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I’d faced in America. So now I was his wife. He would take care of me, he said. But it would come at a cost. He hadn’t spelled it out, but there’d been no need. All men expected sex. So now, I was once again mentally preparing myself to give up my body in exchange for what I required to survive.
    Only sex , I reminded myself. It was only sex. Nothing more. Just my body. I can get through this.
    He closed the door behind us, and I clutched my purse tighter to my side. It was a habit. A safety reflex, I supposed. It wasn’t likely he would steal the few things I had inside it, and there was no one else here.
    “There’s another room in here,” Razor said, guiding me to a bedroom to the left of the main living area. It was opposite the master suite, where he’d clearly been spending his nights, if the strewn clothes and the open, half-empty suitcase on the floor were any indication. “If you want to sleep in here…” He left the words hanging in the air between us.
    He was giving me a way out.
    No, not a way out. A reprieve. He was granting me time to adjust to being married to him before he made use of my body.
    That wouldn’t help anything. All it would accomplish would be to put off the inevitable. No, it would be better to get it over and done with, let him fuck me now. Not that I thought he would be happy with fucking me for only tonight, but going through with it now would give me a better idea of what to expect from him in the future. Rip off the Band-Aid .
    I stopped before we reached the second bedroom and spun around to face him. Then I wished I hadn’t, because we were chest to chest, nose to nose—or really more nose to Adam’s apple—and he didn’t back up. Not even a half a step. Like so many other men before him, he didn’t appear to have any qualms about being in my space. He might as well belong there.
    I swallowed hard and took a small step back, trying to regain my focus. “No. I sleep with you tonight. We took tests. Both clean. I will sleep with you.” That was why I’d insisted on getting that part done now, after all.
    Razor didn’t answer immediately. He stared at me instead, the same way he had earlier. Like he was trying to see inside me. Like he wanted to know what I was thinking.
    I couldn’t let that happen. Not for him or anyone.
    “All right,” he finally said. “I’m not going to lie and say I don’t want you in my bed, but I’m not going to force you to be there. So if you’re really sure—”
    “I’m sure. I want you to fuck me.” And, to prove my point, I slowly licked my lips before biting down on the lower one, fluttering my eyelids at him. Never mind the fact that it was an outright lie. I didn’t want Razor to fuck me. I didn’t want anyone to fuck me. But what I wanted didn’t matter. I’d learned that lesson a long time ago, and there wasn’t a chance in hell I would forget it any time soon. That wasn’t the way the world worked.
    His eyes followed the path of my tongue and settled on my lower lip, darkening with lust the way men’s eyes always did.
    But he didn’t touch me. He didn’t push me against the wall. He didn’t rip my clothes off me or put his mouth all over me or do any of the things I had come to expect. Granted, he was a real man, not a porn star, and this was a real sexual encounter and not something performed to a script. Maybe my expectations weren’t fully in line with reality.
    “In Russia,” he said after a moment, his head cocked to the side, “what’s the nickname for Viktoriya? What would someone call you if they cared about you?”
    There wasn’t anyone left who cared about me, but I brushed that aside. It would be better to stick to what he’d asked, try to play by his rules even though I didn’t know what they were.
    “Vichka,” I replied, giving him the name Papa had used for so long.
    “Vichka,” he repeated, letting the diminutive roll off his tongue. He brought one hand forward and touched mine, only a