Vadim
She didn’t move. She stood beside the tall windows with the stillness of someone looking for an escape that wasn’t there, or an excuse that hadn’t arrived yet. Both options were equally unavailable.
This was the cost of drawing my attention.
Radovan had leaned in earlier with those few words—she was listening at your office door, Pakhan—and I had filed it for later. Later had arrived. The Chechen situation was almost resolved, the routes were being restructured, and the remaining outstanding item on my list had run out of time.
“Unbraid your hair,” I said.“I’d like something to pull on when I ride you.”
The single sharp intake of breath. The rapid blinking. The specific expression of someone who had prepared themselves for this moment and discovered, now that it was here, that preparation had not been adequate.
It made me want to take my time.
I tugged my shirt from my trousers, shrugged out of it and tossed it onto the jacket.
When I moved to my belt she bolted.
Not for the door—for the bed. She crossed the room and pulled the covers up and burrowed underneath them, and for a moment I watched with something approaching genuine curiosity. Then the movement beneath the duvet clarified itself.
She was undressing under the covers.
I stared at her for a moment.
Twenty-five years old. Had smashed two glasses on a cathedral floor and ground the shards under her heel. Had called my bodyguard amudakin my own hallway.
And she was hiding under a duvet to take her clothes off.
I took my time removing my trousers, folding them carefully over the chair where the rest of my clothes were piled. There was no rush. There never was when the outcome was already decided.
Most women were apprehensive of me—had been since I was young enough to notice it. The eldest son of the Pakhan drew quite the crowd, and not always the kind with good intentions. I had learned that lesson early and expensively. These days anyone who arrived uninvited at my door without clearance would find themselves answering to Konstantin before they found themselves answering to me, male or female without exception.
I peeled my boxers off and stepped out of them.
The room was quiet except for the faint sound of her moving beneath the covers. Minimum training these past few days and no outlet for it—my body had been running on compressed energy since the wedding and it was past time to do something productive with that.
Her head appeared above the duvet. She had begun unbraiding her hair, fingers working through the plait, strands loosening around her face in the lamplight.
At least she was following instructions.
I gripped the edge of the covers and pulled them back in one motion, exposing her completely. She startled and crossed her arms over her breasts, still holding strands of half-unbraided hair between her fingers, her knees instinctively pressing together. The lamplight fell across her without mercy.
Unblemished flesh from throat to hip.
No nicks, no scars, no bruising.
Yet.
She bent one knee over the other, angling away from my inspection with the instinct of someone who understood, on some level, that being looked at this carefully was its own kind of exposure.
I glanced up at her face, then pulled the covers entirely from the bed and dropped them.
“What did I say your job was?” I asked, and reached down to ease her arms away from her breasts.
The skin was like porcelain—pale and smooth and warm beneath my hands. Her nipples were the palest pink I had encountered, almost the same shade as the rest of her. I cupped one breast, testing its weight in my palm. Supple. The warmth of her radiating upward. I stroked my thumb across her nipple and watched it peak, her breath catching and then deepening, her chest rising and falling with a rhythm that was no longer entirely steady.
Her body had its own answer, whatever her face intended to show.
“Finish your hair,” I said. My voice had dropped without my deciding to allow it.
