Page 38 of A Love Most Brutal (Morelli Family #2)

“Me too,” I admit while pulling away from him to retrieve a q-tip and my tube of Aquaphor. “I would’ve killed him slower.”

“You would’ve been within reason.”

“I think so too.” I gently swipe the gel on the line, then cover it with a bandage. We’ll have to wash the blood out of his hair, and then I’ll bandage it again.

“How does it feel?” I ask.

“I’m fine,” he says, and when I glare at him, he amends. “It feels like my head got cut open and then stitched back up.”

“So, could be worse,” I conclude.

He smiles again, a sure lot of smiling for someone who was just bleeding all over our very clean, white-tiled bathroom thirty minutes ago.

His thumbs trace paths up and down my side.

“You need to shower. You’re not coming to bed like that.” I try to step back, but he holds me close to him.

“Kiss me,” he says. “Please, Marianna.”

It’s gotta be the blood loss, the worn off adrenaline, that’s making him this way.

“Shower first.”

“Kiss first.”

“Your lips have blood on them,” I say, and he frowns. “Shower first.”

He does let me step back then, and pushes himself to stand, slightly staggering. I rush to his side and wrap an arm around his waist.

“Alright, big guy.” I lead him to the shower and reach in, turning the knob before helping him strip out of his crusty tank top.

Shirtless in front of me now, my eyes scan over the botanical and traditional tattoos on his chest covering rows of neat scars.

I trace a finger across one of the raised lines and he takes a sharp inhale.

“My father’s favorite punishment,” he says by way of explanation. I’ve never asked about his scars, the dozens of straight parallel lines cut into his skin in places his clothes always hide. My heart constricts at the admission, and I lean forward and kiss one beneath the tattooed dagger.

“Pants off,” I command, and he helps me shuck them off of him along with his briefs. I look pointedly away from his penis—see, I am polite and respectful—and usher him into the shower, the water soaking us both.

“Now you,” he says. I roll my eyes before removing the shirt, and tossing the wet garment over the glass door.

“You just want to see me naked,” I say.

“I always want to see you naked,” he agrees, and his hands roam over my body. I push his shoulders until he’s sitting on the shower bench, which unfortunately just puts his eyes closer to boob level. They fix fastidiously on my chest; easily distractible, he is.

“Tilt your head back.”

I grab the detachable shower head and spray his hair, lightly rubbing his scalp until the water runs clear.

His eyes fall shut, still a hint of that smile on his usually stern mouth.

I’m careful to avoid the wound as I lather and rinse his face, his neck, his chest. He doesn’t offer to help, just lays his head back against the tile while I wash him clean of his blood.

His cock is hard, jutting between us, and I’ve done a good enough job ignoring it, but now that he’s clean, I take pity on him, dropping to my knees on the tile and bringing him into my mouth.

His eyes snap open. “ Marianna ,” he hisses, like an admonishment. I take him deeper, though, and his head falls back with a groan.

Part of me is worried that he really will pass out, but he’s looking very much alive and well now as I stroke and lick up his length.

“ Malysh, ” he moans, moving his hands from my head to my shoulders, urging my head up and off of him. “Please, let me come inside of you.”

“For an heir?” I ask, breathless. He squeezes his eyes shut in tandem with his tightening grip on my arms then shakes his head as if to clear it.

“Sure,” he says, not fighting my rationalization for once with sweet and filthy words.

I straddle his hips on the bench before sinking down on him, and Maxim gives the longest moan as his hands grip my hips, guiding me in shallow strokes up and down his cock.

I gasp when I take him to the hilt and fall forward to press my lips against his.

His tongue is hot and presses immediately into my mouth.

I can’t help the breathy moans as I ride him faster.

I feel his hips start moving beneath me and I tut. “Stop trying to exert yourself, you’re injured.”

Maxim sucks and bites on my neck. “I had a good doctor.”

“You’re insatiable,” I murmur.

“You make me this way, don’t you see that?”

I kiss him to keep him from carrying on talking like that; he gets carried away easily, traipsing too close to what feels like a confession that I don’t want from him. I can’t have it, not when I don’t have room in my heart for him and never will.

“Marian—”

“Quiet,” I command and grind harder on him, inching toward my release until it takes over me. Maxim is right behind me, his strong arms wrapping around my back pulling my chest as close to his as he can while he spills inside of me.

He repeats that Russian word into my wet hair, malysh, malysh, malysh as we catch our breaths. I’m sure it won’t always be like this. After I’m pregnant, he won’t want to have me so often, so intensely.

This is what I tell myself as he peppers soft kisses up my throat, my jaw, my forehead, my eyelids. Our marriage may be an arrangement, a business deal, but we can at least enjoy it for now.

Out of the shower, I dress the wound again with dry bandages, put on another of his shirts, and then tuck myself into bed next to him where I’m certain we’ll sleep past our alarms.