ARIEL
“I have less than zero interest in shopping with you right now,” I inform Sasha.
He doesn’t turn his gaze from the window. “If I cared, that would be devastating.”
“What kind of places does a guy like you even shop at? Whips & Chains ‘R’ Us?”
I’m aware that’s not my most devastating burn ever, so I’m not surprised when he doesn’t laugh. He does look at me, though.
And something in his expression gives me pause.
Sasha looks hangdog. Tired, in a lifelong sort of way. Still beautiful, but there’s a sadness to it that grabs me by the throat for a second.
I shudder and look elsewhere. That’s a dangerous trap and I will not be setting foot in it.
“We’ll go wherever you like,” he murmurs.
“Perfect. Walmart has a great line of granny panties I’ve been dying to try.”
“On second thought,” he says, the faintest hint of a laugh rippling through his voice, “we’ll go where I like.”
Le Petit Oiseau looks like Marie Antoinette’s boudoir went apeshit with a Bond villain’s credit card. Glass cases gleam with purses made from what I assume to be the hides of various endangered species. Chandeliers pour out of the ceiling overhead like it’s’ all one continuous waterfall, crystallized into place.
I feel guilty for besmirching their glistening tile with my peasant feet—to say nothing of my attire, which is ghastly. But Sasha strides past the glittering accessories toward a tall, stern woman in a black sheath dress with resting oligarch face.
She pales when she sees him. They exchange brief words in French—I’ll be damned; he really does speak it—then both turn to look at me.
Sasha stays put. The woman marches over, her long legs chewing up the space between where she was and where I’m currently awkwardly marooned one step inside the entrance. “Mrs. Ozerova, it’s a pleasure to make your—”
“Just Ariel,” I interrupt with a gulp. Then, so as not to sound like a complete and total bitch, I add, “Please.”
She hesitates. Her eyes flick to the side, as if she’s looking at Sasha through the back of her skull. Then she nods crisply. “Yes, of course. Ariel. My name is Yvonne. It would be a delight to assist you today.”
I consider resisting. I could, in theory. Sasha is standing aloof in the rear of the store, hands holstered in his pockets, with a look of distant, utter disdain on his face. If I refused, I’d bet he’d just tighten his jaw and instruct the staff to bar the doors. Maybe I wouldn’t be able to leave, but I wouldn’t have to cooperate. It’d just be a Wild West standoff. Two gunslingers waiting for the other to crack.
But everything in this store really is stunningly beautiful. Ostrich leather, Peruvian cashmere—you can’t look in any direction without seeing something so exquisitely made that it takes your breath away. My fingers itch to touch this dress and that scarf.
Jasmine would have loved it here.
We used to play dress-up when we were young, putting on our best dresses and clomping around in Mama’s heels. Princesses at the ball, fairies flitting to and fro. I still remember her braiding my hair into fishtails for the first time, stepping back, and smiling. You look beautiful, Ari.
I force a smile to my face. “Great,” I tell Yvonne. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”
She begins with a broad lap of the store to familiarize myself with the different sections. It’s a guilty pleasure to let my fingers riffle over every single thing they can get close enough to touch. My eyes didn’t fool me—it all really does feel incredible. Soft as clouds, sleek, gorgeous.
There are just two problems with that.
One, I’m not the kind of girl who can get away with rocking a gold lamé jumpsuit or a black crocodile trench coat. That’s for movie stars and runway models, not for someone who still can’t remember that there’s no hard T at the end of “Yves St. Laurent.”
Secondly, admitting I love this stuff would be giving Sasha what he wants. And after last night’s eruption, I’m still hurting in a way that brings me back to the very first square he and I ever started on. I want to piss him off. I want to see that crack in his facade again, the one that made him kiss the hell out of me in the car. Not the one that made him bark at Feliks to “take me away.”
Between those two issues, though, I think I can see a narrow way through. A way to get what I want—the opportunity to play dress-up again, even if it’s just for an hour or two—while keeping him from his own grim, grimy, you’ll-do-as-I-say-and-you’ll-like-it satisfaction.
So it’s back to the brattiness we go.
When the first circuit is completed, Yvonne looks at me. “Where would you like to begin, Mrs.— Pardon me, Ms. Ariel?”
I purse my lips and look around. Then I stroll toward a rack of beaded gowns, conveniently located within earshot of Sasha. “That one first,” I say, pointing at a bruised purple evening gown with a ten-foot long train. “And the silver heels—no, the ones with the emerald straps. Actually, all the straps. Oh, and that kangaroo leather bag shaped like a swan. That’ll be perfect.”
Yvonne looks at me, then at Sasha.
Sasha looks at Yvonne, then away.
