Page 14 of Marrying the Savage

I close my eyes. Dmitri’s voice waits there.

“You’ll adjust.”

My eyes open again.

Absolutely not. I sit up, shove the blanket away, and press both hands over my face.

Tomorrow, there will be another fitting. Another meeting with the wedding planner. Another conversation about flowers, music, security, and which silverware looks most appropriate for an alliance built on my complete lack of options.

In thirteen days, I’m supposed to marry Dmitri Sokolov.

In thirteen days, I will stand beside him in a church while everyone watches me become his wife. His possession. His proof that he has climbed one step higher in a world full of men who measure power by what they can take and keep.

My stomach twists.

I hate him. I hate his perfect hair. I hate his voice. I hate the way he says my name like it’s already written in his house records. I hate that everyone around me treats my misery as if it’s a childish inconvenience, something I will grow out of once the ring is on my finger and the doors close behind me.

I hate that my uncle knows I hate it.

And I hate that he’s doing it anyway.

I fall back against the pillows and stare at the canopy again. Then, because the universe is apparently determined to humiliate me even in private, my mind supplies a different voice.

Quiet. Low. Controlled.

“I didn’t ask.”

My skin warms.

No. I press my eyes shut harder.

Not him. Not Damir Volodin.

Not the man my uncle looks at as though he has seen a ghost crawling out of the past with a knife between its teeth. Not the man Dmitri despises. Not the man every person in that restaurant seemed to fear without needing instruction.

Definitely not the man who removed his glove like the act had been invented specifically to ruin my life.

I roll onto my stomach and bury my face in the pillow. This is ridiculous. I’m getting married in less than two weeks, and instead of obsessing over escape plans like a reasonable doomed woman, I’m thinking about a man old enough to have destroyed entire families before I finished learning multiplication tables.

A dangerous man. An enemy. A stranger.

A stranger whose eyes moved over me for all of two seconds and somehow made my body feel more awake than Dmitri has managed in six months of formal dinners, polite hand kisses, and compliments that sound like property assessments.

I turn my face to the side and groan softly into the pillow. “Stupid clitoris,” I whisper to the empty room.

The room offers no response. Coward.

For a few minutes, I try to be sensible. I count backward from a hundred. I breathe in for four, hold for four, breathe out for four, which only makes me feel like a very anxious kettle. I recite the capitals of countries I have visited and countries I have only pretended to enjoy studying while tutors attempted to make me marriageable.

Nothing works. My body remains restless. Wanting.

Annoyingly, inconveniently wanting.

I throw the blanket aside and sit up again. “Fine,” I mutter.

The bedside drawer opens with a soft glide. I reach past a book I have not finished, two lip balms, a packet of sleeping tablets I never take because I don’t trust anything my uncle’s doctor prescribes, and finally find what I’m looking for.

Small. Sleek. Pink. A birthday gift from Anya, who is technically my friend and technically a terrible influence, which is why I love her. I stare at the vibrator in my hand for a moment, suddenly feeling absurd.