“I need to know what he wants,” I say.
“Yes.”
“And I need to know what I want.”
“Yes.”
“And if he proposes to some random socialite next week, I reserve the right to commit a felony.”
Frankie laughs so loudly I have to hold the phone away again. “There’s my girl.”
I smile despite everything, and then a shadow falls across the terrace. I look up.
Aleksei stands in the doorway, sleeves rolled up, barefoot, watching me with that unreadable expression he gets when he already knows more than he’s saying.
My pulse jumps instantly.
Frankie notices the silence. “What?”
I lower my voice. “He’s here.”
Frankie makes a noise somewhere between a squeal and a death rattle. “Call me later. Immediately. If you die, I’m haunting you.”
“Very comforting.”
“I mean it.”
The line clicks dead.
I lower the phone slowly and look at him. For a second neither of us speaks.
“Were you snooping on me?” I joke.
Aleksei doesn’t answer my question. Not with words.
He just crosses the terrace in three quiet strides, takes the phone from my hand, sets it face down on the table, and kisses me.
It isn’t tentative. It isn’t even particularly fair.
One second I’m sitting there with Frankie’s voice still echoing in my head and a thousand questions crowding my throat, and the next his mouth is on mine, warm and demanding and somehow quieter than urgency but just as devastating.
I make a small surprised sound, and he swallows it with the kiss.
His hand slides into my hair, tipping my face back the exact way he likes, while the other finds my waist and pulls me up from the chair and into him. I can feel the heat of his skin through the thin shirt I’m wearing, the solid line of his body, the way he already seems half-wound and dangerous just from looking at me.
“That friend of yours asks too many questions,” he murmurs against my mouth.
“She has excellent instincts.”
“She’s interfering.”
I smile into the kiss. “You’re just annoyed she said things out loud.”
His mouth curves. Then he kisses me again, slower this time, deeper, until the morning and the beach and every practical thought in my head dissolve into heat and the taste of him. When he lifts me into his arms and carries me inside, I don’t protest.
I probably should.
But the truth is, I’m tired of protesting things I know I want.
