“Then I guess you’re stuck with me.”
She patches me up with surprising skill. Halfway through, I hear her mutter under her breath, “Thank God for YouTube.” She double checks there’s no shrapnel in the wound and cleans it out.
I have to grit my teeth against the wave of pain-induced nausea when she applies the dressing.
“You’re very lucky the bullet went all the way through.”
I attempt to move my arm after she finishes and almost pass out.
“Stop that,” she snaps. “I’m already impressed with how tough you are. You don’t have to keep trying.”
The nausea and waves of pain are too intense even if I wanted to try to impress her further. I keep my mouth shut as I dig through the medicine stash. When I find the bottle of pills I’m looking for, I pop two in my mouth and swallow without water.
Sonya watches me with a slight frown. “I’m afraid to ask if you got that legally or not.”
“Then don’t ask.”
I lean back against the vanity and close my eyes, willing the morphine to work fast against the waves of pain creating a new pounding behind my eyes.
I can still feel Sonya’s attention on me, and after a minute, she finally speaks. “You surprise me.”
“Why? Because I have access to morphine?” If that surprises her, she hasn’t been paying attention.
“No. You, yourself. You’re different than what I imagined a mob boss to be.”
“You watch too many movies,” I sigh. “It’s all fantasy.”
“Yeah, but—” She pauses as though she’s thinking, and when I finally open my eyes, she’s chewing on her bottom lip. “I’d like to know what it’s really like.”
“Why?”
She shrugs, but I’m too tired and low on blood to ask her more about it. It will have to rest for now.
“You’re thepakhanof the Volkov Bratva, a man who comes home with a bullet wound at two in the morning and has a lot of scary-looking guys keeping watch on his house. But then there’s the other side of you, the man I met at an airport who kept me calm on a plane, who showed me Prague, and can dance like Fred Astaire.”
“My mother taught me. She loved to dance, but my father didn’t have time.”
Sonya smiles at the revelation. She cups my face with a gentle touch, her thumb brushing against my cheek.
I pull away, uncomfortable. Uncomfortable with the complete attention of this woman in the prime of her life—her skin radiant and glowing with pregnancy, her glorious hair, shining eyes, a face I could gaze at forever and never grow tired of. This woman is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in her ratty old t-shirt and sleep shorts, her hair mussed with sleep, a woman who fights for those who can’t fight for themselves.
Sonya doesn’t need me nor should she want me. I’m nearly twice her age, a man who’s seen and done far too much, who has stained his soul blood red with all the killing and illegality. A darkness surrounds me like a death shroud that will never be clean. Sometimes I feel guilty, touching her with hands so dirty.
I don’t want to put out her light with my darkness. Darkness that will remain, no matter how legitimate I make the Volkov empire and its name.
But I don’t want to live without her, either. I’ve tried to make it be just about sex between us, but no matter how many walls I put up, no matter how detached I’ve tried to be, somehow, she’s slipped through.
I glance to her stomach, where our child sleeps.
Our child. A child I never thought I would have.
I reach up and push back the hair from her cheek, then smooth it behind her ear so I can stare at the face of the woman who makes my heart tremble whenever she’s near, something no one has ever been able to do before.
“I’m too old for you.” The words come out suddenly.
Sonya raises a brow as she crosses her arms. Her lips, those incredible, soft, perfectly pink lips, curl into a wry, one-sided smile. “You sure don’t act like it in bed.”
I scowl at her. “I’m serious, Sonya.”
