Page 7 of A Surprise Baby for the Russian

I pick up the granola bar and eat it, not because I am genuinely hungry and beginning to feel a little faint, but because I need something to do with my hands. I look at my empty ring finger and sigh. Maybe love was never meant for me anyway.

“You’re making a habit of that.” Yakov’s deep, level voice breaks the silence of the kitchen some time later, pulling me out of my thoughts.

I look up from the crumpled wrapper of the granola bar. He is still sitting across the table, eyes watching my face with that relentless, unblinking intensity. “Making a habit of what, Mykros?” I snap, my voice dripping with as much venom as I can muster.

“Looking at me like you’re trying to work out the amount of force it would take to drive that pen through my skull.”

“It doesn’t take working out; it takes an opportunity,” I fire back, leaning forward, resting my elbows against the wood to crowd the space between us. “And for your information, I am not looking at you. I don’t care about you. I am mourning my sanity, which apparently vanished the second I let you pull me into your car.”

He doesn’t flinch. If anything, my hostility seems to entertain him, something dangerously close to a smile pulling at his lips. He folds his arms over his chest, his lean torso stretching beneath his jacket, his presence filling the clean kitchen until the air feels claustrophobic.

“The aisle and the beautiful dress will have to wait, malysh,” he says, referring back to my earlier comment. “But the reality of what’s just happened is fixed. You’re my wife now. You’d do well to remember that.”

“I am a Volkov, Yakov,” I sneer. God, I want to punch him in the face, or poke him in the eyes, something, anything. “I signed a piece of paper under duress, having been kidnapped. You think because you have a document you’ve stolen from somewhere in your pocket that I’m going to start playing the dutiful, blushing bride? Fuck off.”

Yakov stands up from his chair, his massive frame blocking out the window light as he steps around the side of the table, stopping barely a foot away from my seat. The sheer size of him is slightly terrifying. He leans down, bracing his large left hand flat against the back of my chair, effectively trapping me between his chest and the wood.

“It isn’t a joke to my father, Raya,” he whispers, his breath warm against the sensitive skin near my ear, sending an involuntary, irritating shiver down my spine.

I force my chin up, glaring directly into his face, our noses barely inches apart. I can smell the leather of his jacket, and the sharp scent of his cologne. It makes my chest tighten in a way that hurts. “I couldn’t care less about your father. My brothers will turn your entire family’s empire into a pile of smoking ash.”

Yakov leans down a touch deeper, his gray eyes darkening until they look like cold flint. The mocking, easy facade vanishes, replaced by a ruthless, blunt reality that makes my lungs seize.

“I hope they do, but make no mistake, my father will rip you apart, Raya,” he whispers, the low gravel of his voice vibrating right through my bones. “If kidnapping you didn’t give him the power he wanted against the alliance, he wouldn’t have hesitated to put a bullet in your head and bury you under a concrete pier to ensure you were never found. That was the alternative to this room. That is what Yaroslav was bringing you to.”

A cold spike of dread hits my stomach, the raw, unyielding truth of his words slicing right through my anger. I hate that he is right. I hate that every door in my life currently leads back to his shadow.

Yakov studies my face, and the tiny, arrogant smirk returns to his jaw. “But until your brothers find you, or I return you to them myself,” he mutters, his voice laced with an intoxicating arrogance that makes my stomach do a pathetic flip, “you’re sitting in my kitchen, eating my food, and answering to my name. Get used to it, malysh.”

I pull myself back against the wooden slats of the chair, trying to create a single inch of distance from his overwhelming heat. “Get out of my face, Yakov,” I mutter, turning my focus back to the crumpled granola bar wrapper to hide the scalding blush spreading across my cheeks to my ears.

“As my wife commands,” he grins, stepping away and leaving me alone in the quiet room to wrestle with the terrifying realization that my prison cell has window boxes, and my captor is the only thing keeping me safe.

Chapter 5 - Yakov

I give her the grand tour. It takes approximately two minutes, which is intentional. It’s a small house on a quiet street, with limited entry points, which basically means there’s nowhere for anyone to hide. She walks through each room with her arms folded and her jaw set, and I watch her survey each one. She is doing it without thinking about it, something that’s evidently been ingrained. I wonder who taught her that. I wonder many things about Raya Volkov that I have no business thinking about, but I have been doing it for months anyway.

We get to the bedroom last. There is only one, and accordingly, only one bed. I watch the moment she registers this, the slight rise in her chest, the color that moves up her neck before she gets control of it. She turns around and attempts to give me her sternest look. “You can sleep on the sofa,” she points toward the sitting room.

“I’ll be sleeping in here.”

“Oh no, you won’t.”

“Oh yes, I will. It’s safer. One room means one door to watch. I’m not leaving you alone at night in a house my father’s people will definitely be looking for.”

She stares at me. “We are not sharing a bed.”

“The bed is large enough that you won’t know I’m in it.”

“I will absolutely know you’re in it.” She says this with complete conviction, then I can see the moment she registers how it sounds, because she gets momentarily flustered. It’s cute. “Because you’ll be taking up half of it.”

“I’m not that big.”

“You’re… You’re like a mountain.” She points at me, trying to disguise her blush with bluster. “Just make sure you stay on your side.”

“I’ll do my best. Promise.”

“That’s not half as reassuring as you think it is.” She turns and walks out of the bedroom, trying to be stroppy. I stand there watching the sway of her hips as she struts away, and breathe in clean linen and the faint whisper of her lingering scent. Raya Volkov is going to be sleeping inches away from me, and it is going to be a colossal exercise in self-discipline for the next several weeks. I can’t believe she signed the fucking form. Tonight, I will be sleeping in bed with my wife. Raya Volkov is my wife. There was never a question: if it hadn’t been this way, it’d have been another. She was always going to be mine. My father doesn’t realize the massive favor he did me, the best thing he’s ever done for me in his whole shitty life, in fact.