Page 36 of Hateful Vows

TWENTY-SEVEN

DANTE

O n our way back, I’m starving. I insist on getting a burger at a drive-by and eating it in the parking lot like a teenager hiding his love of junk food from his parents.

The look of utter disdain on Aleksei’s face is so comical, I wish Irina was here to appreciate it.

We eat in silence before he lathers a heavy dose of hydrogel on his hands, mouth upturned like the fat burger insulted him.

It’s so easy to disturb Aleksei’s little routines. And I take too much pleasure in it.

When we arrive at the penthouse, only a few low lights illuminate our path into the living room. The silence is deafening. I expected my viper wife to bite my head off, but she’s nowhere to be found and the door to our bedroom is wide open.

Aleksei follows me all the way up, and surprise morphs into comfortable warmth.

I like him in our space. The man is a closed book on his best days but he must have been more rattled than he let on.

I pick the bottle of scotch on the vintage cart and pour both of us a dram.

He swallows it in one go and I roll my eyes.

“This isn’t cheap vodka, Lyosha ! It’s a three-thousand pound bottle of Scotland’s finest whiskey, for Christ’s sake.”

I pour him another and give him a pointed look as he sips it slowly.

“I don’t drink vodka,” he counters. I narrow my eyes at him. The corner of his lip, close to his scar, twitches.

“Aleksei Dobrev, making a joke?” I clutch a hand to my heart, feigning surprise, though where he is concerned, it kind of is. I shouldn’t like him relaxing around me like this so much. But what can I say? I do have a natural attraction for broken souls.

Percy meows at my feet and I pick him up, wincing slightly with the remnant pain of the bullet hitting my back.

I bump my forehead against his. I’ve never had a pet, my father would have skinned it alive but I would die for my furry baby.

Irina might think he’s hers but we both know who the mutt prefers.

Me. It’s me. I feed him the best salmon money can buy behind her back, he’d better.

Now, he seems agitated, meowing again like he wants to alert me to something. My hackles rise. I look up to see Aleksei’s head dropping down, chin to chest, with a defeated sigh.

“What’s wrong?” I ask him, and the cat.

“Irina probably started her period.”

“What?”

“Perceval is very protective of her and when she’s on her period, she has a tendency to… self-isolate. He doesn’t like it.”

“She was just fine. You saw how she took those men triple her size?” I ask incredulously.

If anything I’d have thought that adrenaline and all the stress this life can cause would almost suppress her cycle, but my knowledge of the topic is limited at best. I pick up my phone and add ‘learn more about menstruation’ on my Irina-task-list portion of my notes app.

Aleksei looks at me quizzically. I don’t miss his eyes darting to the elevator; I don’t give him the chance to flee, yet again. If I have a say in it, he’ll even live here permanently, but my plan requires a little more finesse.

My protective instinct rears its head and I invite him to our bedroom. “Let’s see what our girl needs.”

But Irina isn’t in our bedroom. Or in our bathroom. I come back out into the corridor. To my left is the living room Aleksei is now standing in the middle of.

“I was talking to you, Lyosha . Not to the cat.”

“Oh.”

To my right are two doors. One of them open, one of them closed.

Oh, she fucking didn’t.

I barrel through the closed door into the guest bedroom, cat in arms, ready to give my wife a piece of my mind, but what greets me stops me in my tracks. Irina is burrowed under a mountain of blankets despite the summer heat, her head barely visible under the cocoon she’s made for herself.

Percy jumps out of my arms and onto the bed, climbing the blankets and disappearing into a tiny hole where my wife is. “What are you doing here, Perceval?” she asks softly before hugging the creature to her chest and giving him head kisses.

I’ve never seen her like this. Even with her pet, she isn’t so affectionate as to give kisses so freely like this.

“Yeah…” Aleksei simply says behind my shoulder. “You’re gonna need a hot water bottle, maybe a heated blanket just to be safe, and a weighted one. Panty liners, no pads; she hates them. Tampons. Large and Medium. No small ones. Without applicator. And After-Eight. Lots of After-Eight.”

I grimace. “The granny’s chocolate?”

“Yeah,” Aleksei chuckles softly, sending a delighted shiver down my spine all the way to my groin. “She loves them. She will down an entire pack in an hour when she’s on her period. Let’s go, malysh . We have some shopping to do. And I have the keys to her flat for the fundamentals.”

