“I’m just tense?—”
Smack.
It’s not harder than he spanked me, but it’s odd. And I think I like it.
“The next lie will cost you.”
“You’re being ridiculous. We have bigger problems?—”
Smack!
A moan tumbles out of me. I can’t help myself.
He breathes against my neck until the skin there lights up. He brackets my hips with his hands and holds still until the stillness becomes pressure. He trails his fingers under the edge of my dress until I melt and then withdraws.
I try to say I am fine. He skims his nose along my cheek until I want to cry from the gentleness. He puts his thumb on my lower lip and presses down until it trembles back at him.
I thought the cost would be more smacks. Not tenderness that makes my eyes water or my heart soar. “Please?—”
“Tell me,” he says. His voice is low and patient and relentless. “What is wrong?”
“Nothing!”
He taps the inside of my ankle with his shoe. A reminder of the release. A reminder of choice.
Even now, when he knows I’m lying to him, when the stakes are life and death, he’s still so fucking gentle with me. Even in this room of torment and sexual anguish, he can’t bring himself to cross that line. Not with me.
It breaks something inside me I can’t explain. A hot knot forms in my throat, and I can’t swallow past it. So when I speak, my voice cracks. “Everything.”
“Use your words.”
Tears stream down my face. I can’t hold the words inside anymore, and I’m terrified of what that will bring. “Vitaly texted me. Before you came home. He told me to come to the window.”
Roman stills, and then he is calmer than calm. He rests his head next to mine for one second. He does not rush me. He waits.
“He had my mother. Outside the main fence. Tied. Gagged. He had a van. He was smiling.” That last word chokes me. I gulp to continue. “He told me I would go with you to the club and be your whore and make you feel safe and convince you to put the walls up. He said there would be a knife tucked into the left arm of your throne. He told me to take it and stab you in the chest when the walls were up. Said that way, you’d know what it’s like to be stabbed in the heart by me too.”
Roman’s jaw tightens once. He does not move away. “He told you that. He spoke that filth into your ear.”
“He called me Scarface. He said if I didn’t do what he said, my mother and the boys would die screaming.”
The world goes quiet in a way that adds sound to my own breath. Roman rests his palm on my chest, over my heart. It pounds against his hand and does not settle. He kisses my forehead once. He does not curse. He does not promise me comfort.
The panic I have been holding begins to tear. It rips down my chest and opens like a mouth. The words pour out because the room makes words and because he will not let me hide. “I don’t know if the guards at the retreat are alive. He knows I love my mother. He knows I love our sons. He knows I will do anything to keep them breathing. He knows I am weak for you. He knows I will cut my own throat if he tells me to, as long as they live.”
“Love, you?—”
“Let me finish.” Because if I stop I will never start again. “I don’t know how to make the right choice. Every choice breaks the wrong person. I am supposed to be clever and brave and quiet and useful. But I’m a shaking woman in a pretty dress with her hands cuffed to a wall because she can’t say a sentence without wanting to scream.”
The tears come because they have to. They do not ask permission. Roman leans in and kisses them where they fall. He does not hush me. He does not tell me I am brave. He lets me be exactly as scared as I am.
“Look at me,” he says. His mouth is gentle. His eyes are not.
I lift my head. He smiles. It is small and sad and true. He kisses me hard enough to stop the thought that is eating me. He pulls back a fraction so he can say the next thing with his mouth against mine. “We all do what we must for the people we love,” he says. “If this is what you must do to protect our children—if you have to kill me to save them—fucking do it.”
My whole body jerks against the cuffs. The leather creaks. I stare at him. I cannot pull air. He said the thing I have been running from. He said it without flinching.
“No!” It tears out on a breath. “Do not ask me that.”
