I woke up and sighed, nestling against Maxim. The mornings when he was still in bed with me were the best. Even if he didn’t take me and start my day with an orgasm, he was there as a distraction from the boredom.
After last night, though, I was curious whether things would be different between us.
He told me that he cared about me.
No details were given, but he did break down to grudgingly admit that.
He didn’t like my giving him my back and anticipating going numb around him.
No reason was provided, but he reacted strongly to the idea of my closing up.
So… where does that leave us?
As we lay together, I couldn’t stop wondering if he’d care about me once I admitted that I was pregnant. He’d been abundantly clear that was all he wanted to kidnap and keep me for. Sooner or later, he’d make me take a test. And I’d start to show eventually.
Maybe I’ll never have to tell him that I was already pregnant when he captured me.
That felt deceiving, but it was my instinct to stay on his “good” side. After all he’d done for me, I felt guilty about his not being able to trust me. Trust was a two-way street, though. He sure didn’t trust me, having to keep me here locked like this.
No matter what, I refused to dwell on the beginning of pain that encroached when I had to think back to how he said he didn’t commit.
No girlfriends.
No wives.
Just… this.
“What’s that sigh for?” he asked.
I hadn’t realized I had exhaled like that again. I shrugged, not wanting to leave his side. With his thumb stroking over my shoulder, I was in a trance-like comfort.
“You don’t have to hurry off for a meeting?” I asked. I wasn’t sure of all of what he did, and I didn’t want the details anyway. The less I knew, the better. “I’m surprised you’re still in bed two days in a row like this.”
He kissed the top of my head. “Last night was a difficult one. The Cartel opened fire on us at one of our warehouses—”
I reached up and pressed my hand over his mouth as I shook my head. “No. Please don’t.”
He tugged my hand away and kissed my palm while it was near his mouth. “What?”
“Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know any details.”
“Too gruesome to handle?” He arched a brow.
“No. I just don’t want to get involved and know anything.” I lowered my gaze to marvel at his tattooed chest, dragging my fingertip over the lines. “I’m not that naïve, Maxim. If I’m here and anyone were to ever get to me—”
“They won’t,” he vowed.
“Okay. Hypothetically. The longer you keep me here, the longer I’m associated with your organization, and I know you’ve got to have tons of enemies out there.”
“Do you doubt that I can keep you safe?”
“No.” I shook my head. “But I also know I can’t predict the future and, well, there’s no changing the fact that you have enemies and that I’m a part of your world now.” I didn’t cower under his somber stare. “Survival of the fittest. The less I know and could be questioned about if I were ever taken, the less chance of someone being able to hurt me.”
“Ignorance is bliss?” he guessed mockingly.
I nodded. “I hope it could be.” I leaned back against the pillows. “Besides, you just told me last night that you don’t trust me. So don’t go contradicting yourself and telling me about ‘business’.”
He grabbed my fingers as I did air quotes and kissed the tips of them as he brought them to his lips. Small things like this should’ve warmed me up. Little touches. Instant need for contact. It was making me get my hopes up that he couldn’t keep his hands off me, like he needed to be reassured that I was with him no matter what.
Just not as his girlfriend or anything more.
“I’m not telling you about business.” He brushed my hair back from my face before he kissed me. “I was merely explaining that last night, my brothers and I were shot at, and because of the cleanup necessary with that incident, things will move slower today.”
I winced, not a fan of his being hurt.
“What do you have planned today?” he asked.
I slumped back and huffed out a laugh. “Seriously?”
He followed me down to the bed, kissing along my jaw, then my neck. “Yeah. Seriously.”
“Umm, nothing? Same as the day before?”
He lifted his head and frowned at me. “Aw. Are you telling me that you’re bored when I’m not here?”
“Like you’d care.”
He narrowed his eyes. “I thought we went through this last night.”
