Page 115 of Marrying the Savage

For once, I agree with Mikhail. The man is bleeding onto the floor while kissing me in a medical room, and apparently I have become the kind of woman who needs external supervision to remember wounds require treatment.

Damir lifts his head. His eyes are dark, his mouth wet from mine, his chest bare and marked beneath my hands.

“You will stay,” he says.

I blink. “For what?”

“The doctor.”

“You want me to stay while he stitches you?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

His gaze moves over my face, unreadable again but not cold.

I swallow. Then I nod once.

He steps back, just enough to let me slide off the examination table, but not enough to make the room feel normal again.

“Come in,” he says.

The door opens, and the doctor enters first, carefully not looking at my flushed face or Damir’s bare chest more than professional necessity demands. Mikhail stands behind him, takes one look at us, and immediately looks exhausted.

His gaze flicks to my mouth. Then to Damir’s arm. Then back to Damir.

“I see the wound received attention,” he says dryly.

I want the floor to open.

Damir looks at him without shame. “Close the door.”

Mikhail does, but not before I see the corner of his mouth twitch.

My terrible, impossible husband.

I sit beside Damir while the doctor cleans the wound. Damir doesn’t flinch once, but when the antiseptic touches torn skin, his hand curls slightly against his thigh.

Without thinking, I reach for his uninjured hand. His fingers close around mine immediately.

The doctor says nothing.

Mikhail says nothing.

I stare at our joined hands and pretend my heart hasn’t started doing something inconvenient again.

Outside the room, the house remains tense with whatever happened before he returned. Inside, the doctor stitches his arm. And Damir Volodin, who should be impossible to hold, keeps my hand in his until the bleeding stops.

17

DAMIR

I find myself outside Sofia’s room just after midnight.

That is how I know I have become foolish.

Men like me don’t find themselves anywhere. We choose rooms, exits, targets, routes. We don’t drift through our own houses like ghosts following the warmth of a living woman because sleep has left us and discipline has become unreliable.