His hands clench into fists. "You will. When the vodka wears off. When you remember who I am. What I've done to you." He turns back to the window. "What I'm going to do."
The threat makes me wetter.
I lie back on his bed, still wearing my rough cotton dress. The sheets smell like him. Cedar and smoke and dark promises. My body aches with want, with the absence of his touch.
"Alexei?"
"Hmm?" He's already folding himself into the chair, settling in for an uncomfortable night rather than risk touching me.
"Tomorrow, I'll make you earn it too."
I hear his sharp inhale. "Earn what?"
"My regret."
Silence. Then, so soft I almost miss it:
"Careful what you promise, kotyonok. I always collect what I'm owed."
Sleep pulls at me, heavy and warm. The vodka makes everything soft. The unfamiliar bed feels foreign, the way moonlight catches on the bonsai's leaves, the sound of his breathing from across the room.
I burrow deeper into his pillow, and it's strange how safe I feel. Here, in my captor's bed, in the heart of enemy territory, with my knife under the mattress and exits memorized. The safety isn't physical. It's something else. Something about the way he chose discomfort over taking advantage.
"Can't sleep?" I mumble.
"Go to sleep, kotyonok."
"You'll be sore tomorrow. In that chair."
"I've slept in worse places."
Of course he has. Thirty-seven kills probably required uncomfortable reconnaissance.
"Number twenty-one," I say, vodka making me reckless. "He was selling information about my family to the feds. I made him watch while I destroyed everything he loved first. Then I made it slow."
Silence. Then: "Good girl."
The approval in his voice makes me clench my thighs together.
Dawn creeps across the floor, painting everything in soft grays and blues. His profile sharpens in the growing light. That aristocratic nose, the brutal curve of his mouth, hands that have killed and almost kissed me with equal skill.
"Alexei?"
"Sleep, Sofia."
"When you finally do it…" I don't have to specify what. "Will you make it quick?"
A long pause. "I haven't decided."
"Liar."
"Sleep."
I'm already falling, pulled under by exhaustion and vodka and the strange comfort of being in his space. Of knowing he's watching. Guarding. Even if it's just guarding his own self-control.
For the first time in eleven years, I don't dream of Mikhail.
I don't dream of Russian gardens or boyish laughter or promises I can't remember making. There's no blood, no screaming, no guilt crushing my chest.
