Page 64 of Secret Baby for the Bratva Boss

“Hm?”

Heat rises to my face. I get a flash of that dark night, of the fog and the gunshot, of two bare-chested male bodies, locked in a fight to the death. Nearly to the death of them both. “I get scared you won’t come back.”

“I will always come back.” He takes my face firmly in one hand, turning it, so I’m forced to meet his hard eyes. “This is my home, now. Russia is only an obligation.”

“I know that,” I say, brushing his dark curls from his eyes. He’s grown tan in an American summer, even a northeastern one, and it gives him a rakish, cologne-ad look. Especially today, with his beard trimmed close and neat. He’s wearing a white linen shirt, short-sleeved, that shows off his arms. I try not to stare. “I miss you anyway, and I worry.”

“I know that you do. I’ll be on call every minute of it, as always.” He means it. I’ve never lost contact with him, even for an hour.

When he first started going back to Russia for work—less of the kind of work he used to do, but not completely divorced from it, either—I stayed up nights, anxious, biting my nails,tossing and turning until morning. But he’s gone enough now that I sleep well, and sometimes I even forget what he’s doing over there. What we both agreed he must still do, for all of our sakes. There was a time when he wanted to give it all up. But as tempting as it was, I knew, in my heart, that that life was still a part of him. Maybe it won’t always be, but it is now. And there were loose ends to be tied up, anyway.

I couldn’t ask him to leave it all behind—his history, his family, his father’s legacy. There are elements of his criminal past that can’t just be thrown out. It’s not so simple as that, and I never expected it to be. And now, somehow, through this place and the time that’s passed and raising our son together, we’ve managed to carve out an equilibrium. It’s a rare thing that I feel unsafe. And I firmly believe the same of our son.

“Kat,” says Aleks softly, drawing me back to the moment, to the sweet, tender peace of it. “Are you happy?”

Am I happy?I bend my head and kiss him, feeling a sweet chill at the way his palm presses into and then strokes my back: from the place between my shoulder blades to the very base of my spine. Heat blooms between my legs, and the wine is dancing in me, and I think of what we’ll do when the sun goes down and Adam has gone to bed. I think of his mouth, and the trails of fire it will leave on every inch of my body. I think of his arms around me, his heat pressed into me, his tongue in my mouth.

And I think of how he holds me after, every single time; how he strokes my hair until I fall asleep, how he whispers, his lips against my ear:I love you, and then in Russian, and then in English again,Kat, I love you.

Am I happy? I brush the dark curls back from his eyes. “I have never been happier,” I say, a little surprised at the emotion in my voice, and how it trembles. “Never, in my entire life.”

His eyes dance, softening. Russia forgotten, a thing for another day. Now is a moment for us, the three of us, with our home here on the hill, the home I bought and Aleks rebuilt for me; our paradise. Our own little world, with its sacrifices and its compromises and all of its gains.

“How do you think he’s doing?” I ask after a while. We sit as we were, with me on his lap, my arms draped around his neck and my cheek resting on his shoulder. A warm dry breeze has risen up from the woods, and the evening is cooling, the first purple strokes beginning to appear along the far line of the horizon.

Adam is playing on the fence, reaching over to pet the velvet nose of one horse, then the next, then the third. Each waits patiently, their wise eyes amused. Adam’s face is free of worry, his eyes bright, shadows cast out. It hasn’t always been this way.

“I think he’s doing brilliantly,” says Aleks, stroking my hair. “He was so young when it happened.”

“Not young enough,” I lament.

“No. Not young enough.” I hear what he doesn’t say:The alternative was that much darker.And he would be right for that, I know. “But he’s strong, like his mother. And stubborn, and clever. And children are so resilient, Kat; he’ll grow up with steel in his spine, but he’s still a child. Look at him. He’s carefree. He’s happy. Innocent as he ever was.”

That eases my worries, just a little; but still, as happy I am that Adam is doing well, I’m glad not to be looking after him alone. I know I could do it. But that isn’t what I want. And it’s not what would have been best. What’s best is the three of us, just like this; together. And we fought for that, like hell.

“He is happy,” I say softly. We watch him play until the stars come out, winking to life like wishes.

Later, when we’re in bed together naked, the sheets thrown off and the summer heat dry and on us like a blanket, I listen tohim breathe. He’s stroking a pattern on my bare shoulder. Once in a while, he bends to kiss it, and a prick of heat awakens in my belly. It’s late, the stars crossing the sky outside the window.

“This house is so big,” he murmurs after a while, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear. He kisses it, then my earlobe, then my neck, my jaw. “Sometimes I hear how empty it is at night.”

I turn onto my side, looking at him skeptically.

“Hm?” He asks, but his eyes glitter, and the smile he gives me is knowing. “What’s that look?”

I’ve brought it up before, in passing, once or twice. “Surely, Aleks, you’re not suggesting…”

He traces his fingers over the swell of my hip, up to my waist. Then slides his hand lower, his palm warm and rough against my flat belly. “Adam is nearly five now,” he says. “He’ll be too old to play with a little brother or sister soon, he’ll just think they’re in the way.”

My face heats. I feel myself grin, and I try to suppress it, but it’s no use. We’ve been waiting, maybe for stability, or maybe for the right time, or maybe just for the feeling. “Aleks…”

“You don’t want to?” He studies me, really asking.

“I want to,” I whisper. It feels like a wild thing, to say it out loud. “I think I’m ready to try.”

His smile is small, subtle as ever. But so rich with feeling, and so vulnerable and bare that it almost makes me want to cry.Husband,I think, as I sometimes do.What a wild word, husband. But he’s mine.

“We could try,” he suggests, his hand on my belly shifting ever so slightly downward. “Right now, even, we could try…it’s never too soon.”

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