If I rush, we will lose the only chance to take Vitaly while he watches. I need him to reveal himself. I need Roman to keep the walls down until then. I also need him to press the button at the exact right second if he is not going to kill his son in front of everyone.
I reach under the left arm as I shift my weight once more. This time, I find a knobby handle. I resent the relief I feel as I grind on my husband’s hard-on.
I hate this plan. And I hate that it’s the only one I’ve got.
26
ROMAN
I hate this.
Mina lowers into my lap like she was born to that place. The first time she came to me, she was all bright edges and stubborn courage, a woman daring herself to walk into the dark. Tonight, she is not naive.
She sees what I see. Corners that can hide a hand. Shadows that can hide a boy. She sells a smile to the room that looks like sin. She gives me a kiss that tastes like a vow. I feel the weight of both.
We make a spectacle because that is the job. This crowd lives for the show. It fills the blanks with its own hunger. I have used that hunger a thousand times.
I do not want to use my wife. Not now, not ever.
I have taken my pleasure in this chair with women who asked for nothing but to be chosen for an hour. Mina is not that. I want her like a man wants the reason he still gets up in the morning.
All the world is a stage, and the men nothing more than actors, or however the quote goes. But we are not actors, and while we may be on a stage, I am tired of giving people a show. More than that, I don’t want to show them my wife.
I slide my palm up her thigh and stop where it is decent. The room imagines the rest, and I let them. They don’t get the full sight of her. Not this time.
I bend to her ear. “Let me put up the walls.”
The switch sits under my left hand. One press and the panels would rise smooth and silent. The stage becomes a room, and the noise outside turns into a muffled hush of pulsing bass and moans. It also sets the trap for Vitaly.
I am tired of waiting for this.
She stiffens for half a breath. Then she shakes her head, small enough for only me to feel it. “Keep them down,” she whispers. Her voice is velvet and wrong. The request lands like a pebble in a still pond.
Odd. My instincts list possibilities. She wants to draw this out. She’s searching for Vitaly in the crowd, paranoid that he’ll get the drop on me or my security. Perhaps she’s in a mood.
Whatever the case, it is not my preference. I kiss the corner of her mouth. “I do not want to share you with them.”
“Share me,” she says, low and steady, as if the words do not cost her. “Use me. I like it.”
Since when?
Is this a mirror of her behavior on the island? That blow job that was damn near public? The sex against a tree that was public? Is she an exhibitionist, or is it something else?
I turn her chin with two fingers until she looks at me. The eyes I give her are not for the room. “I do not use you, love. You are mine. I am yours. We do not belong to them. We belong to each other.”
A shine lifts in her eyes. Not submission. Fear. She hides it fast, but I am built to read tremor the way other men read maps. Her voice catches on the next breath. “You told me pakhans don’t live for themselves. They live for their people. We do belong to them, so we should put on a show.”
Every word is right and still wrong. The logic fits. The reasoning under it does not. I search her face. Her lashes flutter once. She looks over my shoulder for the briefest slice of a second. That is the look of a woman counting down.
“What is wrong?”
She opens her mouth. Nothing comes. She swallows. Her throat works. She tries again. The effort hurts me more than anything she could have said.
Mina is unwilling to speak on this here. Very well. “Come with me.” I stand with her in my arms. “We’re taking this to another room.”
“What?”
The floor manager reads the shift and opens the path. The rope drops from a hook. A low table slides out of our way. Two guards take positions a beat closer than usual. I descend from the stagewith her held against me, slow enough to sell possession, fast enough to keep the moment intact.
