32. Bronwyn

32

brONWYN

With every day we spent together, the sexual tension wound tighter, until it became a straining guitar string, sending out vibrations that made everything sexual.

It turned out that the massive penthouse was actually tiny. Somehow, we were always running into each other. I’d have to squeeze between the kitchen island and the breakfast bar while he was standing there, which meant either I faced him and my nipples dragged across the hard curves of his chest, or I faced away from him and felt his cock harden as I stroked it with the cheeks of my ass. Either way, I was twitchy and horny for the rest of the day.

Or he’d come into the bedroom just as I was coming out of the shower in a cloud of steam, naked except for a towel. He’d always do the gentlemanly thing and walk back out so I could change...but not before his eyes raked hungrily up and down my body...and then flicked to the bed. I knew he was imagining all the things he wanted to do to me. I knew because I was imagining them, too.

The lust, I’d expected. What I hadn’t expected was how good living with him started to feel. He’d be sitting in his office working and I’d lie on the couch reading, or sometimes watching a movie in Russian to help me learn his language, and I’d look up and see him, and sometimes catch him looking at me, and... I felt warm, in a way I couldn’t describe. We fitted: he was a good cook and always made breakfast, which suited me fine because I needed help to get going in the morning. But he hated doing the laundry, so I gradually took it over. It was heartbreaking because I was getting a glimpse into how good things could be if we actually loved each other. He even cleaned, running the vacuum cleaner around the place between maid visits because he knew it made me happy.

It was when he was cleaning, one night, that there was a metal clang from the bedroom. I sat up, startled, dropping my book. Then it dawned on me what had made the noise, and I cursed and ran through to the bedroom. But it was too late.

The things wrapped in towels I’d stashed behind the dresser had fallen out. Radimir was staring at two long, shiny tubes of metal with big, hospital-gray handles. My crutches. “I don’t need them often,” I said quickly. “Hardly ever. Only if things get really bad.”

Radimir looked up. “They’re fine.” His forehead creased. “Why did you hide them?”

I avoided his eyes and said nothing, but he was infuriatingly patient. “They’re... ugly,” I said at last. “They make me ugly.” God, that sounds shallow. I sighed. “Everyone can see. Okay? Everyone can see I’m…” I waved at my legs. “When I use them, I can’t hide it. Everyone knows.” I looked at the floor, humiliated. I wanted to stuff the crutches and myself behind the dresser and hide there forever.

Radimir stepped over the crutches and put his hands on my shoulders. I stubbornly stared at the floor, but he just stood there, his hands warm and calming, until I finally looked up.

“Nothing in the world could make you ugly,” he told me. His voice was absolutely level. But I could hear how hard he was working to keep it level, and that made me melt.

I looked at the crutches. “I don’t want them to see me struggling,” I mumbled.

“They won’t see you struggling,” he told me. “They’ll see you fighting.”

That cracked something, deep in my chest, and something poisonous I’d been carrying around for years started to drain away. My throat bobbed and I nodded, staring up at him...and then I quickly turned and walked away before I did something stupid.

Everyone else, even his brothers, knew him as the cold-hearted Pakhan, the Bratva boss. But I kept seeing flashes of another man, maybe the man he used to be, or the man he could have been. What if he could be again?

But then there were the times when I realized I didn’t know him at all. Early one morning, he was coming out of the bathroom just as I was going in. I was trying not to stare at the way the little jewels of water chased each other down the curving slabs of his pecs and the shampoo bottle slipped out of my hand. I crouched down to grab it and?—

I froze, staring at his feet. That first night, it hadn’t been a trick of the light. He was missing two toes on his left foot and one on his right. Oh Jesus. An image flashed through my head: Radimir tied to a chair, trying not to scream, as bolt cutters— God, someone tortured him and it took three toes before he talked?

I realized I was still staring. I grabbed the shampoo and stood, but he knew I’d seen. I looked up into his eyes and I could see the raw pain there. The thing he’d told me never to ask about. What the fuck happened to him? What happened to his parents?