I murmur into the face cradle.
Spa music starts up from some speaker she’s set on the dresser.
I suddenly wish she spoke English. I want to pump her for information about Ravil. How long she’s known him, how he treats his hired help, what he’s like. Anything there is to verify or refute the ideas I already have about him.
The image of him choking the man at Black Light pops into my mind again.
Ravil is violent. He threatened to cut the man’s tongue out if he spoke disrespectfully about me again.
But he was gentle with me.
Far more gentle than most of the doms I saw scening with their subs at Black Light. There were no canes and heavy whips. He left no marks on my skin nor did he humiliate me much. More than that, he was measured. Controlled. He took in my responses and adjusted accordingly. We’d existed inside the same version of reality.
This is the same internal debate I’ve had every time I had second thoughts about my decision not to tell him about the pregnancy. Whether he deserved to know. Whether it was safe for him to know.
It certainly doesn’t feel safe now.
I can’t decide if that means I made the right or wrong choice in keeping this from him. Would he have been reasonable if I’d been straightforward and honest from the beginning. Or was this strong-arming inevitable?
I hear the snap of a lid and the rubbing of Natasha’s palms together, and then she makes contact. I flinch at first. Until Ravil’s earlier assault—seduction—whatever, I hadn’t been touched in months. Certainly not in a way that’s pleasurable. Sure, I hug my mom once a week when I meet her at Dad’s rehab center, but that’s about it.
My muscles bunch and tighten under her slow strokes, but eventually, I relax. She soothes my jumpy nerves, and the tension releases little by little. She’s good. Very good. She doesn’t dig in deep and kill me working out knots, but she finds them all, nonetheless, and somehow gently coaxes them out of their contraction.
Gradually, I unwind and eventually start to drift in and out of a light sleep. I wake when she murmurs something in Russian with the sense I’d been far, far away. There’s been no disturbing, frantic dreams—not the ones where I’m trying to prove myself at the law firm or in court, not the ones where I’m at my wedding, but I can’t find my groom.
None of that. Just a deep sense of peace.
Of me.
It’s like coming home.
She touches my shoulder lightly and murmurs again.
The massage is over. She steps into the bathroom and shuts the door, and I take a few minutes to get my bearings and find my way off the table. I open one of my suitcases and pull out a pair of pajamas. No sense in putting my work clothes back on—especially if Ravil isn’t going to let me out of this room.
Natasha emerges and waves toward the overstuffed armchair by the window. The one with a magnificent view of the water. She directs me into it and refills my water and hands it to me.
“Thank you,” I say, though I’m not sure she understands me. “That was magnificent. You are truly a gifted healer.”
She smiles, receiving my gratitude whether she understands the words or not.
She strips the table of the sheets and folds it up, carrying it to the walk-in closet, where she props it against a wall. She says something more in Russian and waves to me as she leaves, her large wicker basket with the sheets, massage oil and speaker, slung over her shoulder.
“Goodbye. Thanks again. Sorry I doubted you.”
She flashes an impish smile before she waves again and leaves.
Well, silver linings and all that. I should’ve treated myself to a massage months ago. That was pure heaven.
Ravil
The guys are gathered in the living room when I come out, no doubt waiting for me. The television is on, but Oleg turns it down when I enter.
Dima’s already taken Lucy’s laptop out of her bag and is doing his thing with it. Making every bit of it accessible to me. Inserting tracking chips in it, her purse, and her phone in case she somehow gets away.
“She is beautiful,” his twin, Nikolai, observes from an armchair, still speaking in Russian as I ordered.
A thread of irritation ripples through me. I’m not the jealous type, but I suppose I am possessive. Not that I believe for even a microsecond any of these men would ever touch what belongs to me. We are brothers in arms, and I am their pakhan. Loyalty runs deep between us.
“You will make pretty babies,” Maxim agrees in English.
“Russkom,” I growl.
He rolls his eyes but continues in our mother tongue. “First you order everyone to speak English only. Now the entire building must speak Russian. And for what? For how long? Let us in on your plan, Ravil.”