I open my mouth to argue, but he kisses me before I can say anything else. It’s soft and sweet and everything I’ve been missing these last couple days. When he pulls back, I’m slightly breathless.
“That’s cheating,” I murmur against his lips.
“I prefer to think of it as strategic,” he says, his thumb tracing along my jaw. “Besides, you were about to lie again, and I can’t have that.”
“How do you know I was going to lie?”
He touches the space between my eyebrows. “Because you get this little crinkle right here when you’re about to say something you don’t mean. It’s one of my favorite things about you.”
“You have favorite things about my lying face?” I ask incredulously.
“I have favorite things about every one of your faces,” he says simply, moving to pour some salts and bubble bath into the tub, but something about the way he says it makes my chest tight with emotion. “Your thinking face, your laughing face, your sleepy face, your annoyed-with-me face…”
“I don’t have an annoyed-with-you face,” I protest.
“You’re wearing it right now.” He grips the bottom hem of my nightgown and lifts it up over my head.
The bathtub in here is surprisingly nice, given we’re in an underground silo. It’s a large white claw-foot tub, big enough for two. Once he turns the water off, I move to step in, and he halts me.
“I’m taking care of you, remember,” he says, and swoops me up, causing an embarrassing squeal to escape my throat. He lowers me into the warm water, and then I watch as he undresses.
“I could get used to you spoiling me like this,” I say as he steps in behind me and pulls me back between his legs.
The water is perfectly warm, and I let myself melt against his chest, feeling the tension from the day finally start to dissolve. His arms wrap around me, and I close my eyes, savoring this moment of peace.
“How was your trip?” I ask, tilting my head back against his shoulder.
“Productive,” he murmurs into my hair as his hands start to run idle circles down my arms. “Rain sends her regards, by the way. She thinks I’m blinded by my feelings and that you’re going to get us all killed.”
“Comforting,” I say dryly, stretching my legs out and crossing my feet on the upper edge of the tub. “I thought you were going to keep the mission a secret,” I say, trying not to sound accusatory.
“I didn’t give her specifics and only told her what she needed to know in case anything happens, and she knows it stays between us. I told her about Aunt Irina and how fucked things are within the Syndicate right now too,” he says as he moves his hands to my shoulders and starts massaging me.
“How did she take that information?” I ask, leaning my head forward as he works the knots in my neck with his strong hands.
“Rain’s tough and skeptical by nature. She insisted she never fully trusted Irina’s leadership, and she wants to help change things when we get back,” he says, and despite not personally liking Rain that much, I’m glad she has our backs.
“That’s reassuring,” I admit, sighing as he hits a particularly tense spot. “We’re going to need allies when this is all over, especially if Irina doesn’t take kindly to us exposing my father’s operations and planning an entire mission in secrecy.”
“Rain also said something interesting,” he continues, hishands moving lower to work on my shoulder blades. “She thinks there are others who’ve been questioning the leadership quietly. People who joined Solace and the Syndicate because they believed in the cause, not because they wanted power.”
I turn slightly to look at him. “How many others?”
“She wasn’t sure, but enough to matter. Most of them are afraid to speak up because they don’t know who they can trust.” His hands stop. “Rain thinks if we can prove what Marco’s been doing and Irina’s motives, it might be the catalyst to clean house properly.”
“No pressure or anything,” I say wryly, settling back against him. The warm water and his touch are making me drowsy, but my mind is still processing everything. “So when we get back, we’re not only fighting the Volkovs, we’re potentially dealing with a civil war within our own organization.”
“Potentially. But if this mission is successful, Irina and I may be the only Volkovs left,” he says, which puts things in perspective.
After breaking into Marco’s largest secret-testing lab buried beneath the most dangerous gutter zone in the country, we’re hoping to kill him, Orin, and Gary in the process.
Fuck.
I turn in his arms so I can see his face, studying the tension around his eyes that he’s trying to hide.
“Are you okay with that?” I ask quietly. “I know they’re monsters, but they’re still your family.”
He rubs his eyes. “My father bought and used you. Orin tortured you and has blood on his hands from many operations like this one. Gary…” He shakes his head. “They stopped being my family the moment I learned what they really were.”
