“They’re annoyed you got to Bordeau first?”
His smile’s placid. “Yes.”
Replacing the lid on the cooler, I huff out a laugh. “No wonder I associate limbs with your love language.” His sudden tension snags my attention. “I went from you holding me and then suffocating me in blankets, because God forbid a maid sees so much as my shoulders, and then—” I pause. Gape at him. Gasp: “No. Maxim. No.”
His jaw works again.
“It is, isn’t it?”
He grits his teeth.
“IT IS!”
The lightbulb flaring to life over my head would illuminate the state.
His nostrils flare.
“You’re sulking because I told the maid I’d love her forever!”
“You haven’t called melovein Russian, Victoria.” His hands flare wide in an explosion of movement that stuns me more than his words. “And there yougoddamnare, telling thegoddamnmaid that you’llgoddamnlove herforeverbecause she said she’d make your sister decafgoddamntea!”
My mouth gapes wider.
The urge to tip my head back and burst out laughing is immense.
But he…
Oh, fuck.
I scramble over the couch and hurl myself onto his lap. “Dorogoy.”
He stiffens. “Don’t just say it. You have to mean?—”
“You haven’t said it to me either. You call me kitten and hare and everything in between but not that.” I keep my tone gentle. Kind. Because as bewildering as this may be, I sense his hurt is genuine.
Not just that, but confused.
And if I think about it, really think about it, I understand.
Maxim’s life hasn’t been full of love. Despite his years on the street, he knew love. Has known it. Recognizes it. Feels it. His parents and grandmother assured that. But it’s not exactly something he’s been allowed to embrace during his years in the mob.
I cup his cheek and, holding his jaw in place, I press a kiss to those lips that have given me such pleasure and, against them, I mewl, “Dorogoy.”
“Lyubovmoya.”
And as he breathes those words, words that are almost poetic, not informal but evocative and oddly archaic, I don’t even have the chance to explode with joy.
Orto shower his face with kisses.
Because—
FORTY-SIX
ILYA’S IN THE HOUSE!
A knock sounds at her door.
No one can get to her front door without going through guards, so I’m already on red alert. Then my cell phone buzzes.
