Not that this negates my stupidity and lack of self-control.
 
 Carefully, I pull out and lower her to her feet, searching her face for signs of distress.“Alinyonok…” My voice is tight with self-loathing.“Did I hurt you?”
 
 She blinks up at me, her jade eyes soft and hazy.“No… I mean, kind of, but in a good way.”
 
 Fuck.I knew it.I’m everything she’s accused me of being: a selfish monster.
 
 Like your father, a voice deep within whispers, but I shut it out.
 
 Even on my worst day, I’m not like him.
 
 I will never be like him.
 
 But Iama fucking animal when it comes to my wife.
 
 My fresh-out-of-cancer-treatment wife.
 
 “Let’s get cleaned up, and I’ll let you rest,” I say, mentally kicking myself as I guide her back into the shower, where I swiftly strip off my clothes and throw them on the mat outside the stall before turning on the water.
 
 I wish it were cold water, but she doesn’t deserve to be punished for the craving awakening in me again even as guilt eats me alive.So I make the water warm and ignore my growing erection.I will wash her as chastely as any nun?—
 
 “I don’t want to rest,” she says huskily when I face her, soap in hand.
 
 And before I can say another word, she drops to her knees in front of me and takes my cock into her mouth.
 
 Chapter18
 
 Alina
 
 Iwake up sore, satisfied, and happier than I can recall being in years.Only a faint echo of a headache pulses behind my temples when I open my eyes and stretch, feeling like a well-fucked cat.
 
 Or a woman who’s been told she’ll live, and whose husband demonstrated several times yesterday exactly how much he still wants her.
 
 It’s insane how much better I feel this morning.Maybe it’s the orgasms, all five or six of them, or maybe I just slept better here than at the clinic, but the strange emotions of yesterday and my illogical response to the good news are muted, more of a memory than something that currently weighs on me.I can actually feel the joy and relief that I should’ve experienced when the doctor told me I’m in remission, even if a part of me is still afraid the cancer will return.
 
 I don’t know if that fear will ever go away, but I can live with it.
 
 Because the treatment worked, and I’m going tolive.
 
 Grinning from ear to ear, I leap out of bed—only to wince at the pulling soreness deep inside.
 
 Yeah, okay, there’s a chance I may have overdone it yesterday.I mean, I all but forced Alexei to have sex with me again.And again.And again.Not that there was much force involved—all I needed to do was touch him, and he took over from there—but still, that’s not something I ever imagined I’d do.
 
 I’m still not ready to put a label on the way I feel about the man who’d manipulated my life for a decade and forced me into marriage, but it’s no longer as simple as resentment and hate.
 
 Maybe it never was.
 
 I grab a robe and am about to head to the bathroom when my gaze falls upon a phone.
 
 And a laptop.
 
 Both are sitting pretty on the nightstand, right there within my reach.
 
 What the hell?
 
 Cautiously, I pick up the phone.It’s the latest Samsung model, with a nice, big screen.
 
 A screen that’s locked, of course.