I set a rhythm designed to remind her exactly who she married, each thrust deep and hard. The sound of skin against skin echoes through the stateroom. Her nails drag down the paneling, leaving scratches in the teak, and when I pull her back against my chest so I can reach around and find her clit she makes a sound that belongs in a confessional.
“You’re the only thing in this life I worship.” The Russian roughens every syllable, makes them sacred in a way Englishnever could. “Moya ikona. Moya religiya.” My icon. My religion.
She comes with her eyes squeezed shut. The sight of her falling apart because of me, because I made her feel this way, destroys whatever rhythm I was still holding. I follow her over with my forehead pressed between her shoulder blades, breathing in the sweat and perfume and particular chemistry of her body wrapped around my cock.
The world stops existing.
Then she says, “I need to sit down.”
I ease out of her slowly and help her to the bed, noticing every mark on her skin with satisfaction I probably shouldn’t feel. The dress is intact on the floor, ready for her to step back into. The sapphires are waiting in my pocket.
“Shower,” I tell her. “Then you put on my jewels, and we walk into that casino and smile until we’re close enough to destroy everything Vadim built.”
“What jewels?”
I pull the velvet box from my jacket and watch her face change when I open it.
The sapphires catch the light, the exact shade of the dress pooled on marble. Set in platinum. Matching earrings. A bracelet that will catch light at her wrist every time she lifts a glass or reaches for the concealed blade, I know she’ll be strapping it to her thigh.
“Roman—” Her voice cracks. “This is too much.”
“It’s exactly enough.” I lift the necklace and show her the clasp, the hidden eight-pointed star worked into the platinum. “You see that? That’s the Vor star. You wear my rank now, Anya. Everyone who sees this knows exactly what you are to me.”
“And what am I to you?”
“Everything.” I fasten the clasp around her throat and press my mouth against her nape. “Now shower. We have work to do.”
* * *
The casino takes up the entire main deck of Polina’s floating kingdom.
Murano crystal and roulette wheels and baccarat tables where oligarchs bleed rubles into offshore accounts while pretending the money doesn’t have blood on it. The smell hits me the moment we walk in—expensive cigars and cologne and underneath it something sour, the desperation of men who’ve bet more than they can afford and women calculating exactly what their company costs.
It smells like Moscow in the nineties. Like home.
Anya’s hand rests in the crook of my elbow with light pressure that somehow feels possessive. The sapphires at her throat catch every eye we pass, announcing exactly whose bed she warms and whose protection stands behind those blue stones at her collarbone.
“Vodka,” I tell the server who materializes at my elbow. “Beluga Gold. Neat.”
“And for the lady?”
“Nothing.” Anya’s voice is clipped. “I’m working.”
The server disappears. I let my gaze sweep the room.
“Four exits,” Anya murmurs, voice pitched low enough only I can hear. “Two staircases up, two down. Cameras in every corner. Polina’s at eleven o’clock, wearing Valentino she probably killed someone for.”
“She definitely killed someone for it.” The vodka arrives, and I down it in one swallow. Cold and clean and dangerous. “Dmitri’s with her.”
Anya’s fingers tighten on my arm.
Dmitri Volkov. My cousin by blood,sukaby nature. He’s wearing a suit the color of bruised steel and standing with his hands clasped behind his back in that deceptively casual pose that tells me he’s running whatever scheme that involves my wife.
We’re three meters from Polina when she turns around.
Emerald silk, the exact shade from the Ritz auction. Her platinum hair glows under the chandelier light, and her smile could gut a fish at twenty paces.
“Roman Viktorovich.” Her Ukrainian accent drips honey and venom in equal measure. “And the bride. How delightful that you could join us for our little auction. The helicopter ride wasn’t too uncomfortable, I hope?”
