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“Pizza? Who doesn’t like pizza?” What a silly question. “Yes. I do. Onions and mushrooms?”
He scrunches up his nose. “On your half. My half will have spinach and sausage.”
I mimic his expression. “Keep your spinach on your half,” I insist. “Green things shouldn’t be on pizza.”
He grabs his phone and taps away, I assume to order the pizza. I hop out of bed and get my suitcase open to find a pair of lounge pants and a t-shirt. Every move reminds me of what we just did, and it occurs to me that instead of lying in the bed with awkward silence drowning us, we’re ordering dinner and getting our comfortable clothes on for a night in. Like we’ve done this a million times before. It’s too natural. A girl could get used to this.
“What?” he asks as he’s yanking on his pajama pants and catches me staring.
I shake my head. “Nothing. How long for the pizza?”
“Half hour. Do you want to watch TV?”
I nod. “Sure.” He turns to the door. “Hey, Maxim? What did that mean? What I was saying. What did it mean?”
He stops at the doorway and grins. “You said, very nicely in my language, ‘Yes, sir, I’m yours.’”
My stomach flutters with this information.
“Come, Max.” He snaps his fingers at his cat, but the cat stays at my feet.
“I’ll bring him. I just want to find a hair tie.” I bend down and pat Max’s head.
“Hmm.” Maxim grunts. “Hurry.”
“Da ser,” I say with a laugh.
Maxim
Mandy yawnsand snuggles into my chest while we lounge on the couch. I let her pick the show, and now I’m stuck in the middle of a serial killer documentary.
“You don’t have any tattoos on your feet.” She points to my bare feet, crossed at the ankle perched up on the coffee table.
“Who gets tattoos on their feet?” I huff a laugh.
She shrugs then turns her face up to mine. The glow of the television shines on her face, and I want to kiss her. Fuck that. I want to do more than that with her. My hunger for her should have started to simmer down now that I’ve tasted her.
Soon. I’ll get bored soon.
“You have them all over. Your fingers, your stomach even has markings, and up your neck.” She reaches one hand up and runs her fingertip over the black marks on my neck. Her eyes widen when she feels the scars the ink hide. “You were hurt.” She twists more. “Who hurt you?”
The demand in her question knocks me off guard for a moment. That’s my line, isn’t it? She’s mine to protect, not the other way around.
“It was a long time ago,moy malen’kiy voin,” I assure her and pull her hand away from my neck. I can’t have her touching me when all I want to do is throw her down on the couch and fuck her into oblivion.
“What happened?” She’s not going to let it go.
“I was in a fight, but I won.” The other guy didn’t make it out of the bar alive, not that he had any chance of surviving anyway. I’d gone there that night to do exactly what I did—end him.
Her lips screw up to the side. “Your entire life is a fight, isn’t it? I mean, that’s what the Romanov family pays you to do? To fight for them?”
“I protect those that need protecting. If it’s a person or if it’s a product.”
She raises her eyebrows. “You’re their security?”
“You could say that.” It’s more complicated than that, but she doesn’t need to understand any of that. The further away from that part of my world I can keep her, the better.
I bring my own fingers to the scar on her cheek. “Your turn. Tell me what happened.”
