“Then what is it?”

She lifted her head. Raw fear and uncertainty burned behind her beautiful eyes. “I plan things. I’m methodical. Logical. I’ve been raised to be that way since I can remember. But in the last three weeks, my life has gone from routine days at work and take-out dinners, to romance with a man who doesn’t do subtle or slow, a world I have no clue how to navigate and a possible murderer nosing into my life. It’s a lot, Kir, and I don’t know how to handle it.”

She had a point. Several of them, actually. And if he hadn’t been so focused on logistics and his own fears, he might have seen them for himself. “You are right.” He released her hand and turned into Sergei’s driveway.

“I am?”

He nodded, put the car in park and faced her. “I cannot change who I am and the way I was raised any more than you. I will not ignore the threat to you and will ask that, where your safety is concerned, you will exercise patience, but I will endeavor to give you time to adjust to our relationship.”

Her frown would have been comical if the topic at hand didn’t have him so vexed. “You say that like we’d agreed to marry each other last night. We’re dating. Not marching down a path to matrimony.”

Oh, yes, they were. It might have taken some verbal bludgeoning from Sergei and Roman to get him to realize what a good thing he’d found, but now that he’d acknowledged it, he wasn’t letting her go.

Still, he wasn’t stupid. “You are the first relationship I’ve entered into. I would not take such an action lightly.”

Her eyebrows hopped high. “I’m your first girlfriend?”

Girlfriend? Such a paltry representation for what he wanted from her. For what he envisioned for them both. “Yes, malyshka. You are my first.”

And my last.

The admission seemed not only to calm her, but painted her features with an open wonder. “That’s...” Her gaze roamed his face. “How is that even possible?”

Because he’d never allowed himself to consider such emotional exposure. Because he’d never met a woman worth the risk, and certainly had never experienced even a tenth of the connection he shared with her with anyone else. He cupped the side of her face and traced the line of her cheekbone. “That’s a long story better shared another time.”

“But you’ll share it with me?”

He didn’t want to. Didn’t want to relive the details himself, let alone share it with a woman whose opinion of him mattered so much. But a partnership built without trust was no partnership at all. “Yes, vozlyublennaya. After you’re settled.”

He helped her from the car, the tense preoccupation that had gripped her the whole drive replaced with a keen awareness of her surroundings. A thorough study of the men who gathered her luggage from his car. Noting the men stationed around the grounds and appreciating the splendor of the estate itself. Nothing escaped her scrutiny. Though, when he guided her to the carriage house rather than the main building, he did seem to catch her off guard.