Page 18

ZOYA

I woke up in his arms. I’d actually slept next to a man without wanting to kill him—without actually killing him.

How strange. No. How dangerous.

This man was holding me captive, using me as a pawn. Just because he fucked me didn’t mean he was now my boyfriend and we’d suddenly have a normal life filled with arguments over getting a dog and whose turn it was to pick the next Netflix movie.

This was all just a game. A fucked-up twisted one, but still a game.

One I intended to win.

“Does this mean you will let me go?” I asked, before pressing my face into the crook of his neck.

Roman was warm, so warm.

Having his arm slung around my waist, holding me close to him, tucking me against his hard body, was surprisingly comforting.

He made me feel more than just warm; he made me feel safe.

That wasn’t something I had ever really felt.

Stop it. Remember. Violent kidnapping enemy. Not my new fucking boyfriend.

It was a trick. My body was just weary and worn out from everything that had happened, and the hormones coursing through my body after having sex for the first time.

That had to be it.

It wasn’t because Roman had taken care of me in the shower. It had nothing to do with the tender way he washed my hair, or the way my entire body felt like it was set on fire when he kissed me.

There was no way that it had anything to do with the intensity of the pleasure that wracked my body as he took me in a way no other man ever had, or the way he looked at me with passion and admiration as I slid up and down on his cock.

It had to be hormones, not the way he made me feel.

Right?

Roman’s breath was steady, his chest rising and lowering against me.

For a moment, I thought he hadn’t heard me. I thought maybe he was asleep.

Did that mean this was my chance to escape?

I wasn’t chained to anything, only his arm banded tightly around my waist. But if he was asleep, perhaps I could move it without waking him?

I turned my head slightly, just enough to meet his dark eyes staring down at me.

His hand moved to brush a lock of hair out of my face, his fingers trailing over my jawline and his thumb caressing my lips.

So much for sneaking away while he was asleep.

“Well?” I asked. “Does this mean you’re going to let me go?”

His lips twisted in a soft smile. Then he exhaled sharply.

“What do you think?”

I huffed out a breath of annoyance. The frustration simmered just beneath my skin.

Of course, he wouldn’t give me a straight answer. Why would he do that when he could just toy with me instead?

Rolling back over, I stared up at the ceiling. My eyelids were heavy. I would’ve given in to the need for sleep, wrapped in Roman’s warmth, even if it was just some sick little game, if the weakness hadn’t also been crawling up my limbs and hunger wasn’t clawing at my empty stomach.

My body ached for sustenance.

I needed food.

I had lost too much blood, and I needed protein, iron, and nutrients to replace what was now soaked into the sheets on the other side of the bed.

“If you’re not going to let me go, can you at least arrange to feed me?”

His fiery gaze stayed on my profile for a moment. The weight of it burned my skin until his arm tightened around me, pulling me back into his chest.

“What’s wrong, printsessa ? Didn’t like my cooking?”

He had made that dish he fed me?

I ignored the way my heart skipped a beat, knowing that he had prepared that food for me himself.

Instead, I rolled my eyes. “I don’t even know what that was.”

He chuckled, the low rumble moving from his chest through my body. I felt it more than heard it.

“ Ropa vieja . It’s a dish my mother used to make when she was homesick, or she thought that I needed comfort food. She said it would fill my stomach as well as provide important nutrition to my soul and connect me to my people.”

“Oh.” I didn’t know what to say to that.

Instead of some smart-ass remark or surface-level snark, he showed me something real.

Something that I could tell by the timbre of his voice was important to him.

I rolled in his arms so I could face him, look into those deep dark eyes for some sign that he was messing with me or joking. There was none.

“I never really knew my mother. My father killed her when I was young.”

I didn’t mean to say that.

Just because he told me something meaningful didn’t mean I had to reply in kind. But part of me wanted to. It was almost instinctual.

The words held so much truth. Not just facts, but the core truth of who I was as a person. They were so true, they felt foreign on my lips.

It wasn’t the persona I created, the badass bratva queen. The only surviving heir to my father’s empire. It had nothing to do with her; it was just me.

Just Zoya’s truth.

I hated giving him that, giving him a piece of who I truly was, of the girl that I tried so desperately to hide. To protect the way her family should have protected her.

