My heart starts hammering against my ribs.
The doorknob turns.
And Dimitri Volkov enters the room.
I stand automatically, my hands clenching in the fabric of my dress. My heart is pounding so hard I’m sure he can hear it.
He’s removed his jacket and tie and rolled up the sleeves of his white dress shirt to his elbows, exposing strong forearms marked with scars that tell stories of violence I don’t want to imagine.
The top buttons of his shirt are undone, revealing the hollow of his throat, the hint of more scars on his chest.
The sight of him less formal and more raw makes me weak in the knees even as I tryvery hardnot to notice how he moves.
How every step he takes is deliberate and controlled, like a hunter stalking prey.
So unlike Alexei.
He’s terrifying and I hate that I notice these things. I hate that despite everything, I can’t stop memorizing details about him—the way the white fabric pulls across his chest with each breath, the dark hair at his collar, the scars on his forearms that speak of violence.
“We’re only going to do this once to make it official,” he says without preamble. His voice is flat, matter-of-fact. “That’s all.”
That’s all. Like it’s nothing. LikeI’mnothing.
I nod because I can’t speak. I can’t trust my voice not to shake or break completely.
He approaches slowly, deliberately, and every instinct I have screams at me to back away, to run, to do anything but stand here and wait for him. But I force myself to stay still even though my entire body is trembling.
When he reaches me, he doesn’t touch me immediately.
He circles behind me, and I hear the quiet tread of his footsteps, and feel the heat of him at my back.
My breath comes faster.
Shallower.
Then his fingers are at the zipper of my dress, and I freeze.
The sound of the zipper seems impossibly loud in the silent room. His knuckles brush against my bare skin as he pulls it down—just the lightest touch, completely impersonal—but it's like an electric shock. I can't step back or move. It's like my feet are rooted to the ground, like my body won't obey the commands my brain is desperately trying to send.
I hear my own sharp intake of breath.
The dress pools at my feet with a soft whisper of silk, and suddenly I’m standing there in nothing but the simple white lingerie set my mother bought. It’s nothing seductive or meant to entice. It’s just plain white cotton and lace, bridal and innocent.
I feel so exposed and vulnerable but when I try to move my hands to cover myself, they won’t cooperate. They just stay at my sides, trembling.
Dimitri circles back around to face me, and his eyes slowly and thoroughly travel over my body, taking in every detail. I seesomething flicker in those cold gray depths, but it’s there and gone so quickly I might have imagined it. But then his jaw clenches, and that blank mask is back in place.
“On the bed,” he says quietly.
It’s not a request. It’s a command.
I move on shaking legs, climbing onto the massive bed, and I don’t know what to do with my hands, where to look, how to be. This isn’t how I imagined my wedding night.
Dimitri stands at the edge of the bed, and his hands move to the buttons of his shirt.
I should look away and close my eyes. I should do anything but watch as he methodically unfastens each button, revealing inch by inch the body underneath.
But I can’t look away.
