Just before I grabbed the shower door handle to open it up, Nikolai clasped my hand, raised it above my head, and spun me like a ballroom dancer.
I ended up with my bare backside pressed against the cold marble, and Nicolai pinning my hand above me to the wall while leaning in to stare down at me. “It’s been quite a day, hasn’t it?”
I clutched that towel. “Do you mean because I woke up this morning married to a guy I fully intended to ditch, but then somehow ended up with all this going on? Because, yeah, it’s been a heck of a day.”
A bit of a smile ghosted across his mouth, and he leaned down and kissed me, a slow, succulent kiss that tingled and soothed me all the way to the tips of my toes.
My fingers snarled in the loosened towel.
Then he kissed me more lightly, and then lighter still, then at the top of my forehead, and then he straightened. “Then go shower, little angel. We’ll save some things for tomorrow.”
I was way,waytoo interested in what those other things were. “But not the contract. We need to talk about the contract tonight.”
“Shower. Now.”
As I trembled under his arm, I was so absolutely exhausted that my legs were filled with noodles. With his massive, muscular body looming over me, I yawned.
It was a surprise yawn that snuck up on me, and I over-yawned with my whole face. I must’ve looked like a snake dislocating its jaw to eat something much bigger than its head, like a goat.
When my nose and upper lip got out of the way so I could see again, Nicolai’s gentle smile had turned into something more amused. “We can end evenings earlier if you’re tired.”
“Oh, no. I’m okay. I’ve been staying up late at night a lot lately.” Because sleeping in my car when it was dark outside had been too dangerous. “Hey, we finished the wedding ceremony right about three a.m. last night. We’ve been married for a whole day.”
Nicolai took my left hand in his and lifted it. The brush of his lips over my knuckles near our wedding rings was gentle, but his bright blue eyes were trained on mine the whole time. “Well then, happy twenty-four-hour anniversary, Mrs. Romanov.”
After what had happened in the car, and in the bed, standing in the misty steam with him kissing my knuckles seemed too serious. “One down, three hundred sixty-four days to go, huh?”
He turned my hand over and kissed the underside of my wrist, then looked up at me with those crystal-blue eyes of his. “That’s the plan. Three hundred sixty-four to go.”
CHAPTER 26
the new jersey contract clauses
NICOLAI
Three hundred sixty-four days to go.
And I am already falling for her.
Twenty-four damnedhourswith her, and my world is turning, orienting on her like she is my compass.
After setting the temperature and flow parameters on the shower stall’s control screen embedded in the wall, I stepped in and held out my arm to check the water. I couldn’t let my little angel get burned or chilled.
Pleasantly warm water cascaded over my palm and fingers, a handful of warmth that dripped away, and then I handed her in. “Let me know if you want me to adjust, or there should be a smaller screen in there. Tap the red arrow for warmer.”
She pivoted slightly on her bare little feet as she walked into the long shower stall, her yellowish blond hair hanging over the bright white towel wrapped around her. The glass door drifted shut behind her.
Twenty-four fucking hours, and I wanted to suck her soft little toes and watch her moan.
But it had been twenty-fourintensehours, and yes, that was how I wasrationalizing it.
Lexi had seen me at my most vulnerable,literallydrunkenly vulnerable to attack or kidnapping or compromising photos or getting run over where I’d passed out in the street, or anything else.
Her kindness toward an idiot drunken stranger was incomprehensible.
That day, I’d talked to Lexi about what must’ve been one of the worst days of her life, when that dumbass fool jilted her at the altar, and seen deeper emotions in her than I had in my so-called friends whom I’d known for decades.
If I’d spent twenty-four hours with her as a series of eight dates that had lasted three hours each, speaking and listening and negotiating and finally touching each other, it wouldn’t have been hard to believe that I was falling for her.
