My wife was drunk.
She drank a moscato to go with her apple tart and ice cream. She was in a veritable food coma and happily buzzed.
I might feel a bit guilty, but not really because I had my arms around her while she was teetering adorably in her heels.
I had Sato bring the SUV around. It wasn’t every day that I’d willingly leave my Porsche in the city. I didn’t trust anyone else with it, only Sato and Kolya. And Kolya was probably still sleeping after the vodka he had last night. Besides, I didn’t want to give him an excuse to drop by the house.
As for asking another soldier to drive us home, I still didn’t want to show them I might be growing fond of my wife. I trusted the men surrounding me, but they might tattle to their wives that their pakhan had become a doting husband. Someone mightoverhear and use that as ammunition. Especially since I couldn’t surround Lucy with an army of security. Our agreement was one bodyguard. That was why I assigned her my best. Sato was overqualified, but he didn’t seem to mind.
“I’m drunk,” she mumbled as I settled her against me in the back of the SUV.
“Yes, you are, baby,” I murmured.
She stiffened, and I held my breath. Would she pull away? But then she relaxed into me, and I released a relieved exhale. I didn’t know what possessed me to call her “baby.” I’d never used it in this context. I didn’t think I was capable of forming such a familiar endearment said in such an intimate tone. But I was giving myself latitude to experience feelings that were slowly emerging from the cracked walls of my heart.
“Straight home?” Sato’s eyes met mine in the rearview mirror.
“Yes.”
The vehicle started rolling through the mid-afternoon traffic. I stared at the top of my wife’s head, settled so trustingly against my chest, and it made something inside it ache.
It had happened before—when Irina forced me to hold Aralina as a baby and left us alone in a room. I thought I was going to drop her. But when my baby sister grabbed my thumb and wouldn’t let go, then stared at me with her blue-gray eyes, my stone-encrusted heart fissured. A tiny crack that allowed traces of emotion through. Emotions I’d used to telegraph reactions and make me appear more human.
But Lucy was arousing more than reactions in my groin, she’d aroused a confusing set of feelings along with it and an instinctive protectiveness that I was having difficulty regulating. Since Russia, my whole life was about control, and after I’d struck a marriage contract with Lucy, she’d been sending me into an uncontrollable tailspin at an alarming rate.
The drive was peaceful; my thoughts were not. I was driven to explore this unique opportunity. And I was an opportunistic asshole. When we arrived at my residence, Lucy was barely awake. She’d kicked off her shoes and was having trouble toeing them back from under the front seats.
“Give me a sec,” she mumbled.
“I could carry you,” I told her.
I exited the SUV and watched her feet successfully attempt one. “If you’re having trouble putting your shoes on, maybe you’re not in a state to walk.”
“I got this,” she repeated.
I chuckled. “No, you don’t.”
I leaned in and plucked her from her seat.
“Kirill!”
“What?” I glanced down at her with amusement. “I’m merely doing my husbandly duty.”
Sorcha met us in the foyer. “Is Mrs. Zahkarova okay?”
“She’s fine,” I told my housekeeper. “She’s just drunk. Can you collect her shoes from the car?”
“Not so tipsy that I couldn’t walk,” Lucy slurred.
She was a hilarious drunk. This was the first time I’d carried her this way which was decidedly romantic. I remembered our wedding night when I tossed her over my shoulder.
Definitely an improvement.
“My room is that way,” she protested when she realized I was taking her to mine.
“It’s time we shared a room and stopped the gossip by the house staff.” Or prying by my mother.
“I’m not sleeping with you!”