But it just slipped out, and I couldn’t take it back. I wasn’t sure I would even if I could.

Roman still watched me, his expression inscrutable and, for a brief second, the air between us felt different. Heavy, but not with attraction, or sex, or even the never-ending power struggle.

Heavy with vulnerability, maybe?

If I were any other woman in the arms of any other man, I would say that the lonely little boy in him who just missed his mother was looking at the scared little girl in me who was terrified of the people that should have loved her.

I pushed it down.

All of it.

I locked it away where no one would ever find it again. Whatever this moment was, whatever feeling I just experienced, were weaknesses I could not afford.

“If you let me into the kitchen, I’ll cook us some proper Russian food.”

His head tilted back with laughter.

“Right, because on the world stage, everyone knows that Russian food outperforms Cuban food every single time.”

There was something light in his laughter. His entire body rumbled with it, and I couldn’t help the smile pulling at my lips.

Cuban.

His mother was Cuban. That explained so much. Why he didn’t look like his cousins, at least not at first glance. The dark golden hue of his skin, why he drank rum instead of whiskey or vodka. And it explained why he always smelled like a tropical seduction.

He was the culmination of two cultures that were very different but blended so damn beautifully.

“Come on,” I pleaded, placing my hand on his shoulder, trying to imitate what I’d seen other women do to seduce men into giving them whatever they wanted. “You cooked for me. Let me cook for you.”

“And let you near the knives?” He laughed, again. “Not a chance.”

I raised my hand as if I was making some solemn oath. “You have my word. I won’t use any knives. Scout’s honor.”

“You were not a Girl Scout,” he scoffed.

“I was. It was an easy way for my father to get rid of me for a few hours a week and it was the only time I got to spend time with girls my age before I started school, and during breaks.”

I had never told anyone that before, either.

He still didn’t look convinced. He gave me a flat look that seemed to ask if I really thought he was that stupid.

“I’m not stupid enough to think that I could take you down with just one itty bitty little knife, anyway. I’m just hungry.”

He stared at me for another moment, with that unreadable look of his.

Then he exhaled, his shoulders relaxing as he muttered a curse under his breath before getting up and reaching for a T-shirt that was thrown over a chair. He tossed the soft gray fabric at me.

“Fine, but you are wearing this.”

I held up the soft, well-worn cotton T-shirt to see the faded red-and-white emblem for the HC Spartak, a hockey team in Moscow.

Did Roman play? The image of him in hockey gear was surprisingly appealing.

I had never been too interested in the sport, but I could see Roman on the ice, graceful as a dancer, but brutal. He was the type of man that wouldn’t keep score by the number of times his team got the puck in the net. He would keep score by the number of players he took out on the ice.

Graceful, but lethal.

By the time I slid the shirt over my completely naked body, drowning me so much that the hem hit my knees, Roman was already on his feet and buttoning a pair of slacks that hung low on his hips.

Low enough I could trace the lines of his abs with my eyes down to the carved muscle that formed a tight V.

He arched his eyebrow and gave me a cocky little grin as he caught me staring at him. I arched my eyebrow right back, daring him to say something.

Without a single word, we left the bedroom, and I followed him into the kitchen.

The space was sleek, expensive, all dark countertops and state-of-the-art appliances.

It looked like it came directly out of a magazine.

Just like him.

I ignored the way he leaned against the counter with his arms crossed over his chest as he watched me like I was some kind of puzzle he was still trying to figure out.

Instead, I moved toward the refrigerator, running my fingers over the ingredients he had stashed and then checking the pantry for flour, butter and everything else I would need.

He had made me a dish from his childhood, something that his mother made to comfort him. I didn’t have a family recipe like that, but I had one dish that had always brought me comfort.

One that a nanny my father had hired to watch me and make sure I was trained to be a wife had made me when I was sad. Or when the wind was too cold for anything else and I needed to be warmed from the inside out, or when my father’s temper turned glacial.

It never failed to make me feel better.

That didn’t mean I needed to let Roman know why I was making something so time-consuming when I was starving.

“I’m making kurnik ,” I said.

“Isn’t that usually for weddings?” he asked. “Are you proposing?”

I shot him an annoyed look. “No, you have the ingredients for it, so that’s what I’m going to make. Is that a problem?”