I held in a growl but rolled my eyes. “Not that you don’t care about me.” I realized now that he had to care to some extent if he could be invested enough to get jealous. “But you haven’t been concerned about what I did when you weren’t near before.”
“I thought you were reading that one book. I saw it lying around.”
I nodded. “Where’d that come from, anyway?”
“Hugo—one of the supervisors. His wife gave it to him to give to me when I asked for something for a woman to read.”
I smiled. “Well, I’m not much of a reader.”
“Then what do you do?”
I sat up. Other than worry about your reaction to my being pregnant? “You really want to know?”
He nodded, sitting up as well.
“First I worry about what will happen to me after I tell you I’m pregnant. I mean, if I’m pregnant. Then I daydream about what I’d like to happen. And then I start to imagine what I’d be doing if I weren’t here.”
He blinked. “All right. What is it?”
I stared at him.
“What would you be doing if you weren’t here?”
“And I still had debt to pay off? Easy. I’d be working.”
“Without the debt.”
I licked my lips. “I don’t know. I used to like going to the gym and staying fit. That was one of the small reasons I didn’t mind dancing. It was a good workout.”
“Then use the gym here.”
I blinked, surprised at how simple that was. “Okay.”
“If you have any interests that would preoccupy you, tell me. I can’t read your mind.” He got up, stretching.
I was too weak to stare at his dick. “You’ve been preoccupying me.”
He gave me a naughty smile. “And I don’t plan on stopping any time soon. I’m serious, Sloane. If you’re bored and idle, then you’re bound to concoct more ways to be stubborn and combative with me.”
“I am not,” I argued.
“See?” He smirked. “Within reason, you can preoccupy yourself while you are here until you are pregnant. Hobbies, reading, whatever you want.”
“But I can’t go anywhere?”
He shook his head. “Not yet.”
“Yet?” I got out of bed, taking his hand when he offered it to me.
“Yet,” he confirmed. “I’ve never done this before—keeping a woman. We can take this in steps.”
I wanted to interpret his words as a confession that the this he was talking about was actually a relationship between us. But I wasn’t that gullible.
Not yet.
“And right now, we’ll try another step.”
I tilted my head to the side. “Another step toward what?”
“Toward… our continued mutually beneficial situation.”
I wanted to roll my eyes.
“Okay, what’s this step?” I asked as he held my hand and led me into the walk-in closet.
“I’d like for you to meet my grandmother,” he announced, picking out clothes.
Huh. That’s new. He’d introduced me to his brothers, but I seldom saw them in the building. A grandmother would be different. It was hard to think of another woman being in this family. Everything seemed so masculine. But I tried to tamp down my excitement to see a woman.
This felt like too much of a test, and I knew damn well that Maxim would be critiquing how I handled this experience.
An hour later, he brought me to have breakfast with a regal-looking, older woman.
“Grandmother, I’d like you to meet Sloane,” Maxim said before we took our seats. While we weren’t in the fancy dining room like the day I’d met Damon, Nik, and Saul, this sunroom space with a seating arrangement was still posh and elegant. Everything about the Ivanovs was a reminder of their wealth.
“Sloane, this is my grandmother, Anastasia Ivanov.” He glanced at me.
“It’s nice to meet you,” I said as I took the older woman’s hand. Her skin was cool and soft, leathery with her age, but I was surprised at how weak her grip was. I nearly crushed her hand as we shook, and I debated whether I’d shown too much strength.
“Hmm. This is a surprise,” she replied coolly, watching Maxim and barely looking at me.
Okie-dokie, then.
Her declining to reply in kind, that it would be nice to meet me, told me enough. Her posture and attitude combined in a clear effort to let me see that I was inferior to her, not an equal. As she sat with Maxim and acted like a queen, I got the impression that she’d only ever see me as an outsider, not fitting in here with her eldest grandson. In her eyes, I would be a guest and apart from her family.
