I can't breathe. I literally cannot pull air into my lungs because his eyes have me pinned and his stubbled jaw is inches from my face and my hand is still pressed against his chest.
He breaks the silence first. "Have it your way,malyshka."
His voice has dropped even deeper, and through the conduit of my arm, I feel it rumbling deep in my core, sending a tingling throb down to my clit until a different kind of wetness starts slicking my thighs.
I don't know what that word means. But I know that it is something inappropriately intimate that he has no right to call me.
Nonetheless, my body responds to it like it’s been waiting to hear that word my entire life. I like the way it curls through the air between us, and I wonder what it might sound like as his tongue runs along my skin.
He steps back.
The loss of his warmth is so sudden it makes me sway. My hand, still extended where his chest was, drops to my side. I watch him button his jacket slowly and his eyes flick down to where the towel is slipping slightly at my sternum before he drags them back to my face.
"Twenty minutes," he says. "Don’t be late."
He turns and walks toward the elevator.
I close the door. Lean against it. Press my forehead to the cool wood and try to remember how to breathe again.
What the hell was that?
My shoulder burns where it touched his chin. My palm tingles where it pressed against his heart. My whole body feels like it's been rewired, every nerve ending recalibrated to a frequency that's specifically, impossibly tuned to Slava Romanov.
"Aunt Bella?"
I nearly jump out of my skin.
Anthony is standing beside me and looking up at me with Luca's eyes. His small face is creased with worry.
"You looked scared."
"I'm fine, peanut." My voice sounds almost normal. “I was just surprised, that’s all.”
Anthony considers this with the grave thoughtfulness of a child who has learned too young that adults don't always tell the truth. Then he nods, apparently satisfied, and asks, "Is Aunt Lydia coming?"
"She'll be here soon. You're going to wait for her while I get ready, okay? Stay in your room like a good boy."
He nods again and trots off. I watch him go and feel the weight of everything I'm protecting settle back onto my shoulders—heavier now, somehow, pressed down by the memory of Slava's skin on my shoulder and his voice calling memalyshka.
I push off from the door and head for my bedroom. Hair. Makeup. Dress. In that order.
I have a gala to attend and an identity to maintain and absolutely no time to stand around dissecting the way Slava Romanov looked at me when I was wearing nothing but a towel and righteous indignation.
The knock comeswhen I'm halfway through my eyeliner.
My hand jerks and sends a black streak across my temple.
Motherfucker!I told him twenty minutes and I know for a fact that it hasn’t even been ten. And if he thinks he can just come up again when I expressly told him to fuck off.
I stomp over to the door and yank it open. "I said I'd be downshortly, what part of that was unclear?"
"Wow, okay. Hello to you too." This time, itisLydia.
The fight drains out of me so fast I feel dizzy. "Oh God. I'm sorry. I thought you were?—"
"Someone else?" She steps inside, already scanning my face with the practiced eye of a woman who has known me since before any of this started. "Care to tell me who's got you ready to throw hands in a cocktail dress?"
“No-one."
