He kisses me, grinning.
“What’s wrong?” he asks. “You’re looking at me like you can’t quite comprehend just how incredibly handsome I am.”
“That’s part of it.” I push him away playfully but he holds me in a massive bearhug. “Mostly I’m wondering how this happened.”
“What do you mean?”
“This.” I wiggle my ass.
“Well, you see, princess, when a man loves a woman—”
“Don’t be a jerk.”
He kisses my ear. “I know what you mean.”
“When I came here, I thought this would be temporary. Or at worst, we’d go through with the marriage, but it wouldn’t be real. You know what I mean? I’d grin and bear it. But it wouldn’t matter.”
“Does it matter now?”
“I don’t know.” I turn to face him. “Does it?”
He smiles and kisses me. “Yes,” he whispers. That’s all the answer I need. We stay there for a while, breathing hard as the sweat cools on our skin. The room’s quiet and the Kremlin’s still, but my entire world is in this bed.
“I keep meaning to ask you something,” he murmurs after a long, comfortable silence.
“I thought you were asleep.”
“Nah. I can’t sleep when your bare ass is pressing up against my cock.”
“Oh, so that’s what that is? I thought there was a weird metal rod in the middle of the bed.”
“No, love. See, when mommies and daddies—”
“Oh my god, I’m going to smash you in the face with this pillow if you keep making that stupid sex talk joke.”
He bites my shoulder and sighs. “Listen to me for a second, okay?”
“Fine, fine. Talk, you big jerk.”
“I’ve been thinking about the business.” He pauses. So it’s that kind of conversation. I shrug a little to let him know I’m listening. “From everything we’ve discussed, there are a lot of moving pieces. It’s a lot of overhead, and not a whole lot of profit. Razor-thin margins. Not to mention the risk.”
“That’s true,” I say, doing my very best to remain still and keep my heart from going insane. This might be the moment I’ve been waiting for and nudging him toward, but I can’t let myself get too excited. I’ve had a couple other false alarms already.
“The bribes are the tricky part. They only go so far. One thing goes wrong and the whole enterprise can come toppling down. Once some hotshot DA gets a bite out of our family, he might think he can take on the whole empire.”
“You think the flesh trade is a liability.”
“I think it is, yes. It’s okay for your father because that’s all he has. He can focus on it. But we’re not like that. We have our fingers in a thousand jars. Legit businesses, not-so-legit business, and more investments than you can imagine. Running girls is small-time. It’s not really growth. It’s like running on a treadmill.”
“So what do you want to do?”
“It’s a terrible idea, and I don’t think we should move forward.”
Yes, fuck yes, he’s right for all those reasons and a thousand more. I’ve been subtly implying that every time we talked about it, and he’s finally reached the conclusion himself. I feel a swell of pride—quickly tempered by guilt.
I don’t want to manipulate him into doing what I think is right. Granted, I only gave him the facts and let him figure this out on his own, but still. I hate the idea of going through life coming at problems sideways. It may work for others, like Emmie and Galina, but I can’t stomach it forever. I want more than that.
I turn around and kiss him. “Can I be honest with you?”
“That’s all I ask.”
“I’ve been trying to make you come to that conclusion for a while now.”
He stifles a laugh and kisses my neck. “No shit, princess. You’re not exactly subtle.”
“You knew?!” I push him away, wide-eyed.
He rolls onto his back and laughs. It’s a deep and joyful sound, and even though I’m surprised as hell, I can’t help but laugh along. Why did I think I could fool him at all? Maxim’s too clever and too used to living in a bratva family to be so easily manipulated.
“Princess, I knew from the second you came out of that lunch with my sister and started talking about the business. But I’m not so stubborn and stupid that I can’t listen. And besides, you do have a really good grasp on how it all works. All those reasons I listed are legitimate.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, grinning. “I won’t try something like that again.”
He waves a hand in the air. “That’s how these things work. You try to convince me of something and I make up my own damn mind. I’m a big boy, Siena. You don’t have to stress about telling me what you think is the truth. Just tell me what you want.”
“In that case, give me your credit card, I want to go shopping.”