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Her eyes darken. So does the color in her cheeks. She says nothing.
So. She is going to make me spell it out. Good on her, I suppose. I’m not surprised in the least that this girl might get some pleasure out of the sight of me squirming. “Konstantin would face much harsher retaliation, and from a much, much broader swath of thebratva, should he kill a wife…rather than a once-lover from a past life.”
Now she is glowing like a coal, her eyes dark and dancing. Still, she says nothing.
“It would take a target from my back, too,” I continue, more blandly. “Politically, I would become a less enticing quarry. High-placed gangsters would have to stop shoving their daughters and nieces and allies at me as marriage prospects. I would be off the table, so far as political marriage would be concerned. Which, as you might have guessed, is my preference.”
Kat watches me. I notice the faintest tremor in her hand.
“I have a son, Aleks,” she says finally, very softly. “And I don’t intend to have another. I’m not a marriage prospect for you. I could never give you a real family, a real legacy. Even if I thought it would protect me, it could only endanger Adam.”
Adam. Yes. The boy with the dark hair and eyes. Adam, with the wisdom of more years in his little face. The way he looked at Kat was the way I think a flower looks at the sun, and she looked at him just the same. With the kind of love that is only produced through the art of nature, millions of years in the pursuit of perfection.
“Adam would be far safer,” I say, “if you and I were wed. If you had the power to call yourself my wife…” To my surprise, my heart drums. So low and hard that for a moment, I’m helpless to finish the thought. Finally, I say, steadily: “And him my son.”
Her eyes flash. The blood drains out of her face. “But he isn’t,” she says weakly. “And forcing him into some life of danger and Russian crime—”
“He would be forced nowhere. And do you have so little trust in me, to think that I would endanger him? Or you?”
“You already have,” she says, crossly. “Whether you meant to or not, Aleks, your relationship to me, as brief and meaningless as it was, as it is, putsallof us in danger.”
“That’s different. Were we married–”
“But we’re not!” To my shock, tears leap into her eyes. “How the hell would it make us safer? We would be targets for longer, we would be targets for the rest of our lives!”
“I hate to break it to you,” I say coarsely, “but likely enough, that’s still the case. Even if I kill Konstantin, I can’t kill his entire gang. I can’t eradicate his family, his alliances, his people.” And now anger follows up, fast. I stand suddenly, hands in fists, looking down at her. “Perhaps I made a mistake implying your opinion in this matter would be taken into consideration.”
She stares at me, aghast, clearly stunned. “Are you…threateningme?”
“Do I need to?” My voice emerges far colder than I mean it to, and sharp as a blade. But I didn’t come here to have a conversation about this. If it’s what I decide is right—and damn, if I’m not tempted—it will be the thing that happens. “Do you really believe you have any authority here, Kat? Like it or not, you stepped into my world all those years ago. You invited this.”
She leaps to her feet, and to my shock, gives me a hard shove, both hands thrown against my chest. It’s not enough to move me though it does catch me a bit off-guard. I step back. “You’ll have to force me. I will never,nevermarry you.” But even as she says it, she’s blushing, and her wild eyes have dropped to my mouth and then darted back to my eyes. “If your goal is to make me hate you, Aleks, it’s working.”
“So be it. I have interests of my own to protect. If your safety aligns with that, so be it. It’s simply business.”
“And the other night, was that just business?” She steps closer, and without meaning to, I take another small step back, feeling my shoulders touch against her closed door. “Is that what you want? Some marriage of obligation?”
“It is what I need. And it will be in your best interest.” But I’m doubting myself now. Not the truth of that—because that is true.And if I’m to marry, doesn’t it make sense to at least choose someone I once cared for? Someone I know I am compatible with, even if she hates me, and the kind of life I lead? There would be no better protection for her, or her son. If I can’t make her see that, the dealing will have to come down to force. “You are already found out. You’re already in Konstantin’s sights. This may be the fix, and if it’s not, it will, at the very least, buy us time. So, we will be engaged.”
Her eyes flash. “You’re a bastard,” she hisses. “Who the hell do you think you are? Coming into my town, intomyhouse like this, taking over my life like—”
“Maybe you should have thought of that before, Kat.” She’s making my blood boil. And strangely…I don’t hate it. When was the last time I felt quite this alive? It might be mad, but the intensity with which she’s looking at me, talking to me…it makes me want her. More than I have since I got back. “You seem tired. You should rest.”
“Don’t tell me what to do.”
“Or what?” I take her by the wrist and turn, pushing open the door to her bedroom and flicking on the light. “We can talk about this tomorrow, if you feel like trying to behave yourself. Until then, I think it’s best we save our words. Yours don’t seem to be particularly well-considered as it is.”
“Well-considered?” She yanks her arm free and spins to face me, eyes wild. “I won’t marry you, Aleks. If you were the last man on Earth, I wouldn’t marry you.”
But she’s standing very close to me again, and the hunger is beating in me like a drum. I can practically smell it on her, too, feel it rolling off her body like heatwaves. She takes a step even closer, erasing what space there was between us.
“If you want me to be your wife, you’ll have to make me.”
“Shouldn’t be too difficult,” I say, but with strain. I’m hard for her now, and half-hating myself for it. My hands are closedin tight fists, and it’s taking everything in me not to grab her. Not to throw her onto the bed, or against a wall. I want to be inside of her; in the kind of wild, animal way that begs to be consummated despite the consequences. “You’re a lot of talk, Katerina, but very little action.”
Her eyes flash with rage, and as if set on proving me wrong for that, she grabs me roughly by the front of my shirt and yanks me down. In the same instant she stands on her toes, grabbing my face with one hand none too gently, and shoving her mouth against mine.
It’s more than enough invitation. If I thought I was fucked before, I certainly am now. When I’m with her, all sense and control and reality seem to melt away. I become irresponsible, even erratic; I become a wilder man, just as I was that one night, all those years ago.
