“Natasha? What are you doing?”
I keep my eyes glued to the ceiling. “I was waiting for you.”
“For me? For… what?”
“We never actually had sex. So I thought we should. We need to do our duty.” My hands are clamped around my stomach. I can do this.
Slowly, Maksim comes into the room and gazes down at me. There’s a softness to his features I’ve never seen before. “You still look just as afraid as you did the night of our wedding. You don’t want to do this so why are you offering yourself to me?”
“We have to do our duty.”
“We have time to get there. I mean, hell, we’ve been married less than a week. We can wait a little bit longer if that’s what you need.”
“But then you’ll end up cheating on me like you did Alexandra and then my father will be angry and none of this will go right.”
He furrows his brow. “Alexandra? What are you talking about?”
“She cheated on you because you cheated on her. You couldn’t commit to marriage. You were forced into this marriage with me. Clearly, you don’t want me. But if I give myself to you, then you will. So I’m doing that.”
“Where did you meet Alexandra?”
“Kira took me to a ladies’ function as she called it.”
Maksim rolls his eyes at the mention of his sister before he sits down on the edge of the bed. “Alexandra is my ex because I never loved her. That’s why I didn’t commit to her. It had nothing to do with cheating. We just weren’t made for each other.”
“Neither are we,” I say, my heart rate spiking. “We can’t even get on the same page.”
“I don’t want you giving yourself over to me out of desperation like you’re worried I’m going to leave you. I know what this marriage entails. I know your father is going to have my head if I cheat on you. I’m not stupid, Natasha. I’ve been in this world for a long time now. Don’t worry about my ex-girlfriend. I haven’t thought about Alexandra since we broke up. You don’t need to do… this.” He waves his hand towards me.
Relief floods through me while at the same time, another spike of fear hits me. “I’m worried we’ll never be able to make this relationship work.”
Maksim sighs. “I know. I’m worried too. But doing this isn’t going to help. I only want you to give yourself over to me if you really want it.”
“Do you want me?” I whisper, sitting up and wrapping my arms around myself. The nightgown is too skimpy now. Too on display.
His eyes roam over me and darken. “I told you before, Natasha, that I think you’re beautiful. I would love to have sex with you. But I don’t want it when you clearly don’t want it.”
“You make me scared.”
“I know,” he says in a defeated tone, hanging his head for a moment. “All I can do is show you that you don’t have to be afraid of me. I hope this helps. If I were to take you against your will, then I would be someone you had to be afraid of. But I won’t do that. I’m not interested in that.”
“But you’re a Bratva man. You need control. You need sex. That’s what the other women told me. You’ll leave me otherwise.”
“I know you’re innocent. Sheltered. But you can’t listen to just everything everybody tells you. Yes, I need sex… at some point. I’ll be honest. I’ve been missing it like fucking crazy. Would I love to go out and find someone to fuck? Yes.”
His brutal honesty makes me flush. “It hurts. Thinking of you with someone else.”
“But you don’t even like me. Why do you care?”
“It’s not about that. It’s about our marriage. It’s about what it stands for. I might not love you but I still want you to act like my husband. I didn’t like that you were drunk on our wedding day. I didn’t like that you keep leaving me behind when all of this is so new to me. I didn’t like that you… killed that man, even if it was to protect me. But you’re still my husband. I want you to want me and not think this marriage is horrible.”
“I do think this marriage is horrible because I think it’s horrible to force anyone to marry without love. But I don’t think you’re horrible, Natasha. I think you’re sweet and beautiful, even if you’re shy. Even if I don’t fully understand you. Even if we can’t get on the same page. It’s not you I hate. It’s being forced into a marriage that I hate. But I know what’s at stake if we don’t make this work. So you don’t need to worry. I’m not going to cheat on you. But you have to learn to stop being so afraid of me if we’re going to make this work. There’s no other way.”
I know he’s right. All it would take is telling him about my father and how I feel and then maybe we’d have a breakthrough. I just need to learn to trust him.
Yet, when I work up the courage to say something, his phone rings, breaking the moment.
Maksim sighs and gets up from the bed, turning away from me. Effectively ending what we could have had. “Yes?” He’s quietfor a moment. “On it.” After hanging up, he looks at me with a guilty expression. “I have more work to attend to. That Italian man I was telling you about, Enzo, just tried to steal one of our incoming shipments. I have to go deal with it. I’ll be back later. I promise.”
