Page 103 of House of Lies
CHAPTER 66
Caelia
It’s temporary.
I love how my heart skips a beat in his presence or when I think about him, how I can sense his proximity before laying eyes on him, and how I find solace in falling asleep in his arms, feeling safe.
But it’s temporary.
It has to be.
Spending time with his sister has been nice, even if only for a few minutes. She’s been asleep for the past few hours, and I don’t think we’ll see her again until tomorrow. It’s also been a pleasant change to communicate without struggling to understand each other. I’m doing my best to learn Russian, but progress is slow. It doesn’t help that Kaz always manages to distract me whenever he offers to help. Either he’s a terrible teacher, or I’m a horrible student. I still haven’t met the rest of his family, except for Vanya, whom I haven’t seen recently. We’ve had dinner and taken a shower, and now I’m applying lotion on my legs when the door opens. Kaz smirks instantly.
“Don’t stop on my account,” he says, stepping in and closing the door behind him.
“I wasn’t going to. But please do it,” I tease.
He takes off his jacket and sits on the bed.
“Come here,” he says, grabbing the body lotion from my hand and wrapping his fingers around my ankle.
I place my heel on his knee. Kaz rolls up his sleeves and pours some lotion into his palms. We should resume selling this marriage only outside the bedroom, but it’s impossible.
“Katarina is still out,” he says. “Dedushka stopped by my aunt’s for the night. They’ll arrive first thing in the morning, and Anya will be here around noon.”
“So, you’re mine for the night?”
“I’m always yours, solnyshko.”
God, his words. They either make my body ache or make my heart race. He massages the lotion into my skin.
“Why are you calling me ‘little sun’?”
It was the first thing I looked up once I no longer felt like a prisoner.
“It’s what my father used to call us when we were kids. And he called Anya that her entire life. There’s something else, but I think you might freak out if I tell you.”
“I’ll try not to.”
He motions for me to give him my other leg. I oblige as he contemplates whether his secret is worth sharing.
“I’ve promised no more lies, and you’ve asked why I’m doing all of this, so maybe you should know.”
“I should know what?”
His fingers move up and down my thigh—too slow, too careful.
“You got me through all the dark nights while I was in prison.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I went to prison when I was twenty-five. I was twenty-one when Sevastyan told me that Ermanno had killed my father. Anyway, he came up with this plan for revenge. I was supposed to study Mattia and learn to become him. And I did, but right before I was ready to go to New York, I got arrested. We’ve been monitoring Mattia. Everything he did was reported back to me. I still had one more year to serve when you married him.”
He had mentioned the plan to impersonate Mattia while I was in the hospital, but he never went into so much detail.
“You knew about our marriage?”
“Yes and no.” I raise an eyebrow. “I knew you married him, but Sevastyan was looking into it, and he never told me about the abuse. I thought you were happily married.” I let out a bitter laugh. “I know.” He takes a deep breath. “I should have looked into it.”