So I sat back in my chair instead of following him. Idly, I looked around the sitting room, which was now my home, after all. I imagined myself cozied up beneath a soft blanket in one of the couches facing the drape-covered windows.
That wouldn’t be bad at all.
If circumstances were different, I might have liked being here, in this space. But, despite things being the way they were, I couldn’t say I hated the calm and private energy the whole place gave off.
“Are you sore?”
Mikhail’s voice startled me back to sitting upright.
“What?” I asked, hoping he had said something other than what I thought I heard.
He came to lean against the dining table, his body just inches away from my hand on the table.
“It was your…first time. I should have asked earlier, but I woke up before you, and I had to get started with work. And…and I couldn’t wake you. It hasn’t come up since,” he explained, sighing.
I had never heard Mikhail stumble over his words. Never.
Is the all-powerful mafia boss rambling? Is he nervous? Anxious? Uneasy?
“Yeah, it hasn’t,” I replied as it was clear he was waiting for me to say something.
“So…are you?” he prompted, his eyes on me like they were on a mission to search out how sore I was.
“Oh, a bit. But, I’ll be fine,” I answered, looking away, finding out he wasn’t the only one feeling uneasy.
“I’m sorry. I should have been more gentle,” he muttered.
There was something delicate about his expression that made me place my hand on his knee as I told him, “It’s always like that the first time. It’s not anything you did. Or didn’t do.”
I hadn’t expected his hand to come over mine as he nodded at me, but it did just that. And the heat my hand was trapped between heated up other parts of me, like my face and a lot lower.
“Talking about it makes…”
…me feel exposed to you.
“Let’s just not talk about it,” I concluded, shaking my head.
“Why should we talk about it when we can just do it? Everywhere. On every flat surface. Anytime.”
His heated gaze on my face and his low voice made it hard not to imagine what he was describing.
I pulled my hand from beneath his, pretending to adjust the collar of the shirt I was wearing.
“Let’s see a movie. Or two,” he opined, smiling.
“Or three,” I added, chuckling.
“I’ll order lunch. No cooking, just relaxing like a honeymooning couple.”
Right. We were that now.
“But you have work to do. I…”
“The empire won’t come crashing down because of my absence. I don’t have much to do today, anyway,” he uttered, going ahead of me into the sitting room.
“Okay.”
I sat on the three-seater leather sofa facing the television as he went to pick up the remote control. Then he picked a smaller remote control from the center table as he approached the sofa. Plopping down right beside me, he sat back, his cotton T-shirt riding up a little to show the band of his Calvin Klein boxers.
