“She was an assassin, lisichka.”
I shake my head, naked in my sin. I killed a woman. “It’s not for me to pass judgment. That’s only for God, Viktor.”
He hauls me up and pushes me against the wall. “You will stop with this talk of God! God knows nothing.”
“God knows everything.”
He heaves out a breath, nostrils flaring. I should be frightened, but so much about him is deeply familiar, this man, so tortured and distraught. I fight to see him for what he is—a thug, a killer. I shouldn’t feel bad for him. I shouldn’t feel breathless in his arms.
A man shouldn’t hold a woman to the wall, eyes wild, breath ragged, and be beautiful while he does it.
“Your god doesn’t know you—not like I do.” His heat grows. He thrums with intensity, scruffy cheeks glinting in the light of the bedside lamp. He hasn’t shaved.
He forgets to shave when he’s upset. The thought bubbles up in from nowhere and makes me want to take his head to my breast and comfort him. I tell myself it means nothing. Men are pathetic creatures who forget to shave when upset. It’s nothing. I don’t know him.
“Your god will never know you as I do, Tanechka, and he’ll never, ever love you as I do.”
“You’re wrong.” I push him away and stand on my own, panting. “God loves me unconditionally. Do you?”
“Yes!”
“Unless I’m a nun.”
“I love you for who you are.” Still his gaze bores into me.
The thought comes to me that he’ll do something crazy now. He’s like a song—I know every note before it is sung. I brace myself.
Snarling, he grabs either side of his white shirt and rips it open, revealing his hard, muscular chest, spattered with dark hair. I see the inky swirls and letters over his heart, the tattoo to match mine: “Tanechka + Viktor.” “You have the same.”
I clutch the fabric at my breast.
“No.” He pushes my arms away, grabs my collar, and rips my robe down the middle. The tattoo peeks out from under the cotton shift that covers my thin slip. With a look of horror he yanks the shift down to reveal the entirety of the tattoo. “They tried to bleach it. Who did this? Not the nuns. The men at Valhalla? Who touched you?”
I try to push him away. I fail.
“Who? I’ll kill him.”
“Then I won’t tell you.”
“I’ll kill them all.” He traces it with a trembling finger. “Did it hurt?”
“No.”
“This is how they knew your name.”
“Leave me.”
“They couldn’t get rid of it completely.”
“They would’ve, and I was glad. I wanted it gone.” The sisters liked to pretend it wasn’t there, as did I. Another life, another person.
I stiffen as Viktor draws his head to my chest and presses his lips to the tattoo, leaves them pressed there over my pounding heart.
I try to push him away. It’s like pushing a mountain.
“God doesn’t know you like I do, or he’d love everything about you.” He presses his lips to my shoulder, to the to the upper curve of my breast as he says this, as if he’d speak directly to my heart. “He’d love everything you are. If God knew you like I did, he’d be crazy in love with you.”
“I killed a person, Viktor. God can never love that.”
With a growl he draws away, dark eyes even wilder, and tears my shift in two, so that I’m only in a scanty slip.
In a flash, I see myself driving my fist into his jaw. I resist the impulse; I cover myself with my free hand instead.
I wish I were a snake, that I could shed this body, this mind. Because I don’t just imagine hitting him; I imagine hitting him and then pulling him to me, touching him, feeling him.
“Viktor, please.”
He pushes the remaining bits of robe and shift over my right shoulder, so that it’s like a coat half-on, revealing my slip.
“No.” I push at him futilely, garments hanging from my other shoulder. I fear he’ll rip my slip off, too, and take my nipple in my mouth. The image spears me with warmth. I hate it. I shouldn’t think such things. How could I think such things?
I brace myself, waiting for him to rip my slip off.
He doesn’t.
Instead, he sets his finger on a scar at the far side of my collarbone. Was this his goal? To reveal this scar? And not my nipple?
“Did you ever notice how many of your scars are crosshatched, Tanechka?”
I pant, too aware of the familiarity of his fingers to make sense of his words.
“Have you noticed?”
“I don’t think about them. The scars are ugly reminders of another life.”
“They’re beautiful.” He grabs my arm and jerks it up so that I’m face to face with another ugly scar, this one on the underside of my forearm. “This one, too. Crosshatched. Look at it, Tanechka! You will look at it!”