“This is the guest room. I’m right next door if you need anything.”
That knowledge is comforting and unsettling at the same time.
“Let me get you a shirt.”
He goes to another room before returning with a plain white T-shirt, holding it out for me. When I take it, our fingers just barely brush, but the contact sends a quick jolt straight through me. It’s nothing, a second at most, and still his gaze drops to where our hands meet, his jaw tightening like he felt it too. My pulse skitters wildly in response.
“Bathroom’s through there,” he adds.
“Thank you.” I take the shirt and head inside, bracing my hands on the sink while I stare at my reflection and will myself to relax.
So what? He doesn’t want anything serious. You already knew that.
With a sigh, I back off and change fast, slipping into his shirt. It’s impossible to just forget a man like Kirill, but I’ll have to try.
When I return to the bedroom, he’s still there, leaning against the wall by the door with his back to me, like he doesn’t trust himself to look. Something about him standing there like that, holding himself so tight, makes me want to wrap my arms around him.
“Kirill,” I whisper.
Yet he doesn’t move.
“Thank you.” My words slip out softly. “For what you did tonight.”
For a long second, I think he might leave without another word. Instead, he turns, his shoulders rising.
“Don’t thank me.” His voice drops, rougher now. “You should have never been in that situation. That’s on me.”
What? No, it isn’t. But the words don’t come out. I just meet his gaze before he turns away again and starts for the door.
“Lock the door behind me,” he says, glancing back once before he disappears.
KIRILL
I brace myself against the wall outside her door, one fist pressed into the plaster, the other curled tight at my side. Every tendon in my body is pulled to its limit, like one wrong breath and I’m going to snap.
She’s just a few feet away. In my shirt. And I’m out here like a coward.
I could go to her and make it undeniable that she’s different, that I care too much, that she’s gotten under my skin in a way no one has ever managed. Not even Lev’s mother. Not even close.
But I won’t. I’ve already gone too far tonight. Done things I never should have.
The way I touched her. The way I looked at her. The way my hands didn’t want to let go.
But it happened, and that’s as far as it will go.
I push off the wall and head to my bedroom, stripping as I move, shedding clothes like they’re the problem as I enter the bathroom. The water is scalding as I turn it on, biting into my skin, steam rising fast around me. I let it. I welcome it. My palm presses to the tile, but nothing burns away the way I crave her.
My cock is hard, needing her, and it would be easy to take what my body is demanding, to lose myself in her for one fucking night.
She doesn’t deserve that, though. She deserves more than a man like me. A man with blood on his hands and a past that never stops rotting.
But it doesn’t seem to matter. I still want her. Won’t let anyone else have her.
Because even with everything I am, she belongs to me now. And there’s nothing I can do to change that.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
SLOANE
