prickled with heat, but I didn’t look away as I forced out a hesitant, embarrassed explanation.
“You talk in your sleep, but I can’t understand you because you always speak in Russian. And it drives memad,Vasya. I’ve made no secret of being obsessed with you; every tiny thing you do consumes my mind, but especially the soft words you say in your sleep.” I glanced out the window, my face burning. “And I figured there’s no one left in your life you can speak to in your first language so—I’ve been taking lessons.”
She sobbed.
Fuck me.
“Come here,” I breathed, my own embarrassment swept away when I saw my wife in floods of tears. Vasilisa buried her head in my chest, shaking against me. “I love you. There’s not a single millimetre of me that isn’t completely in love with you.”
“But—but you won’t touch me…”
“Fuck, Vasya, you’ve been through hell and sex was used as a weapon against you. You’re scarred inside and out, and every instinct in my bones screams to protect you. Fucking you … it would scare you, not protect you. If you think I don’t want you…” My hands flexed on her back and I forced myself to admit, “I had to jerk off every night in the shower so I could sleep beside you without forcing myself on you.”
“You wouldn’t force me,” she said quietly. “And I—I touched myself, too. Thinking about you.”
Fuck. The picture that painted was lethal enough to make my heart stop.
“I’m not enough,” she whispered when I took too long to reply.
A knife carved the fragile muscle of my heart in two. I dropped to my knees in apology and devastation, pain rupturing my chest until each breath was accompanied by a stab of pain.
“You’re everything I’ve been dreaming of my entire goddamn life,” I said fiercely, my hands curling into fists on my knees as I stared at the wooden floor. There were droplets of blood there,from where it had dropped from the knees of her jeans. “You’re more than enough—you’re a miracle, Vasilisa. I love you. I’m twisted and fucked up but I love you with every drop of blood in my heart. I really, genuinely, believed I was protecting you by not having sex with you. But I would be fuckinghonouredto.”
When she didn’t say anything, only a hitch in her breath to betray that she’d heard me, I swallowed hard and dared a glance up. “You’re my wife and I take that seriously. I’m sorry I made you believe our marriage is anything less than a gift.”
She stared across my office, her throat bobbing hard.
