Page 22 of A Surprise Baby for the Russian

I wake up as the little spoon. I mean, I’m not surprised. Yakov doesn’t strike me as a little spoon kind of guy. What I am surprised by is how happy I was to lie there for a while, enjoying the warmth. It felt normal, if that’s not a totally strange thing to say, given we’re in a bed in a safe house, after he’s been shot, running from his psychotic father and his twin, who tried to kidnap me—but yeah, normal.

I extract myself with excruciating care, which takes some doing because Yakov is a massive human being. His left arm is heavy, slung securely over my waist, under the stubborn impression that it belongs there. I need a massive dose of caffeine before I start driving myself mad—especially with things that require me to rewrite the script on my own feelings. I’ve been doing way too much of that lately, and it’s genuinely exhausting.

My body aches like I’ve had a damn good workout at the gym, my thighs especially; my neck and shoulders are marked with a constellation of bruises that, if I close my eyes, I can still feel the suck and pull of his mouth on me. An inconvenient throb between my legs lets me know exactly how I felt about that. I can still smell him on my skin, and it’s a scent that’s proving hard to get rid of, if I even want to get rid of it, which is a problem in and of itself. I am unshowered, disheveled, and sticky between my thighs. While my logical mind is already halfway through constructing a tidy narrative in which I spent the night locked in mortal combat with my captor, my actual body is screaming at me that last night was… what? Satisfying? Mind-melting? Unfairly excellent?

It’s an embarrassing and treacherous thing to admit, even privately inside my own skull: Last night was hands down the best sex I’ve ever had. It wasn’t just the fact that he’s fit as fuck, with that whole dark and brooding tattooed god thing going on, or the way he can pin me to a mattress with one forearm—sweet Jesus, why didn’t I wake him up and beg for more? It was the way he looked at me as if I was the beginning and end of his universe. Nobody has ever looked at me like that. He didn’t flinch when I bit him. He laughed when I cursed him out. He called me “solntse,” which I know means “sun,” and I know exactly how dumb it sounds to swoon over nicknames from your kidnapper, but here we are.

As I lay there, stealing glances at his sleeping face, I realized two horrifying truths. The first is that I am, at minimum, physically attracted to this man, and possibly several other kinds of attracted too. The second is that, for a few hours, I let myself feel safe with him. Not Stockholm Syndrome safe, but—well, maybe a little. Do they make a version of Stockholm Syndrome for when your captor is also your legal husband? If so, I’m patient zero.

The longer I linger in this mental quicksand, the more I realize my usual defense mechanisms are hilariously outclassed. I don’t have a snarky retort for how it feels to wake up in his arms. I don’t have a glib counterpunch for how he whispered my name against the back of my neck. The only thing I’m plotting is how quickly I can get to the kitchen to make coffee before he wakes up and ruins everything by being infuriatingly nice to me again.

I slip out of the bedroom and make my way to the coffee machine in the kitchen, digging in the fridge for milk, slamming it on the counter a little harder than necessary. I’m staring at the coffee maker like it’s a live grenade, so wrapped up in my own head, I don’t notice him until he’s right behind me. He’s barefoot, wearing a t-shirt that looks two sizes too small for his ridiculous torso, and his hair is a mess—somehow intentionally, infuriatingly good-messy, not “I just fought a bear” messy. He takes one look at my pathetic attempt to navigate the machine, crosses the room, and gently moves me aside by my shoulders.

“I’m making the coffee,” I tell him, crossing my arms.

“I know. Sit down.”

“I have been successfully brewing my own caffeine for—”

“You make it wrong.”

I open my mouth to argue, but my jaw snaps shut because the irritating problem is that he makes it exactly right, every single time, without me ever having to say a word. The steaming mug he is going to hand me in approximately ninety seconds will taste a thousand times better than the bitter sludge I was about to brew. We both know it, and it is incredibly aggravating.

I slump into a kitchen chair. “Make it milky with a shit load of sugar, please.”

“Feeling fragile this morning?” He smiles. Like I said, insufferable dumbass.

“Tired.”

He slides a heavy ceramic mug in front of me that I immediately wrap both hands around, letting the warmth bleed into my palms, and take a sip. It is, predictably, flawless. I refuse to say it out loud.

He sits across from me with his own mug and opens his laptop. He says absolutely nothing about last night. So obviously I don’t either. There is a massive, deafening mountain of silence sitting right on the table between us. I drink my coffee; he works. I notice, with a sinking feeling in my chest, that this is a perfectly comfortable, domestic arrangement. What the fuck do I do with that?

An hour later, I escape to the bathroom for a cool shower. Standing under the spray, I finally let the walls crack. Yes, it happened. Yes, you were the one who initiated it. Yes, it was by a significant margin the best decision you’ve made since this whole nightmare started. And yes, I am in some very serious, catastrophic trouble. If I start falling for him, the fragile balance holding my entire world together is going to shatter. I force myself to turn the handle, shutting off the water before I lose my mind. I get out and wrap a towel tightly around myself. I’m fine. Everything is fine.

Through the slightly open bathroom door, the low rumble of his voice speaking in Russian cuts through the quiet house. I freeze, standing perfectly still on the bathmat, shamelessly eavesdropping. I can only catch a few snippets, but I hear enough to get the gist. “Tonight,” he says, “and no mistakes.” There’s something about a shipment, and a rat? I can’t confidently translate the whole conversation, not that I want to know—well, maybe. He finishes the call with, “If he does it again, put the fucker under. I’ll come and do it myself if you can’t.” It’s his work voice—flat and cold. Short, brutal answers. It’s a chilling reminder of exactly who he is to the rest of the world. It’s different from the low, gravelly tone he uses when he mutters rodnaya into my hair in the dark.

I pull on a pair of leggings and a sweatshirt, march out to the living room couch, and aggressively pick up my book.

I try to read, I really do, but I find myself yanked backward into the sticky amber of last night, and the way Yakov’s hands moved over my skin. My phone buzzes against the cushion next to me and then again repeatedly.

Sofie: ok so Matvei has officially lost it

Sofie: Like, totally lost his shit. You did speak to him?

Sofie: he’s been on the phone constantly. I think he’s got Adrian Nikolai trying to trace you

Sofie: just thought you’d want to know your big brother is losing his mind in a very dramatic fashion

Sofie: also he yelled at me for like 10 minutes yesterday because I wouldn’t tell him where you are, fucking rude, told him I know shit

Sofie: ok that’s all, text me when you can, love you xx

I stare at the screen for a while, thumb hovering. I don’t really know what to say, so I settle for:

Raya: tell him I’m fine, I’ve told him I’m fine, and that I’ll call him again soon

Raya: and thanks for not telling him anything xx