Chapter 39

Avgust~

A s soon as the door shut behind Melor, I turned to the woman that was going to drive me into an early grave. "Have you lost your fucking mind?"

"What?" she asked, playing dumb.

"What is wrong with you, offering yourself up like that?" I spat.

"What? Do you think that I wanted to?" she squawked. "You think that I enjoy being tormented and abused? Because I don't, Avgust."

"Then why suggest it?" I bit out as I made my way towards her.

When I had escorted her into my office, all the men had been standing, and so not wanting her to feel inferior, I had placed her on my desk. Though she'd been sitting down, and the men had still towered over her, my desk was a place of significance, so sitting her on top of it had made a statement. I hadn't been lying when I'd said that her position as my wife would come with a great amount of power.

"Because if I can help end this, then I want to," she answered. "I don't want to be looking over my shoulder all the time, Avgust. I don't…as long as Nikel Ovchinnikov is running around loose, I don't imagine that I'll be resting easy." She let out a deep sigh as she added, "I just…I just want my life back, Avgust. That's it, that's all. I just want my life back."

"Well, you are not going to get it, vozlyublennaya," I informed her. "However, you will not need to look over your shoulder as you continue on. You will be well protected, and so will your sister."

Her blue eyes stared at me intently. "Even if I did agree to marry you, I do not want to be a prisoner, Avgust," she said. "I want my life to have meaning, even if that means working at a gas station, restaurant, or bar. I have no desire to sit in this giant house all day, doing nothing.'

At that, I stepped in between her legs, then placed my hands on her hips, careful to avoid her injured leg. Coincidentally enough, Louie had chosen to brand her on the same leg that was still recovering from the cuff, so it really was a mess.

"Then give me babies," I told her. "If you don't want to be in this house alone and doing nothing, then give me babies, Samara. Give me as many as you want, and then stay home and raised them to not be assholes like the rest of us."

She let out a hollow laugh. "You know just as well as I do that the first son that I give you will already start his bratva education before he even knows his alphabets."

"That's untrue," I semi-lied. "I will not care if our firstborn is a son or daughter. They will both know the ways of the bratva, no matter their gender."

"I'm serious, Avgust."

"So am I, Samara," I assured her.

"I can't marry you," she said, and it would bother me if her words mattered. "No matter what we had when we were younger, there's still fifteen years between the kids that we were then and the adults that we are now. I don't even know you, Avgust. I know nothing about you, except for who you are."

"I'm the same person, vozlyublennaya," I replied seriously. "'I'm just older."

Her eyes began to well up a bit. "This isn't the life that I wanted, Avgust. If it was, then I never would have ended things between us back then."

Letting go of her hips, I cupped her face with both of my hands. "But do you want me?"

"Avgust, that's not fair," she whispered softly.

"Perhaps not," I conceded. "However, I will do whatever it takes to make you my wife, and if I have to play dirty to make that happen, then I will. I will not let you go a third time, Samara."

"This is happening too fast," she said, still trying to hold on to her pride.

Removing my hands from her face, I placed them back on her hips as my face nuzzled her neck. "It's not happening fast enough, baby."

"You're not playing fair again," she said weakly, her head automatically tilting to the side.

"You'd lose respect for me if I played fair," I pointed out.

Her hands grabbed onto my forearms as my lips tasted her skin. "Avgust…"

"I love you, Samara," I told her. "I have always loved you, and I will always love you." She let out a low moan as she tilted her head back to give me more access. "I loved you fifteen years ago, I love you now, and I will love you fifty years from now. I will love you for as long as there is breath in my lungs, and even then, I'll be waiting for you in the afterlife."

It was true.

From the moment that I first laid eyes on Samara, I couldn't recall a time when I hadn't loved her. While she claimed that we were moving too fast, had she not walked away from me fifteen years ago, we'd have at least five kids by now. Had I not let her go, we'd be celebrating our anniversaries, not picking out a wedding date.

Straightening, I looked down at her as I ordered, "Lay back."

Those blue eyes of hers flared with dark need, but she wasn't so far gone that she'd lost her senses. "The door, Avgust."

"No one would dare to walk in here without permission," I assured her.

"Not even Maksim?" she asked as my hands reached for the hem of her dress.

"While Maksim is allowed to enter freely, he knows better than to come in here while you are in here with me, vozlyublennaya," I smirked. "Besides, he'd see my head between your legs, then immediately leave."

"Avgust…" she whimpered.

Everything was going well until I reached her thighs. When I tugged on the material to lift it up over her hips, she froze, and I quickly bit out a curse. "Did I hurt you?"

Her blue eyes went from need to welling up again. "I just…it's ugly, Avgust."

I let go of her dress, then took her face in my hands again. "Baby, if you think that anything could ever make me see you differently than before, then you're wrong. Those stitches in your leg just prove that you're not weak and that you know how to survive the worst. In fact, you've been surviving the worst ever since Masha decided not to wait for you that night."

"God, you make it all sound so easy," she said, still trying to put up the good fight.

"It's not," I chuckled as my hands went back to her dress. "It's going to be hard, and you're going to be mad at me more often than not, but that changes nothing, Samara. I would rather have hard with you every day than easy with someone that could never make me feel the way that you do."

"And how do I make you feel?"

"Whole," I answered honestly. "You make me feel like I can breathe easily, regardless of whatever else is going on in my life. With you, I feel like I still have a chance at Heaven, though we both know that I do not. Nevertheless, that is how you make me feel, Samara Andreev. That's how you've always made me feel, since the first time I ever laid eyes on you."

Her eyes were wet with unshed tears. "You're not playing fair again."

My hands landed on her bare flesh as I said, "The truth is usually more devastating than the lies, vozlyublennaya."

"Do you have any idea how many nights I wished that I didn't still love you?" she asked, and the relief that I felt was too incredible to put into words. "Do you have any idea how many times I wanted to reach out to you when times had been dark and lonely?" She shook her head in regret. "Had you not ordered me to stay away from you, I don't know if I would have been able to."

"That really would have been nice to know fifteen fucking years ago, Razh."

She let out a sad laugh. "Yeah, I suppose so."

Instead of wallowing in regrets that we could not change, I grabbed the waistband of her panties, then started to tug at them, Samara doing me the favor of lifting her hips to help me rid her of them. While sex wasn't going to solve everything, I'd nearly lost her in a way that I never would have recovered from, and I just needed her with me. Plus, she'd just told me that she still loved me, so that alone was worth celebrating.

As carefully as I could, I slid her panties over her thighs, making sure not to touch her bandage, then when I was finished sliding them down her legs, I put my hand on her chest, then pushed her across my desk. Thankfully, Samara went down willingly, and the woman didn't utter a word as I placed her feet on the edge of the expensive furniture.

The loose fabric of her dress fell into a puddle on her stomach, and without her panties, I could see everything that belonged to me, and in a matter of days, it was going to finally belong to me legally .

"Only for you, will I ever get on my knees, Samara," I told her, and while she might not understand the significance of that right now, she was going to learn soon enough what the stars on my body represented. "Only you, baby."

"Avgust, please…" she whimpered, already begging, and it was the sweetest sound in my ears.

Dropping to my knees, I grabbed the inside of her thighs, spreading her wider for me, and when I saw that she was already leaking, that's when I knew that everything between us would be alright.