“That’s overkill, isn’t it?”
I slid the rings onto her finger. “This will remind you to always wear them. Am I clear?” I nodded for Sato to leave.
“Haven’t you figured out yet that I don’t like overbearing men who give me the ‘Am I clear?’ ultimatum,” she snapped.
But she downed her glass of wine. I swiftly refilled it. Was I trying to get my wife drunk so I could do wicked things to her?
I didn’t even feel a shred of guilt, and I was relieved that my recent epiphanies about my wife hadn’t changed the opportunistic me.
“I’m aware.” I leaned closer. Her breathing hitched, and her pupils dilated. “But have you considered the possibility that you might like to give up control to the right overbearing man?”
Her lips parted. And my eyes dropped to them, wanting to taste them, but I might not be able to stop and fuck her right here. The stirring in my groin was a warning.
“Stop that,” she whispered.
“Stop what, Lusenka?” I rasped.
“Doing that…trying to seduce me.”
“Is it so wrong to seduce my wife?”
“You know we’re not like that.”
I leaned away, more for my sanity than as capitulation to her demand. “What if I want to change it?”
She glanced away. Her cheeks, already flushed from the cold and the wine, deepened in color. I wanted to slip her long hair aside, expose the sensual arch of her neck, and suck at the pulse there.
“Then help me understand you.” She returned her attention to me, ending my lusty designs on her neck. “Why did you grow up in Russia?”
Chapter
Twenty
Kirill
Goddammit.I thought she’d forgotten her question. Although there was a part of me that wanted to surrender the burden of my past to her. One I’d suppressed. Only Kolya knew the full extent of how Russia had stripped the empathy from the boy who’d been forced to endure the frozen wilderness after being coddled by Irina.
In some ways, Ivan was right. I was too soft, and Roman would have been alive if I hadn’t hesitated in pulling the trigger.
“Ivan thought I needed to toughen up,” I said casually. “Irina spoiled me, you see.”
“Toughen you up?” Lucy asked. “Turn you into the Terminator?”
I chuckled. “I have more emotions than a cyborg, I believe?”
“Debatable,” she quipped. “So what was entailed in toughening you up?”
I gave her a gist of my stay in the cabin the first three months after I was exiled to Russia, skipping the parts where I had to shoot and skin rabbits for food. Oh, I hesitated. Again. And Idespised myself for such hesitation. But as soon as the gruff old minder realized my weakness, we repeated murdering rabbits until I was numb to it. We soon upgraded to bigger game like wild boar and moose. When Kolya joined me, I still had some hesitation about killing hapless bunnies, but by the end of three months, it had all been erased.
“So after the cabin?”
“Kolya and I moved in with Anya’s family.”
“That was how far back you’ve known her?”
“Yes. Anya’s father was a powerful brigadier in the Moscow mob, and we joined his brigade.”
“You make it sound like the military.”
