I SAT THERE PANTING, close to hysteria. I couldn’t taste blood, but one of my teeth ached and throbbed and if I didn’t find some way to explain, Maxsim might come back and it all might start again. I gripped his hands. His face swam behind my tears, but I could see him: that other Konstantin, the one who loved me. The man he’d been before something tore his life apart and left him so utterly cold. A normal man who just wanted normal things: not an empire, but a wife, a job, a family….

I suddenly realized what the gadget reminded me of.

“It was a—a p—pregnancy test,” I sobbed.

He froze. The guilt washed over his face, obliterating any last traces of suspicion. “What?” he whispered.

“I missed a pill,” I sobbed, my throat raw from screaming. “And I was worried and I needed to do the test and our bathroom was being cleaned and so I thought of the bathroom in your office, it was just for a minute—”

He had his hand over his mouth in horror. “But why didn’t you just tell me?”

“Because I was scared!” The fear was recent enough and real enough that I didn’t have to fake the emotion. “I thought you’d be mad that I’d messed up! And then you were angry and you brought me here and he was hurting me, he was—”

Konstantin suddenly grabbed me and wrapped me up in his arms. I pressed my face to his chest and it all came out in huge, wracking sobs, my tears soaking his shirt. The emotions were real, the fear and the hurt. The fact I was chewing myself up on the inside for lying to him only made me cry harder.

At last, he gently released me and pushed back so that he could look at me. “I wouldn’t have been angry, if you’d told me about the test.” He took my hands again and squeezed them. “I don’t ever want you to be scared of me again.”

I nodded, still shaky.

“Christina,” he said quietly. “Are you pregnant?”

And I drew in my breath because, even though he was doing everything he could to make his voice level and neutral, I could still hear the hope in it. There was a part of him, buried deep and never normally revealed, that really, really wanted a family.

“No,” I whispered. The guilt was slowly ripping my heart in two. “The test was negative.”

He nodded quickly but I saw the flash of disappointment in his eyes. Then he was gently lifting me out of the chair and cradling me against his chest. He carried me like that all the way to the car, ignoring Maxsim’s questions and just barking Home at Grigory. He held me like that the entire way home and then carried me up to our bedroom.

He set me down on the bed only long enough to run me a bath. Then he carefully undressed me and lowered me into it, kneeling beside me while he gently washed the sweat from my body and the hot water eased the tension in my muscles. The pain in my tooth was starting to ease, but he gave me a painkiller to help. Then he wrapped me in a fluffy towel and dried me, and only then did he lay me on the bed and make slow, tender love to me.

It was the first time we’d been properly private: there was no earpiece anymore, no one listening. When he whispered in Russian and English in my ear, it felt intimate on a whole new level. I hadn’t realized how important it is to have secrets.

The feeling started when he kissed me. It got stronger as he fucked me and became a certainty as we came together. As he spooned me in the darkness, I knew.

I’d had enough.

I loved this man.

I was on his side, now. It wasn’t me and the FBI versus him, anymore. It was me and him versus them.

For the first time, I dared to think it: what if I just never go back?

That’s crazy. I couldn’t just... could I?

I pulled his arm tighter around me. As I drifted off to sleep, I didn’t know what I was going to do, but I knew I wouldn’t betray him again.

But when I woke, a storm was howling outside... and he was gone.