Page 151 of Marrying the Savage

That wasn’t planned. It’s true anyway.

She turns toward the door before I can read her expression properly.

At the threshold, she pauses without looking back. “Tomorrow then,” she says.

“I remember,” I say.

She looks back then, her face unreadable in the low study light. “They are not gifts,” she says. “I don’t want to owe you for replacing the things you should never have put me in.”

She leaves in my jacket.

I stand in the study after she’s gone, looking at the scattered buttons on the floor, the book lying open upside down beside the chair, the faint imprint of her body against the wall where I fucked her.

Mine.

The thought comes without effort.

21

SOFIA

I pace my room until the carpet probably starts praying for death.

This is bad.

Damir is coming with me.

Of course my terrifying, possessive, impossible husband heard the words I want to shop and decided the proper response was to turn a wardrobe errand into a military occupation with tailoring.

I had expected dark cars, silent men, a driver who looks like he has personally strangled three people for breathing incorrectly, and maybe Nikolai or even Grigori lurking near the women’s changing rooms with the haunted patience of a man who has seen too many things.

I had not expected Damir himself. That ruins everything.

If Damir is there, I can’t slip away.

If Damir is there, I can’t meet Anya’s cousin near some side exit.

If Damir is there, I can’t even breathe wrong without him noticing and saying something awful like, You are thinking too loudly, wife.

I stop in the middle of the room and glare at the sea through the window. “This is your fault,” I tell it.

The sea crashes below, unconcerned.

My phone sits on the bed where I left it, screen dark, full of messages from Anya that I haven’t opened yet because I already know what they will say.

Timing?

Exit?

Can you get away?

No.

No.

Absolutely no. Not with Damir there.

I sink onto the edge of the bed, rubbing my hands over my face.