Chapter 117: I like the view

"Viktor!" Sienna’s face went fully red now, embarrassment burning hot all the way to her ears. She yanked the blanket back up over her lap as if it could somehow shield her from how thoroughly he’d just read her.

"What do you want? It’s still early in the morning."

"Well," he said, entirely unbothered by her scandalized tone, rocking back slightly on his heels, "I came to pick up my wife, so we could go on our honeymoon."

Sienna blinked at him. "Honeymoon? Seriously?" She let out a short, disbelieving laugh, dragging a hand through her sleep-mussed hair.

"After everything? You think this is a joke?" Her voice rose, some of the fear she’d been carrying since the wedding finally finding an outlet. "Are you not worried about what Aliya, her father, and your stepmother could do to us?"

Something shifted in Viktor’s expression the teasing didn’t vanish exactly, but it settled beneath something harder, steadier.

He took a step closer, and when he spoke, his voice had dropped into that low register he used only when he meant every word.

"You keep forgetting who you married." He said it simply, without arrogance, the way other men might state the weather.

"Those people are nothing. I could crush them under my feet if I wanted to." His gaze held hers, steady, unblinking, until she almost believed the world really was that simple in his hands.

"Your bags are already packed. Everything you need is ready. I have a surprise for you." The smile crept back in, softer now.

"Go on. Take a shower, come out looking pretty, and we’ll start our journey."

It should have sounded like an order. It was an order, dressed up in a smile too sweet to argue with the particular manner of a man who was used to being obeyed, but who wanted, at least with her, to be something closer to indulged.

Sienna exhaled, feeling the fight drain slowly out of her shoulders despite herself. "Let me guess," she said, dry. "I don’t have a choice, do I?"

"If you put it that way," Viktor said, that smug smile blooming fully now, warm and unrepentant, "then no. You don’t have a choice. You’re going." He checked an imaginary watch on his bare wrist, entirely for effect.

"Get ready, you have five minutes."

And with that, he turned and left the bedroom, the door clicking shut softly behind him, giving her the space to get ready and giving her, too, a few precious moments alone to press a hand over her too-fast heart and wonder, not for the first time, how a man she was supposed to despise had somehow become the only person whose smile she found herself waiting for.

"This is bad," she murmured to the empty room, but there was no real conviction left in it. Only the quiet, terrifying thrill of a heart that had already stopped listening to her better judgment.

Sienna sighed long and heavy, the kind of sigh that admitted defeat before the fight had even properly started, and pulled her legs over the side of the bed.

The cool morning air of the room brushed against her bare ankles as she padded toward the bathroom, her mind still tangled in the wreckage of the dream she couldn’t quite outrun.

The shower helped, a little. She stood under the hot water longer than she needed to, letting it beat against the back of her neck, trying to rinse away the memory of Viktor’s hands sliding along her skin in a place that only existed behind her closed eyes. It didn’t fully work. Nothing about that man seemed to fully wash away these days.

When she stepped out, wrapped in a towel and dripping onto the tile, she caught her own reflection in the mirror flushed cheeks, damp hair curling at her temples and made a decision right then and there.

She was not going to look pretty for him.

Not after that dream. Not after the way her body had betrayed her all night, aching for a man she was supposed to resent.

If Viktor wanted a wife who came downstairs glowing and soft and pretty, dressed up like some offering for his honeymoon plans, he was going to be sorely disappointed. Let him have his surprise. She was bringing her own.

She pulled on a pair of sweatpants, soft and shapeless, tugged a plain jacket over her head, and laced up a battered pair of sneakers she hadn’t worn since before the wedding. No makeup. No perfume. Hair scraped back into a simple, unbothered knot.

It was, in her opinion, the least bride-going-on-her-honeymoon she had ever looked in her life, and there was a petty, satisfied little thrill in that.

She came down the stairs bracing herself for his reaction disappointment, maybe, or that particular flatness he got when something didn’t go his way.

Instead, Viktor looked up from where he leaned against the banister, and smiled.

It wasn’t the smile she’d expected. There was no offense in it, no wounded pride at being defied. If anything, there was something almost delighted in the way his eyes moved over her, the sweatpants, the jacket, the sneakers, the deliberate lack of effort in all of it like she’d handed him something unexpectedly funny and endearing at the same time.

"I wasn’t expecting that kind of outfit," he said, straightening up, tilting his head as he studied her. "But I think this will do."

Before she could ask what exactly this will do meant, he crossed the last few steps between them, bent at the waist, and hoisted her clean over his shoulder.

"Viktor!" She yelped, palms slapping instinctively against his back as the world tipped sideways, the floor swinging up and away beneath her.

He straightened easily, as if her weight were nothing at all, one arm braced securely across the back of her thighs, and started walking, entirely unbothered, out of the room.

"I could walk, you know," Sienna said, glaring uselessly at the back of his shirt, since it was the only part of him she could currently see.

"I know." His voice was warm with amusement, utterly unrepentant. "But I think I like the view when you’re on my shoulders."