"I'm asking what you saw, Anya. Not what he looks like."
I think about it. I think about the way Connor leaned against that doorframe and threw his worst self at me like a dare. The roughness in his voice that was trying to be cruel but wasn't quite managing it. The way his jaw tightened when I said yes, like he'd been ready for a blow and got a breath instead.
"I wasn't scared," I say. "That's what I saw. I looked at him, all of him, the scar and the eye and the size of him, and I didn't feel afraid. I felt..." I search for the right word, and the one that comes surprises me. "Safe. He felt safe, Diomid. I don't know how to explain it."
"Try,” he bites out.
"He's fierce. I could see that. He's got something hard in him, something that's been hurt and turned into armor. But when he looked at me, it wasn't the way the Baron looks at me. The Baron looks at me like I'm something to own and consume for his own selfish pleasure. Connor looked at me like..." I stop. Swallow. "Like he couldn't believe I said yes. Like he expected me to run."
The silence on the other end of the phone stretches so long I pull it away from my ear to check we're still connected.
"Diomid?"
"I'm here." His voice is different now. Quieter. Some of the anger has bled out and what's left sounds tired and sad and something close to relieved, though he'd never admit it. "You really want this."
"I really want this. And if I can make him fall in love with me, I know he'll protect me with everything he is. I saw it. It's in him already. He just doesn't know it yet."
Diomid makes a sound that's almost a laugh, almost a sigh. "You sound like Mom."
My throat closes up. I press my lips together and blink hard at the ceiling.
"I'll talk to Liam," he says. "Properly. And I'll deal with the Baron." A beat. "But Anya, if he hurts you, if he so much as makes you flinch, I will burn that estate to the ground. Orlov name or not."
"I know you will." I love him for it, but we both know our family doesn’t have the same pull as the Orlov’s, or the Baron. That’s how we got in this state in the first place.
Diomid continues. "Don't leave the estate. Don't go anywhere without security. And answer your phone when I call. I mean it."
"I know."
Another pause, softer this time. "I'm glad you're safe. Even if you scared ten years off my life getting there."
I smile. "I love you too, Diomid."
He hangs up without saying it back, because that's who my brother is. The words live in everything he does, just never in his mouth. But I heard it in the crack in his voice when he talked about the Baron's men on the road. I heard it in the way he didn't say no.
I set the phone down on the nightstand and lie back on the bed, still in my coat, still in my boots, staring up at the ceiling of a room in the Orlov house.
Connor Orlov.
My future husband, if Diomid and Liam can make the pieces fit.
I think about the way he bent down in front of me, put his face inches from mine, one eye blazing green and the other pale as fog. He was testing me. I knew it even in the moment. He wanted to see if I'd look away, if I'd show him the reaction he's clearly used to getting from women.
But all I could think, with his face that close to mine and his breath warm on my skin, was that this man could wrap himself around me like a wall between me and the rest of the world, and nothing would get through.
That's what safety looks like.
Not a gentle man wearing a tailored suit and a bank behind him. A man built like a fortress who chose to put himself between me and the thing I'm running from.
I close my eyes and let my thoughts wander to Connor and what standing next to him will feel like.
Connor
I didn't sleep.
I tried. I lay in bed for hours staring at the ceiling, listening to the house settle around me, thinking about brown eyes with gold flecks and a voice that didn't waver. Eventually I gave up pretending and came down to the gym at four in the morning, because if I can't shut my brain off, I can at least exhaust my body into something resembling calm.
It's not working.
