“Maxim!”
“Victoria!” I laugh when she slaps the water. Again. “You are such a brat. You’d probably like it. When you really piss me off, I could strip you so you’re bare from the waist down, then I’d take you over my knee. If I did it just right, every time I hit your ass, my fingers would glance off your pussy.”
“Doesn’t that hurt?” she whispers, her toes curling. Right. Beside. My. Dick.
Double fuck.
“I won’t spank to bruise.” I like her bruiseless. Her silken skin creamy and ready for my bites.
“Do youwantto hit me?”
I don’t tense at her question. How could I when I saw her reaction to the belt? “I will never hit you in anger.”
“You just said when you’repissed?—”
“Yes, there’s a difference. You could never annoy me enough that I raise a hand to you. A tap to the tush if you got off on it, I could manage.” I push my fingers through the gaps between her toes and spread them wide. As her butt clenches and lifts her from the water, gravity sends droplets trickling over her form, taking a path my tongue wishes to follow. “I’m not your father, Victoria.”
My reminder turns her mulish. “I never thought you were.”
“I saw your reaction to the belt buckle. Did he hit you with one?”
“Once.” She bites her bottom lip. “For snooping. Most of the time, he pretended I didn’t exist.”
“What did you snoop on?”
“Him talking to theKrestniy Otets.”
My brows lift at the mention of the Bratva’s leader in Russia. “You remember that?”
“The words were indelibly imprinted in my memory after he beat me,” is her bitter comeback.
“You heard both sides of the conversation?”
“It’s why he hit me. He had him on speaker.”
I narrow my eyes. “What did he say?”
“You know Magdalena—Eoghan and Brennan’s Mom?”
“I know her.”
“She was kidnapped by the Aryans.”
“Before her husband decimated them. Their numbers still haven’t recouped all these years later.”
“Oh, dear, howsad,never mind.” She sticks her tongue out at me.
“Victoria,” I mutter impatiently. “What about Magdalena’s kidnapping?”
“It was a Russian plot to unseat the Irish.”
“Have you told them?”
She shakes her head. “Why would I rake up the past? It’s not like it’d change anything. It was ancient history when I overheard the conversation. You won’t tell them, will you?”
“No. Of course not.” I run my thumb over the padded skin of her big toe. “That’s a burden to carry.”
“Hardly.”
