Page 98 of Then We Shatter

I reel back in shock. “Katarina Barkov, did you just crack a joke?”

“Absolutely not,” she replies. “But Mrs. Freeman, wife of Rick, seems to have been infected by her husband’s awful sense of humor.”

I slide my hand around the back of her head and crush my mouth against hers. I steal her gasp and her smile with a deep swipe of my tongue. “I could fuck you for that.”

Sasha coughs loudly. “Please, there are people in the room.”

“So there are,” Katarina says, casting a wicked look in my direction. I shake my head, but I’m not about to deny my wife anything and I let her continue. “Sestra, once we’re done trussing up this turkey, don’t you have work to do elsewhere? We can play with your husband later. I’d like to play with mine first.”

“Good grief, are you two always like this?”

“Yes,” we say in unison.

“Fine,” Sasha huffs. “It could take me a while to locate all the secret files Vasili and Grigor shared.”

Spiders crawl along my spine at the thought of what Sasha might uncover. She has her work cut out unravelling the Barkov empire, but there’s one thread I’m in no hurry for her to pull. I could probably live without knowing who betrayed me. I don’t know what I’ll do if it’s my brother. Kill him maybe.

I’m quiet as the women bind Grigor and prop him against a wall. He cries like a baby and jabbers like one too.

Katarina cups my face. “Are you back in the room?”

The spark in my wife’s heated gaze sends the shadows skittering back to the corners of my mind. “I’m back,” I confirm. “Ready to put on a show for our guest?”

Chapter 37

Katarina

Idon’t know if I’d count this as the best day of my life, but ending Grigor’s tyranny and setting my sestra free is going to be up there with the day I jumped off a cliff and had the most bone-jarring, earth-shattering, stomach-plummeting orgasm of my life while holding onto the man I’d been grieving for months. The day I married Rick Freeman beats them all. Obviously.

If there’s a shadow over it all, it’s the one I see on Killian’s face as he watches Sasha leave the chamber. He’s worried about what she’ll find in the Bratva’s web of deceit and the flies it trapped. I’m worried for him, which is why distraction is the key.

I have my husband’s full attention as I peel off my leather jacket and bulletproof vest. I have no intention of removing my holstered gun. I’ll never feel safe in this house, but I do feel protected by the man who pulls off his vest too.

Killian hooks a finger into the waistband of my black leather pants and pulls me closer. His worry-lines soften into a mischievous smirk, but before I can ask what he has planned, he leans in and kisses me. His tongue swipes over my lips. Once, twice, until I open up and let him devour me.

Grigor’s complaints from the corner have reduced to snuffled gasps of pain. He’s watching us, but let him. It’s not like he can get a hard-on.

In contrast, my thighs clench with need as Killian rakes his hands through my hair. I like my shorter hairstyle. I know Killian enjoyed roping my long ponytail around his fist, but I feel reborn, and my husband is nothing if not adaptable. He winds my shortened strands around his fingers, pulling my hair taut as he pulls our lips apart.

“I’m not going to fuck you here, Kitty.”

I pant for breath. “No?”

He shakes his head slowly, taunting me. “I’m going to fuck you over there,” he replies, pointing with his eyes to the raised dais.

When he tugs my waistband again, I follow him obediently to what had been my uncle’s throne. I like this idea, but before I can sit down, he peels down my leather pants to gather at my ankles. My thong is next.

“Sit,” he demands.

I sit.

Killian glances over his shoulder. “This is how you treat a woman,” he says, watching Grigor’s face contort in fury as he kneels before me. “On your knees so you can worship her.”

My old camp commander deserves no more of our attention and Killian settles back on his heels. He takes off my shoes, setting them carefully to one side before removing my pants and black silk thong. Once my lower half is naked, he slips my stilettos back on my feet.

Killian pulls me to the edge of my uncle’s throne and spreads my legs. “Perfect,” he whispers, his gaze trailing up from my center, across my stomach, my sweater, my neck, finally settling on my mouth.

He scowls when he catches me biting down on my lower lip, holding back what I can’t say in front of Grigor. I’m far from perfect, and that bastard in the corner would consider it a minor victory to ease his passing if he knew.