Total pages in book: 71
Estimated words: 66833 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 334(@200wpm)___ 267(@250wpm)___ 223(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 66833 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 334(@200wpm)___ 267(@250wpm)___ 223(@300wpm)
I bet that kind of reputation could be an asset in certain business circles. Also, I wonder how much of said reputation is due to their father. Alexei is only thirty, and Ruslan is even younger, so it’s possible that most, if not all, of the brutal deeds attributed to the Leonovs can be laid at the feet of one Boris Leonov.
Then again, maybe I’m just grasping at straws to justify my growing reliance on my husband and my increasing attachment to him. I hate to admit it, but I now crave his presence as much as I do his touch—and the latter not necessarily in a sexual way.
He’s getting me addicted to him, dependent on him in much the same way that I’d once been dependent on the painkillers that helped my headaches. With him at my side, it’s easy to keep my word and not abuse the meds I now have such easy access to. I don’t need the meds because he’s my pain relief, my stress reducer, my distraction from the anxiety that would otherwise consume me alive.
With Alexei, my illness is more than manageable.
At times, it’s almost… pleasant.
My mornings start with a kiss and a gentle neck massage, followed by a breakfast of my favorite foods that he spoon-feeds to me, same as most of my meals. I don’t know why I allow this, but I do—and for some reason, his feeding me helps me keep the food down despite the still-present nausea. On the one day I tried eating by myself like the grown-up I am, I threw up immediately, so I haven’t tried again. Not only does his spoon-feeding me seem to be easier on my stomach, but the way he looks at me as he places each bite into my mouth makes me feel like my old self.
Wanted. Desired. Dangerously so.
My body may be battling a deadly disease, but it still responds to the dark heat in his eyes, to the scorching pull between us that nothing seems able to extinguish.
Not that he ever acts on that pull. He’s careful with me nowadays, much too careful for my liking. It’s as if he’s afraid I’ll break if he does anything more than give me a tender kiss. I won’t break, but I don’t know how to convince him of that—or if I should. After all, this is a marriage I didn’t want, the culmination of a betrothal forced upon me when I was just a child. Except, with each day, it’s getting harder to remember how it all began, to recall all the reasons why I shouldn’t let myself fall for this man who takes such tender care of me.
Is it all an act? If so, for what purpose? We’re already married. He has me where he’s always wanted me—and yet nothing is as I imagined it would be.
I try to think back to my parents and their relationship, back before it took its darkest turn. Did my father ever take care of my mother when she was sick? I was a child, so maybe I didn’t pay close attention, but I don’t think he did. For all his toxic obsession with her, I can’t recall a single instance when he so much as brought her a cup of tea while she was ill. In fact, I distinctly remember my mother being bedridden with pneumonia for a week when I was nine, and my father was entirely absent. I know that for a fact because I spent most of that week in my mother’s room, so worried about her that I refused to go to school or play with my friends. My brothers spent a lot of time at her bedside too, but not my father.
Supposedly, he had a lot of work that week.
I hadn’t given that incident a lot of thought—with the help of antibiotics, my mother recovered, and all was well—but now I can’t help but to dwell on it… and to analyze every other aspect of their relationship.
In the past, all I’d seen were the parallels between my father and Alexei, but what stands out to me now are the differences.
Differences that I uncover more of every day.
“Do you ever drink?” I ask Alexei on an impulse one morning while we’re waiting for the nurses to take me for a scan. “Like to the point of getting drunk?”
He considers it for a moment, then shakes his head. “Not really. As a teenager, I had too much vodka a couple of times, and I didn’t like the feeling. I prefer to be clear-headed and fully in control, so if I do have any alcohol, it’s usually a glass of wine or champagne with dinner.”
“How very non-Russian of you,” I say, half-jokingly, and he shrugs.
“That’s what my father always said.”
“Oh?” I’m extra intrigued now, as he hardly ever mentions the elder Leonov.