Page 150 of Lethal Legacy

Picking me up, he walks me down the corridor and into the bedroom.

46

ROMAN

“Uncle Roman!” Masha’s indignant tones pierce straight through the bedroom door. “Hurryup!”

Lucia leaps under my hand as if it’s a cattle prod. “Get up,” she hisses.

“No.” I catch her around the waist and throw her back beneath me. She gasps as I run my tongue along her collarbone. “Stay quiet,” I murmur, pinning her beneath me with my leg, “and maybe they’ll go away.”

“We canhearyou,” says Ofelia in a bored tone. “Lucia, I can’t find my blue halter top.”

“And I’m supposed to be at the lab in half an hour,” adds Mickey.

I look down at Lucia’s swollen lips and the cherry nipples already hardening under my touch. “Later,” I murmur, sucking one of them before she slips out from beneath me. “We never should have given them the code for that elevator,” I grumble as I head for the shower.

“It was your idea.” Lucia steps in ahead of me. “No,” she admonishes, dancing out of reach of my hands. “Seriously, Roman. Ofelia is meeting her friends at the fiesta, and Masha’s been promised churros. We need to move it.” I wait until she’s out then turn the water to icy cold, trying to kill my raging hard-on. You’d think that two months of having Lucia in my bed, the shower, and on any available surface at every spare moment would have lessened my desire for her.

You’d be wrong.

When I emerge from the shower, she’s already dressed in a white sundress which, by my reckoning, I could remove in about three seconds. “Are you going to see your father this afternoon?” I ask, calculating the timing of a siesta special.

“Yes.” She glances sideways at me, and I suddenly regret having brought that particular topic up. “You know, Roman, it would be nice if you would actually talk to him.”

“I need to get Mickey to the lab.” I turn away, buttoning my shirt so I don’t have to see the sadness cloud her eyes. I know Lucia doesn’t understand why I avoid her father. But over the past two months, we’ve won a tentative peace. Lance Ryder has stayed lost since the parade. There’s been no sign of the Orlovs. Mercura is almost at launch date, with no further problems.

Best of all, Lucia and I have been happy. Not just sexually mind-blowing, which we always were. But actually fuckinghappy.As in, race home from work already looking forward to what I’m going to find happy. Cooking as a family happy. Helping kids do their goddamn homework happy, although in Mickey’s case, it’s more like him tutoring me.

And most of all, devouring Lucia’s body every night happy. Which, if I’m going to be honest, is more like ecstasy than happiness. Sex with her is a drug I cannot get enough of. And lately I’ve been thinking nonstop of how I nail that down permanently. As in, a diamond ring on her finger and my baby in her belly kind of permanent.

Except there’s the small matter of our respective fathers. More to the point, the fact that my father died to save hers. And that my mother disappeared forever due to Sergei’s failure to protect her, as he promised my father he would.

I can understand Sergei wanting to protect his children and guard their inheritance. Respect it, even.

But that doesn’t mean I can forgive him for failing to help my father protect his.

And right now, my only goal is to protect the fragile happiness in my home. That means continuing to call Lucia by her assumed name, so the children aren’t confused. It means giving all of us time and space to gradually relax and find a routine and dynamic that works.

And on top of all that, I’m still running a multibillion-dollar business, with the Mercura launch date edging ever closer.

Bottom line?

I don’t want to rock the boat. I’ll face Lucia’s father soon enough and explain who I am. Probably around the same time I take Lucia to pick out that diamond ring.

But not yet. Not while the Mercura launch date is just around the corner, and I’ve only just begun to trust that when I get home every night, Lucia will be there.

“Abouttime,” Ofelia says impatiently when Lucia and I finally emerge. She’s perched on the countertop in my kitchen, eating a tostada and sipping fresh-squeezed juice. Masha is kneeling on a stool beside her, covered in pulp, and Mickey is opposite them, laptop open on the other side of the counter.

“You guys know you have a perfectly good kitchen downstairs.” I gently shift Masha out of the way as I go to the fridge. “Not to mention a chef whose actual job it is to make your breakfast.”

“He did make it. We just brought it up here. Except for the juice,” Ofelia adds. “But we couldn’t be bothered going back down to get it, and you had oranges in your fridge.”

“Hadbeing the operative word.” I eye my bare refrigerator shelves and close the door again. “Come on, Mickey. Looks like I’ll be hitting the café at work. Have you got your gym bag?”

“Yep.” He closes his laptop and jumps off his stool. After only two months training with Dimitry and me, he’s already begun filling out. He moves with an athletic confidence, no longer the gangly, awkward kid who couldn’t look me in the eye. He’s swapped his glasses for contacts and cropped back the floppy curls so his eyes are actually visible. Mickey won’t ever be a jock, but going by the way the girls who came over for Ofelia’s sixteenth birthday sleepover last week ogled him, I don’t think he’ll be reduced to creating an avatar when it comes to getting laid in a few years.

“Hey,” Ofelia says as we reach the door. “Don’t forget that stuff you said you’d do for my project.”

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