Waves washed against the rocks, but the sound wasn’t lonely . . . not with this man on the same side of the Atlantic. Those cartoon hearts coalesced into one and burst from my chest.
I didn’t even think.
I ran across the yard and jumped into his arms, wrapping my legs around his waist and my arms around his neck. He had to take a step back to keep his balance.
He chuckled roughly. “I wasn’t expecting this response. I even rehearsed and everything.”
I pressed my face into his neck, my entire body shaking. He felt so right, so warm, so comforting, the backs of my eyes burned. Tears streamed down my cheeks, the contentment in my chest blowing up like a balloon.
“Fuck,” he rasped, his hand trembling when he slid it into my hair and cradled the back of my head. “Ya skuchal po tebe.” I missed you.
“Ya tozhe skuchala po tebe,” I breathed through tears before pulling back to see his face. I missed you too.
“Your Russian has gotten better.”
“I’ve been studying.” Hoping. Dreaming.
He wiped away a few tears while I clung to him, refusing to ever let go.
“That’ll help,” he said coarsely.
“Why?” I asked, my tears abating.
“Because you’re coming home with me.”
I raised a brow. “As your captive?”
That villainous look so akin to him touched his eyes, and then he said three words that stopped my heart dead in its tracks.
“Kak moya zhena.” As my wife.
I stared at him for multiple seconds as a combustion of thoughts and feelings overwhelmed me. I slid down his body to reach solid ground and took a step back to think, looking everywhere but at Ronan. Albert sat in the driver’s seat of the car. I wondered if he knew his boss had lost his mind. Khaos nudged the side of my leg as he sat beside me, giving Ronan a distrusting expression.
“Wow,” I finally managed, pulling my gaze back to Ronan’s. “That’s a massive leap. Usually, it goes captive, servant, despised acquaintance, seduced lover—”
“Those all sound great,” he cut me off, “but I’ve had four months”—his eyes darkened as if the time had been worse than prison—“to think about this, and I know what I want.”
“And you want a wife,” I said slowly.
“I could buy a wife from a catalog if I wanted to,” he returned harshly. “I want you. And if I can’t have you as my captive, I want the next best thing.”
A laugh lifted in my throat because . . . well, this was not how I thought I’d get proposed to. Though it was sure beating the proposal I knew Carter would have come up with.
“Which is a wife,” I said as if I understood his frame of mind.
“Da. There are legal ties involved.”
“Ah. I get it now.” I laughed. “So as this theoretical wife of yours, do I get to move freely around the house?”
His eyes narrowed. “There’s no ‘theoretical’ about it.”
“Okay, but I want to know how this would work. Do I get to watch TV, or do I have to ask you first?”
He chuckled. “Obviously, you have some trauma you need to sort out.”
“Blame yourself for that,” I returned, then I swallowed. “I don’t know about this though . . . It’s crazy, Ronan.”
He gripped my throat and tipped my head up to meet my eyes. “Ty svela menya s uma. I teper tebye nuzhno razbiratsa s posledstviyami.” You made me crazy. And now you have to deal with the consequences.