Page 25 of Scarlet Vows

I stare at her, wishing we were anywhere but in the middle of an exclusive restaurant. Not because someone may overhear us—we’re not close to anyone else, and we’re speaking Russian, as well as keeping our voices low—but because I can’t just up and leave. I can’t walk away.

Pretty Alina, whoisperfect, and the perfect choice, waits for my answer.

I take her in. She’s sweet and feisty and so fucking right for all the wrong reasons, and she has backed me into a corner.

What am I meant to say? That I have major feelings for her, that she makes my knees weak and my heart tremble? That she makes me so damn hard that I’m filled with all the filthy thoughts for her when she gets too close or presses against me in a hug?

If I say that, or that I have a crush on her, or god forbid that I’m in love with her, then…what other excuse is there?

If I go anywhere near that, I could lose her friendship, same as if I just say no and leave it there.

She’s fucking right. She’s spoiled, and I’m wrapped tightly around her finger.

I’m also fresh out of excuses.

“Silent, Ilya?” She tilts her head, her gaze moving over me, and she takes a small sip of her drink while hiding a tiny smile.

“I’m always silent. You talk too much,” I mutter, a snap to my voice.

“No, you know I’m right.” She sets down the glass and leans in. “So that’s it, then. You’re marrying me.”

I sigh. It’s a bad idea, and every way I can think to back out, I hear her countering it. If I rip into her, I may make her cry, and that idea is so horrendous, I can’t even seriously entertain it.

Alina’s been through enough tears in her lifetime. More than enough. Same with pain, same with heartbreak.

Not that her heart would ever break over me, but… I can’t hurt her.

“It’s a bad idea.”

She rolls her eyes. “Don’t worry. I’m not asking you to risk your virtue. Marriage in name only, clearly. And it’ll help me and you. Men won’t bug me, and you’ll get what you want. Your inheritance. Plus, if someone’s going to be poking around, we make sense. We sound legitimate. Good friends turned lovers.”

The word “lovers” tumbles through me and strokes my dick. But I shift my attention away, back to the situation at hand. The one she’s effectively backed me into.

“It’s a bad idea.”

“Why?” she asks. “Give me one good reason.”

“Demyan.”

“Luckily, you’re not marrying him.”

She’s playing deliberately obtuse. I knead the napkin on the table near my hand. It’s a terrible idea. I can’t stop coming back to that. But there’s no way out, not with someone as stubborn as Alina.

“It feels…sneaky.”

“Demyan, regardless of what he might think, isn’t the boss of me. He doesn’t decide things for me, and I’ll be honest—I’ll be happy to move back out, gain more autonomy again.”

I consider challenging that, but right now, so many things are flying fast in the air at me that I have to stick to one. Marriage.

But itisunderhanded. I’d be agreeing to a surface marriage, one where she’ll have to spend time with me and at least look like she lives with me. I wouldn’t put it past a will with that kind of stipulation to have things like checkups to make sure the marriage is “real,” as in living under the same roof, seen together in public, and the like. I’ve seen it before.

My grandfather, who went from trying to force my mother into an arranged marriage, to forcing a grandson he never bothered with to not only carry on the family business as the new pakhan, but to make it stronger through marriage, isn’t about to let me just pick someone and marry her and lead separate lives with separate homes. It’s not how the old-fashioned pakhans work.

Hello, corner, meet my back.

All of this is so much worse, considering there’s a lie of omission to her about how I really feel.

Marrying someone I love is asking for trouble anyway. Love screws things up. Demyan and Erin worked it out, but it nearly destroyed him. Love makes a man vulnerable. Loving—if that is what I feel—Alina is the worst kind of trouble. She makes me vulnerable tenfold. The fact she’s a Yegorov makes it worse.