She didn’t ask where I’d come from, who I was, or why I was here, but it didn’t give me a complex of insecurity. When Maxim told me that he’d never kept a woman here in his home like this, I believed him. But still, being his first kidnapped woman, I couldn’t begin to guess at how I was supposed to act around Anastasia.
She wasn’t warm. She wasn’t inviting. She spoke only to him and acted almost like an unfeeling robot. Perhaps she had been such an icy person for so long that she lacked the ability to thaw out at all.
Or maybe it’s just me. I’d never been taught how to be prim and proper like a princess, which this setting seemed to imply I should be. I’d never been an elite member of society like her. So, instead, I reverted to being quiet and observant, not speaking up at all as we ate breakfast.
After that meal that left me clueless about why he’d wanted me to meet her, he took off for a meeting with Saul. Nik offered to show me the gym, and he pointed out the access code on the elevator for me to use the brothers’ personal gym, not the one soldiers could take advantage of.
A little exercise helped to clear my mind, but when I came back to Maxim’s apartment to shower, he took over preoccupying me with a quickie in the shower. But then after a nap, that led to a longer and more intense round of intimacy on the floor, across the couch, and against the wall.
Having him control me sexually like that left me disoriented, and as such, between the workout and all the sex, I was too wired to sleep at night.
Instead of trying to toss and turn and sleep, I gave up and got out of bed to go to the kitchen.
Maybe a little snack would help. My appetite had been rather stable despite my pregnancy, and with the limited common knowledge I had to count on about pregnancies, I suspected I might be lucky to be one of those women who didn’t suffer from morning sickness.
With the well-balanced diet and care I had so far, I felt like I was at my peak health now.
All thanks to you. I smirked at Maxim sleeping in bed.
I pulled a robe on and headed down to the kitchen to make a light snack. Even if the food didn’t help me sleep, it was something to do.
Having a little breather from Maxim could go a long way toward clearing my mind, too.
Finding the kitchen empty and no staff around to bother me, I browsed the fridge and pantry to see what I could create. While I wasn’t so dumb as to think I had free rein in Maxim’s entire building, I bet I could do whatever I wanted in terms of cooking or baking something to my liking.
As much as I missed my independence and freedom, this wasn’t a prison sentence. Not completely.
Even though I’d spent years working as a dancer and stripper, the graveyard shift hadn’t stuck with me. After weeks of being able to sleep like a normal human should, I’d reset myself to wake in the morning and go to bed at night. Other than the times when I was up being taken hard by my insatiable Mafia boss, my circadian rhythm was balanced.
Just not tonight. Maybe this strange stroke of insomnia was another pregnancy symptom.
In the middle of preparing pancake batter, which I’d settled on at a whim, my “warden” showed up. Maxim strolled into the kitchen, squinting and still sleepy. His eyes weren’t open all the way, and he yawned as he came toward me. Rubbing his hand over his bare chest, he paused near the island.
“What the hell are you doing?” he asked.
He had no business sounding sexier with that sleepy voice.
I shrugged. “Making pancakes.”
“Now?” he asked. “At one in the morning?”
I nodded. “Yeah.”
“Why?”
I gave him another shrug, mixing the batter. “Why not?”
“If you wanted something to eat, you could’ve asked one of the cooks for it.” He took a seat on a stool at the island.
I wasn’t shocked that he didn’t suggest that I could ask Ronny for pancakes. Even if someone on the kitchen staff were in here, I wouldn’t have wanted to bother anyone. Ronny was now recovering with that deep gash in his hand, though, relegated to another household duty instead of the kitchen.
“I didn’t want to.” I met his gaze, unafraid to defy him like this. It was just pancakes.
“Why are you so stubborn?”
“Am I?” I challenged.
He smirked, resting his forearms on the counter as he settled in to watch me. “I think you are.”
“What a shame.”
A slow smile lifted his lips as he watched me, and I figured I could call it a victory that he didn’t order me to stop and go back to bed.