Page 93 of Ruinous Need
He finishes buttoning the shirt around my body and rolls back the cuffs so the shirt doesn’t cover my hands. He’s so muchtaller than me that it fits loose and reaches down to my mid-thigh, like a dress. I take a deep breath of the fabric, which has his charcoal scent throughout it.
Viktor steps back to look at me, tilting his head to the side. He undoes a few buttons and tugs the shirt off one of my shoulders. The neckline is just above my bra, leaving the hickeys he’s just left all over my neck on full display.
Then, trailing his hands down my body like it’s painful for him to stop touching me even for a second, he gets down on one knee.
“Viktor?” I can’t keep the tremors of shock out of my voice.
Taking my hand, he rips off the ring Semyon gave me and tosses it to the ground. The shrill noise echoes through the room. “You don’t need that anymore. But you do need this one.” He replaces it with a simple, diamond-studded engagement ring. My eyes are wide.
I can’t look away from the emotion showing on Viktor’s face, more than I’ve ever seen it. His black eyes are liquid with desire.
His throat bobs before he speaks. “Marry me, Lisette. We’ve got a priest. We’ve got a church full of people. Five minutes and we’re done and we never have to think about this damned ceremony again. You never have to plan another wedding or wait around for some asshole to ruin your life. We can start living our life. Together.”
I clasp my hands around his.
“And you love me? I guess?”
Viktor smiles then, his eyes crinkling at the edges as he runs a thumb over my cheek. “Of course I love you. I’ll never stop.”
CHAPTER 41
VIKTOR
SOMEHOW, DESPITE MY memories of this toxic house, having Lisette here helps. It’s not just the deep satisfaction of finally having her with me, with my ring on her finger and my baby in her belly — although that’s part of it.
Despite myself, despite the fact that I knew she didn’t love Semyon, that photo of her in a wedding dress threw me off.
Lisette explained that the photo was from three years ago, when she and her mother had gone to the first wedding dress fitting and tried to make the best of the fucked-up situation they were in. She didn’t understand how Semyon would have access to the picture, which led to me having to explain that the Bratva had her phone cloned for years.
With all that in the past, now it just feels easy and right to have her by my side.
Her smiles. Her laughter. Her cheerful presence.
She’s cleansing the place with her pureness and her absolute disregard for the traditions that the rest of us have been brought up with.
The giant stone building is becoming intertwined with new, happy memories. Like Lisette’s attempt to wash Chekhov in thebath instead of taking him to a dog groomer, which ended with water all over the hallways when he ran away. We had to launch a full-scale chase after the wet husky until the kitchen staff lured him in with treats.
Lisette’s growing belly and our child will only bring more light to chase away the dark.
The change she’s wrought over this place gives me the confidence that I can raise a child without the same twisted upbringing I had.
She doesn’t even know she’s doing it. She probably thinks she’s annoying me with all the interior decorating requests.
Little does she know that every dark piece of furniture she swaps out for simple honeyed wood, every rug that she sends to the second-hand shop — all of it lifts my mood. Until I barely recognize this place as the shadowy house where the worst years of my life played out.
Right now, she’s humming along to the music she’s blasting at full volume and making waffles. They’ve been one of her main pregnancy cravings, and she’s determined to get the recipe right at home.
We do have a whole team of cooking staff, but Lisette insists on cooking herself.
“I feel weird about having servants,” she says.
But she agreed to keep them on when she realized it would mean them losing their jobs if she didn’t. “Also, there’s no way I’m cooking if you have twenty people over for some boring meeting.”
“Such a bad wife. What did I even marry you for?”
“Definitely not the cooking skills.” Lisette gives me a misshapen waffle which isn’t quite cooked through, and flops into her own chair with a sigh. She prods the sunken waffle with a fork, her lips pursed. “I can never get the batter right.”
“Luckily there’s an excellent diner just down the road. Extra whipped cream?”
