Page 38 of One For my Enemy

“Does it bother you,” Lev exhaled resignedly, “that you don’t know my last name?”

She stiffened slightly, pulling back to frown at him.

“You haven’t even asked me,” he pointed out, and she shrugged.

“Figured you’d tell me eventually,” she said, and leaned forward to kiss him again, only he paused her with a groan.

“I can’t do this,” he said, already furious with himself and rapidly growing more so once he’d managed to forcibly release her, taking a step back. “I want it too much, it’s too—you’retoo—”

“Fine,” Sasha sighed, rolling her eyes. Her lips were swollen and full and pink andfuck,he longed to kiss them again; had been longing to all night, plus every night before that. Every night since he’d met her, in fact. “Tell me who you are, then, if it’s so important.”

“You won’t like it,” he cautioned, and she frowned, her dark brow furrowing. “It’s not good, Sasha. It’s really not good.”

She blinked.

Blinked again. Ran the scenarios, he guessed.

Straightened. Evidence of failure.

Stiffened. Yes, she knew.

Scowled.

“You’re a Fedorov,” she said eventually, addressing him now as if he were a stranger. “You’re—you’re Lev Fedorov.”

For a second, they simply stared at each other.

“Don’t tell me anything,” Lev warned firmly. “If you and your sisters and your mother are up to something, don’t tell me. Don’t trust me.”

“I already don’t,” she said warily.

“Good,” he agreed. “And I can’t afford to trust you.”

“No,” she said. “No, you shouldn’t.”

He stood silently, wondering what to say next.

“Sasha, listen, I—”

“Does it matter?” she asked him, posing the question with a neutrality that jolted his thoughts to a halt. “That I’m an Antonova, I mean. Are you telling me you’re doing this because of my family? My name?”

“No,” he said honestly. “No. No, I—Sasha, I like you, none of this was a lie. Well,” he amended, “I couldn’t lie, could I? Because Ilikeyou,” he groaned, “like some kind of noble idiot—”

“Then why does it matter if you’re a Fedorov?” she said, taking a step towards him. “Let whatever’s between our families be between them. You certainly haven’t done anything to me, and I can ignore your surname for—oh, I don’t know,” she murmured, checking her watch, “the next fifteen minutes, anyway.”

Lev stared at her, somewhere between disbelief and distress. “But—”

“If you can check your secrets at the door,” she suggested, returning his hands to her hips, “then I can do the same.”

He shivered, bending his head towards her.

Somewhere, he knew, his brother was lying unconscious in a bed, and it was the fault of someone who bore the same name, the same loyalties, the same blood as the woman in his arms. Maybe someday he would learn that Sasha was just as ruthless as her sisters, just as hardhearted and cold.

But for now, in his arms, she felt likehis—and it wasn’t something he could ignore.

“This will be complicated,” he warned her, though it was meant to remind them both.

“Oh, definitely,” she agreed.

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