I bend to grab a pack of glitter glue off a bottom shelf, and Kolya steadies my back when someone jostles past. His possessive gesture triggers an electric thrill within me. How can he exude danger while also being so chivalrous?
My brain scrambles for an explanation.
He’s just protective. Probably ex-military. He did say he works in private security. That’s why he’s so tense, so precise. He moves like a bodyguard because that’s what he is.
But my body has its own interpretation of his touches, his closeness.
I’m hyperaware of the subtle shifts in his breathing when we’re close. The way his eyes linger on my butt when I bend over.
It’s embarrassing how wet I’m getting in aisle five of Hobby Hut on a Saturday afternoon.
Almost as wet as last night, when he took me up against my own kitchen counter.
Which is the elephant in the room.
The thing we’re not talking about.
I try to concentrate on my shopping list. Red felt. Yellow felt. Orange felt. Cotton balls. Scissors with rounded tips. Themundane items ground me, providing a distraction from the man looming beside me, his presence a gravity that’s constantly pulling me off balance.
As I reach up to a high shelf, I finally gather my courage. “About last night.” Our fingers brush when he snags the pipe cleaners for me. Blushing, I avert my gaze. “That was…” I can’t possibly say “the hottest thing that’s ever happened to me,” so I pivot. “Is that…how you usually…?”
Kolya doesn’t answer.
The silence stretches. With my heart pounding in my throat, I glance over my shoulder.
His dark, impossibly deep eyes are fixed on me. “Only when I want something I shouldn’t. Otherwise, I prefer to take my time. See how far I can go.”
How far?
I nearly drop the pipe cleaners as my mind races with passages from my secret romance novels. All the things I’ve read about but never experienced.
All the things this man might do to me…with me…for me.
Insistent, demanding heat pulses between my legs.
“Oh.”
The intensity of his scorching stare weakens my knees. I wonder, vaguely, if being hypnotized feels like this. This inability to glance away, to break the connection even as warning bells clang in the back of one’s mind.
Before I can formulate the words to ask how far he wants to go, his focus shifts.
The playful moment vanishes, replaced by coiled anticipation.
The suddenness of the switch ices my skin.
I follow his gaze.
Two big men in dark clothes watch us from down the aisle. No shopping baskets, no lists clutched in their hands. They’reclearly not here for craft supplies. And they appear even more out of place than the two jerks in hoodies at the farmers market in seventy-five-degree weather.
One leans over to mutter to the other, their eyes never straying from us.
My lungs freeze. We should look the other way and not draw attention to ourselves.
Cling to the illusion of safety in normalcy.
I tug on Kolya’s jacket sleeve and force a feigned brightness into my voice. “Kolya?”
Chapter 11