I pointedly look at no one.
“Whatever she wants,” Sasha rumbles at last. He lights a cigarette by the three-way mirror. “It all goes on my account.”
I grit my teeth. Let’s see how deep those pockets run.
It’s an absolute shitshow from then on. A never-ending clusterfuck of this and that and three of those, please. Chinchilla fur romper. Diamond-encrusted wedges. A sable stole that makes a PETA activist somewhere wake up from a dead sleep with their heart racing.
Sasha doesn’t so much as bat an eye.
Every item goes up in front of him for perusal. I make sure the price tags are blindingly obvious, and I ask Yvonne again and again to announce as loud as she can what our running total is. We fly past five figures, past six, but even as two commas come into play, Sasha remains utterly unfazed. He takes a seat in an upholstered throne in the middle of the store. At one point, Yvonne approaches him. “This is quite a lot of items, Mr. Ozerov. Perhaps you’d like to—?”
“There was nothing ambiguous about ‘whatever she wants,’” he snarls. “Whatever. She. Wants.”
I redouble my efforts. For fuck’s sake, all I want is to see the faintest hint of the human I know is inside of him. This blank detachment is the worst face he could possibly present. I’m dying to change it in any way I can.
And yes, I’d prefer the sweet Sasha, the Sasha who dotes on me, who laughs with me, who calls me ptichka in that rumbling bass voice that sounds like summer heat lightning. But if he won’t give me that, I’ll reach for the button I do know how to press.
Piss.
Him.
Off.
Four hours in, though, my plan is backfiring spectacularly. I’ve tried on another half a dozen ball gowns, twenty-plus pairs of progressively obscene stilettos, and a ruby-studded choker that made the security guard spasm and drool. Sasha watches it all from his velvet chair, legs splayed, smoke curling from his lips—unfazed as I morph from Golden Age starlet to Balkan trophy wife and back again.
Until I reach for the lingerie display.
Then, at last, his fingers go still.
“Ah!” Yvonne says when she sees where my attention has gone. “I admire your taste. Our newest collection just arrived.”
I yank a scrap of crimson mesh from the rack. “This. And the leather harness. Oh, especially the harness.”
Sasha’s lighter clicks. I look at him and raise a questioning brow. “If you like,” is all he says.
My frown curdles. That’s progress—but I want more.
So I shrug. “I guess we won’t know until I try it on, will we?”
Then, without waiting for his reaction, I turn and embark for the dressing rooms.
But unlike every other item I’ve tried on today, this one gives me pause. Inside the stall, I hold it up over my sweats. There’s not much of it, all things considered. Red lace panties that loop over the hips, black leather garters that sit high on the thighs, all of it running up to connect to a complex maze of interwoven black leather straps that in turn flows into a leather collar with a tiny padlock at the throat.
It’s outrageous. It’s scandalous. It’s gonna make Sasha go berserk.
Still, I hesitate. When I wore that slutty bikini to the spa, all I had in mind was to rile him up to break him down. It was pure and simple motivation. All day today, I’ve been telling myself that I’m right back on that same agenda.
But am I? Is it riling that I’m after, like I was just a few days ago?
I know without even having to risk a glance at my own embarrassed face in the mirror that it’s not that. Not anymore.
Not just that, at least. What I want is to make him be honest with me. Be authentic with me. Is that so much to ask of a man who saved my life and bared his soul last night?
I don’t know.
I guess we’re about to find out.
Moving quickly before I lose the nerve, I strip off my PJs and chuck them aside. Then, using all the Tab A into Slot B expertise I gained from building the IKEA bookshelf, bedframe, and nightstand in my apartment, I assess the ins and outs of the lingerie and shimmy it into place. I do it without looking in the mirror so I can keep my composure. But when it’s on and all my bits and bobs are adequately covered, there’s nothing left to do but turn…
Oh, Jesus, Mary, Joseph. Throw in the Three Wise Men and the goats in the manger, too, while we’re at it.
Because this is positively indecent.
The harness bites into my thighs. The mesh thong disappears between my butt cheeks. The padlock tinkles at my throat as I take in a deep, shuddering inhale.
I look like sex. I feel like a demon. Now, onto the main event.
What will Sasha think?
I stick my head out of the dressing room curtain. Yvonne spots me immediately and starts to hurry over, but I shake my head and point at Sasha instead. “Sweetheart,” I call out in a cloyingly girlish voice that makes my own skin crawl. “Could you give me a hand, please?”
Sasha turns to look at me. His face is taut. “Can’t you—”
“I need you,” I say. “This is a future husband kind of task.”
His scowl darkens. But then he rises and starts to cross the room toward me.