We left Tino and Ilia to guard the flat and take three bodyguards with us.

They look at each other like they would rather eat shit or die but tough luck, my wife needs me and there is very little I wouldn’t do for her.

Including raiding the local supermarket for all the tampons and panty-liners they have.

An hour later, I tentatively enter the space Irina has elected as her safe spot and crouch by the bedside.

I remove a lock of hair out of her face and place it behind her ear, letting my fingers linger on her cheek. She looks so soft like this. But I don’t know if she’s in pain and the anxiety is driving me mad.

“Go away,” she moans with a flare of annoyance and pain.

“I don’t want to, cuore mio . And I come bearing gifts.”

“If it’s not After Eight, I don’t want them.”

“Good thing it is After Eight, then. And a hot water bottle.”

Her bright brown eyes open and her suspicion melts away when I present her with the chocolate she loves, and the bottle. She takes them from me, unwrapping a chocolate and putting the entire thing in her mouth in one go.

“You should be in bed, cuore mio. ”

“I am in bed.”

“I meant our bed.”

She frowns and averts her gaze. Taking hold of her chin, I bring her attention back to me, urging her without a word to tell me what’s wrong.

“I didn’t want to be a burden,” she whispers and my heart breaks into a million pieces. I kiss her forehead, then her delicate finger where my tattoo has healed.

“You are never a burden, vipera . You can stay here if you want. It’s up to you. But then I will be here, too. Because there won’t be a night I’m married to you that I won’t spend holding you, do you understand?”

She bites her lips but nods. “I think I want to be here. For this time.”

I kiss her lips, the mix of chocolate and mint and something undeniably her, more pleasant than I thought. I close the door on my way out and meet Aleksei again in the living room.

I don’t give him time to worry, to doubt that I want him just as much, and that his help and presence make me feel more centred.

I cup the back of his head as I kiss him hard.

He’s stunned but gives into me, his large hands wrapping around my back and nape, holding me to him like I would ever let go.

This might have started with the desire to own both of them, to have the upper hand, and yes, also to blackmail them.

But it has devolved into something more.

Something I don’t have a name for and don’t want to put a label on.

Aleksei’s devotion to Irina is something I relate to, something that makes him so much more attractive.

The mysterious aura he wears like an armour has her name all over it and my need to protect her, my duty to her as my wife just gives me a kinship to him I’ve never experienced with anyone else.

Our lips match each other’s rhythm. He isn’t trying to dominate me but lets me own his mouth, and discover the contour of his face.

I break the kiss, both of us breathing a little harder.

He flinches when I lift my hand to touch his face, but he doesn’t stop me.

I glide my hand over his scars, tracing the one on the corner of his mouth with my thumb before returning to his pink lower lip.

My finger tips graze the large one on his eyebrow.

Slow enough that he could stop me, I kiss it.

Then kiss the corner of his mouth. Then go lower still to suck on his pulse at his throat.

He gasps. And fuck if that sound doesn’t go straight to my dick.

We don’t talk but we don’t need to.

Where Irina loves to fight, Aleksei is all quiet obedience.

He lets me remove his shirt, goosebumps in the wake of my fingers.

I’m not prepared for the raised skin on the grove of his back.

Shame is written all across his expression, his mismatched eyes watching me like a hawk.

What does he think he will see there? Disgust?

My heart clenches painfully at the raised scars on his strong body, telling the story of his pain.

I keep going, dragging my short nails across the hundreds of scars, making him hiss. I smile as I suck on his neck, feral with the idea of marking him just like I did her.

When I start to unbuckle his belt, his hands stop mine.

“Dante, wait.”

I can give him patience. There’s nothing frenzied in what I want with Aleksei.

Of course he is as gorgeous as he is dangerous and I want to fuck him, but that’s not what this is about.

There’s an intimacy between us that even Irina and I don’t share.

Our common goal, our common love brings us closer.

“I’ve never done this before.” He gulps.

“But you want to, don’t you, pretty boy?”

“Yes. I just… I don’t know what to do.”

“Let me show you,” I tell him as I continue removing all his clothing with agonising slowness.

“What about Irina?”

It’s a valid question but one he doesn’t need to worry about.

“She’ll be sad she missed out.” I smile. “The three of us make our own rules, Lyosha . She owns me and I own her. You may not realise it yet but you do, too. And now, I’m about to own you.”