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Marika
Isit alone at my vanity, wondering when I’ll hear the knock at my door.
We don’t have all that much time. I have a dinner tonight—family dinner, once a week now that I live alone at the mansion I once shared with my father and brother. Now, my brother, Nikolai Vasilev, lives with his wife on their estate—I still live here.
To be honest, I like the solitude. It’s a little strange—this house felt too big even when it was only the three of us—but it fits my mood these days. I can wander around most of it without so much as even running into a staff member or security, who do their best to stay out of my way.
No one knows how to handle it when the Bratva princess comes back battered and broken.
No one except Adrik.
There have been so many days in the last few months since Narokov’s threat was neutralized and my brother disappeared into married bliss with Lilliana, where I’ve wondered how I would ever piece back together who I was—who I am now. It feels, honestly, as if it’s been longer than months.
Maybe that’s why I feel the way I do about him. I’d never been alone in my life, and then suddenly, I was, more often than not. Once a week or so, I see my brother and his wife—usually together, sometimes apart—when they’re not enjoying the new estate they purchased after their honeymoon, eager to fill it with the family they’ve already started creating. And in the days in between, there’s Adrik.
He’s the reason I haven’t finished getting ready yet. No point in putting on makeup when I know he’s going to kiss it right off.
Even though I expect it, the knock at the door makes me jump a little. That’s something that’s stuck after the events at the compound where Ivan Narokov made his stand. I jump at things now. Shadows, knocks, strange noises. I knew Adrik was coming, and it still startled me.
I tug my silk robe a little closer around me, and get up to answer the door.
Adrik is standing just outside of it, tall and handsome and blond, a man who was once just another of my family’s security and now has become so much more to me. An anchor, I think, sometimes, during days when I felt like I might float away. He saved me when I couldn’t have done much to save myself.
“Marika.” His deep, accented voice ripples over my skin. “May I come in?”
I nod wordlessly, stepping to one side to let him in. He steps into my bedroom, closing the door behind him, and it still surprises me a little to see him here. It still feels forbidden, taboo. It is.
Bodyguards do not sleep with Bratva heiresses. They don’t take their virginity and become their lovers. But that’s exactly what’s happened with Adrik and I.
“Are you alright?” He steps forward, touching my face, his fingers skimming over my cheek. His thumb grazes over my cheekbone, and where I was chilly a moment ago, I feel my skin warm beneath his touch. “I know today was difficult for you.”
I went to visit my father’s grave today. I woke up alone this morning, dressing in all black and asking for a car. Adrik insisted on accompanying me. It’s been rainy and wet for a week now, the end of winter turning into the first damp chills of spring. I stood out in the wet cold for a long time, under my umbrella, staring down at the gray stone numbly until Adrik finally came out and urged me back to the car, solicitously convincing me to go back home.
I told him he could come up and see me later. I haven’t left my room since.
I nod, still trying to find my voice, glancing over at the rumpled sheets of my bed. I’ve never had a secret like Adrik before. For a little over a month, I’ve kept it. And I don’t know what I’m meant to do.
“Do you want me to go?” His fingers are still gently touching my face. “We don’t have to do anything you don’t want to, Marika.”
“No,” I say softly. “I don’t want you to go.”
He smiles faintly. “That’s what you said to me downstairs, remember? When I came and sat with you, and we—”
I swallow hard. “I remember.”
“I will always be thrilled I asked to stay on your security detail,” he says, that faint smile still on his lips. “Otherwise, this—” he brushes his thumb downwards, over my lower lip, “this would never have happened.”
Of course, it wouldn’t have. Adrik and I are something that shouldn’t have happened. I should have told him no. I should tell him no every time he comes to my bed. But I can’t.
I want him too much.
“Sometimes I think it only happened because you were lonely,” he says softly, drawing me into his arms. I turn my head, laying my cheek against his chest, breathing in the faint, warm scent of male skin and a hint of cologne, the laundry detergent used to wash his uniform. His arms are broad and strong, and I feel safe in them. I have felt safe in them ever since he picked me up off of the concrete floor in that compound, beaten half to death, and carried me to safety.
“I was lonely,” I whisper. “But that’s not the only reason why.”
Nikolai left strict instructions for me not to leave the mansion unless I was heavily guarded, while he went on his belated honeymoon with Lilliana. I didn’t begrudge them that—they needed their space to heal and reconnect, too. I had been left with my security—one of which was Adrik—at the mansion.
At some point, as I came out of the fugue I’d been in, I remembered that he had saved me. I wanted to thank him. So I had offered him a drink.