I step back and let the curtain swish closed. My heartbeat is kicking up higher and higher. One-fifty. One-seventy. One-ninety. 2 Fast 2 Furious. Any second now, that curtain is going to open, and neither heaven nor hell knows what’s going to come next.
I hear his footsteps. It feels like the gala bathroom all over again—me trapped in a tiny little space, breathing hard, wondering what kind of man those footsteps belong to. Thump, thump. Closer. Closer.
They stop. I see the tips of his toes underneath the curtain’s hem. Not oxblood, like before, but black. Black as sin.
Then the curtain rips open.
And there he is.
It occurs to me, not for the first or even the hundredth time, how beautiful he is. It’s unfair, really. No one man should get to have hair that thick and eyes that blue. No one person should get to be so tall and so broad and so there. There’s too much of him, too much width and depth. I feel overwhelmed. It’s hard to breathe.
But it’s his eyes that draw me in most of all.
Because they’re looking at me like he’s never seen anything quite so divine.
He’s not saying anything, though. Just standing there, working his jaw side to side. His fist tightens on the swath of curtain in his grasp.
I finger-comb my hair into something approximating sex-messy. “Well? Will this properly degrade me at Bratva dinner parties?”
I brace myself for what has to be coming next. A crude remark, a learn your place, a scathing dismissal. Or maybe I’ll get what I’m longing for: hope, heart, humanity.
What I get instead is this:
Nothing.
He turns to leave.
Before he can even finish his pivot, though, a word flies out of my mouth all on its own: “Coward.”
Sasha pauses. The curtain is draped over him, not quite open, not quite closed. He doesn’t turn back all the way, but he doesn’t leave just yet, either.
So I press on. “You’re a fucking coward. You know that? You think you’re all big and tough because you have money and you hurt people. But one little kiss you didn’t mean to give and you turn into a big, fucking coward.”
All of my pent-up brattiness is turning into dirty fuel, getting channeled into something altogether different than what I thought I’d be doing today. I’m hot, seething from head to exposed toe. Barefoot and in lingerie and almost two feet shorter than this mute, brooding titan, but fuck it—I’ll go to war with him if that’s what he makes me do.
“You can’t just save my life and then shut me out because it makes you a teensy bit uncomfortable!” I cry out. “I saw your face in that garage, Sasha. I felt you. And now, you’re what—ashamed? Scared I’ll figure out you’re human under all that ice and steel?”
He faces me again and steps inside. The curtain swings closed.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” Every vowel is saw-toothed.
“Bullshit,” I spit. “You kissed me like you needed it more than you’ve ever needed anything. And guess what? I kissed you back in the exact same way! But you recoiled right after that in pure fucking terror. And today, you can’t even look at me. Why? Because caring makes you weak? Because wanting me is inconvenient to your big empire-building plans?”
He strides forward and pins me back against the mirror. Our breaths fog the glass. “Wanting you is far more than ‘inconvenient,’ Ariel. It’s fucking ruining me. Do you know that? How can you not see that?” His laugh, when it comes out, is utterly heart-wrenching. “I want you so much it’s rotting my bones. Every second I’m with you, I want to bury myself in you until we both forget our own names. But wanting—” He presses his forehead to mine and exhales wearily. “Wanting is how men like me get people like you killed.”
The confession hangs between us, every bit as fragile as the lace stretched across my ribs. I slide my hands up his chest. Feel his heartbeat cannoning against my palms.
“Then let me be the judge of what kills me.”
“No.” He shakes his head. “I won’t risk that.”
I swallow hard. The fire in me is still simmering, though. It knows there’s something here to burn through, some thorny underbrush we can clear out of the way to let new things grow. “Why’d you come for me last night, Sasha?”
“You know why.”
“Because my father would’ve slaughtered you if I died?”
“Because I would’ve slaughtered the world!” He surges up tall. His palms slam against the glass on either side of my head. “Is that what you want to hear? That seeing that Serb mudak’s hands on you made me want to peel my own skin off? That I spent six hours parked outside your building last night because I couldn’t fucking breathe until I was sure I saw your shadow move behind the blinds?”
His pupils swallow the last bits of blue left in him. “You asked me why I stopped kissing you in the car,” he rasps. “It’s because I knew. One taste, and I’d need another. Then another. Until you weren’t just a means to an alliance—you were the fucking air.”
“So need me then, Sasha.” My knuckles graze his split, scabbing knuckles. The site of the new scars he’ll soon bear as the price for keeping me safe. “Need me like I need you.”
He sucks in a breath. His face is close to mine again, so huge, so touchable. I reach up to touch it, and as I do, I nod. Just once, but all my heart goes into the gesture.
It’s permission. It’s salvation.
He takes it.
