Last night, I hadn’t given her much opportunity to explore.
“What happened?”
I let out a slow breath, and reached to stop her hand. I kissed the inside of her wrist, knowing it was an excuse to still her questing fingers. I had the same urge to explore her body, to trail my fingers over the edges of the bruises that lined her ribs, but I knew instinctively she’d push me off.
She saw them as evidence of her weakness. I saw them as markers of her strength. Maybe it was the same for her when she touched my scars.
“Wrong place, wrong time.”
“Max…”
“Sweetheart, it’s not a pretty story. No heroics involved.”
“I don’t care. I want to hear it.”
I gritted my teeth, and shook my head. There were shadows I’d been keeping at bay for a long time and I didn’t want to let them out. I came out of the army unscathed. I went into it a different way. These marks stretched back to boyhood. Back to Russia. I had the Bratva to thank for getting me and my family out, untangled from a family in St Petersburg who thought it was their right to take our home, just because they liked it. I would always have a debt to repay for that.
“Let’s just say I owe the Bratva my life. The world is a complicated place, but Russia, when I was growing up, it was simple. Certain men, they wanted something, they took it.”
“What did they want?”
“Our house.” They’d come in the night. Guns and fire against the snow. It should have deterred me from the life I fell into, but it only made me hungry for revenge, even as a boy. Maybe that was why I understood the drive Elizabeth had.
Her eyes widened. “Who took it?”
“Someone who’s long dead. It doesn’t matter now.”
She settled in against my chest, lying back, letting me stroke along her side, fingers smoothing over the bumps of her ribs and her flawless, warm skin. I never wanted anything to mar it and I would spend the rest of my days making sure no one got the chance to try.
“You should get it back,” she said softly, voice drifting close to sleep.
“What?”
“Your house, in Russia. You should get it back.”
I let out a lazy huff of a laugh, lying back as I felt her breathing slow, staring blankly at the ceiling. I should get it back. Maybe I would. St Petersburg was a place I’d love to show her.
CHAPTER 20
Maxim
Elizabeth levered up on her elbows, blinking at me blearily from the bed as I pulled my jeans on and ducked into a clean t-shirt that I pulled out of my drawer.
I leaned over to kiss her. “Make yourself at home, I’ll be right back.”
“Where are you going?”
“Nothing in here to eat, sweetheart. I’m going hunter-gathering.”
Elizabeth snorted a laugh and shook her head. “I don’t think it counts as hunter-gathering when you really mean going to Waitrose.”
“The cheek of it. See, I was going to pick you up a coffee, now I don’t know.”
“You better. You wouldn’t like me when I’m hangry.”
I let out a grumble as I forced myself away from the bed, out into the hall, where I pocketed my wallet and keys and shrugged into my jacket.
It was the perfect morning. The sun was peeking out from between the clouds, and everything felt fresh and clean from the rain that must have come in the night sometime when we were sleeping, or maybe before that, when I was making Elizabeth mine.
I felt brand new. Strolling down the street, I could have been anyone. I wasn’t just part of the Bratva when I was with her. But I didn’t have to hide that part of myself off either. It was intoxicating, knowing that she knew exactly what I was, and wanted the whole package.
I’d always assumed having a woman close to me, starting a family, would mean I’d need to leave it all behind, or keep secrets in a way I never wanted to. I always told colleagues and friends that there was no way I was ever settling down. No one would fit into my life, at least no one I wanted. But that wasn’t true any longer. Elizabeth changed everything.
Being on the alert came naturally to me after so many years, and I identified the two men tailing me when I turned onto Brompton Road. Hair cuts were too regulated, too Russian. They had FSB written all over them from their hulking awkwardness in off-the-rack suits, to the way they stalked along the pavement, too militarised in their movements, too obviously aware of their surroundings. They walked the same way they did when they had on full body armour, in the middle of Moscow, carrying Pecheneg machine guns just to let the public know they were armed.