“I will,” I say.
He moves on. I watch him go and the filing cabinet in the back of my mind, the one markednot yet understood, adds another entry.
The evening ends. Guests disperse. Theo falls asleep on Lyosha’s shoulder during the last hour, which Lyosha handles by sitting extremely still and not moving for forty minutes, and Mike carries him up to the newly decorated room while Lena watches from the doorway with her arms crossed over her chest.
I take my new wife upstairs.
The bedroom door closes and she turns around, her wedding-face dropping completely.
“We are not sharing a bed.” Her voice is flat. “You sleep on the couch. I take the bed. That’s how this works.”
I reach up and start on my jacket buttons.
“Did you hear me?”
I shrug the jacket off and my hands move to my shirt buttons.
“Razvan. I’m talking to you. We need to set ground rules right now before this goes any further, I will not be sharing a—” She stops. “Why aren’t you answering me?”
I turn around.
She’s standing in the middle of the room in her wedding dress and her jaw is set and her eyes are bright with something that isn’t quite fury and isn’t quite tears and is entirely both.
I look at her for a long moment and say, “Because your words mean nothing.”
Her mouth opens.
I walk toward her. She steps back. Again. Her heels hit the dresser and she makes a small startled sound. I put one hand on the dresser beside her hip and look down at her face.
“My words are what matter here.” My voice comes out low. “We share this room. We share this bed. And I will have you whenever I want you because you are mine now.”
“Marriage is not ownership?—”
“No,” I agree. “Usually not.” I let that sit. “This marriage is.”
I take her face in both hands and kiss her.
She makes a sound against my mouth that is pure protest and her hands come up and hit my chest, once, twice, palms flat and pushing, and I don’t move. She hits again and I kiss her deeper then her teeth find my lip and she bites down hard enough that copper floods my tongue immediately.
The sound that comes out of me is not pain.
She freezes. Feels what the sound means. And I take her face tighter in my hands and I kiss her harder, with everything I have, and her fists against my chest stop pushing and her fingers curl into my shirt instead, and we are both breathing like we’ve been running. The dresser is at her back and I have absolutely no intention of stopping.
15
LENA
The coppery tang of his blood floods my mouth, a metallic shock that does nothing to stop him. If anything, it fuels him.
Razvan’s kiss is a punishment, a claiming, his tongue forcing past my lips to duel with mine, licking the blood from my own teeth. I shove against the solid wall of his chest, my hands trapped between us, but he doesn’t budge. He’s a mountain of tailored black wool and cold fury. My wedding dress, a ridiculous confection of silk and lace, feels like a trap.
He breaks the kiss just enough to growl against my mouth, his breath hot and smelling of expensive whiskey. “You draw my blood,malyshka? Now you taste it.”
His hands, those large, brutal hands that signed my father’s death warrant, slide down my back.
One palm splays against the base of my spine, crushing the delicate fabric, yanking my hips flush against his. The hard, thick ridge of his cock presses into my lower stomach, even through his pants and my layers of skirt. A traitorous, liquid heat sparks low in my belly.
No. Not again. Never again.
