“The lawyers should come up with a prenup this week,” Dad said.
“Aw, Paulie,” Mamma groaned. “Did you have to mention that?”
“The properties were mentioned, cara,” he said. “It’s the perfect time to bring it up.”
I agreed, but I was having trouble concentrating on the conversation going around because Kirill’s fingers wouldn’t stop touching me.
It wasn’t unpleasant. It even made me aware of him as a man I might be having sex with in the future. We never talked about consummating the marriage, but typically in arranged marriages that was expected to perpetuate the bloodline.
But ours…would be closer to a marriage of convenience? A marriage in name only?
Ugh…the room grew stifling. I stood up so abruptly that Dom’s eyes shifted sharply to mine, and Sloane gave me a questioning look, but I gave them a slight shake of my head.
I didn’t want them following me.
“Do you want me to come with you?” Mamma asked.
“No,” I said shortly and didn’t wait for anyone else to ask.
Mamma scolded Dad for bringing up the prenup, but she said it so fondly, she made everyone at the table laugh.
Instead of going to the ladies’ room, I strutted straight to the small balcony at the end of the hallway. Since it was summer, the air wasn’t that refreshing. The humidity punched me in the face the second I stepped out, but I needed a few minutes to collect myself. I gripped the railing and pinched the area in the middle of my back to open up my shoulder blades and relieve the tension that was building there.
Footsteps approached. I didn’t need to turn around to know who it was. Of course, he wanted to make sure he played the concerned fiancé.
“You didn’t have to follow me.” Pinpricks of awareness came alive under my skin as the cloak of heat descended over my shoulders and caused me to squeeze the unwanted pinching between my legs.
“Oh, but I did,” Kirill said. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. I just needed some air.”
He gave a snort. “If you want air, you need to find a freezer, not this soup pit. So tell me, what spooked you? Surely not the properties. We’d already mentioned it yesterday.”
“It’s nothing.”
“And you’re a liar.”
He was closer now. His breath feathered the side of my neck and shell of my ear. He could probably see the goose bumps forming there. “Are you sniffing me?” I demanded.
“You object? I like the fragrance you’re wearing. I’m trying to learn you, Lusenka.”
A fractured exhale. “What for? We’re only going to stay married for a year, and then we’ll go our separate ways.”
He laughed briefly, then he gently turned me around. “At least a year. Don’t be naïve.”
I stared at the knot of his tie while I resisted the urge to press my body to his. God, my nipples were annoying me. They were like beacons trying to punch out of my bra. “Well, it’s still a year.”
“Tell me. What spooked you?”
My throat bobbed.
“My touch? You’ll have to get used to me touching you.”
Tell him. Ask him. Are we going to have sex?My cheeks flushed. They were probably as red as the tomatoes on the salad earlier.
I raised my eyes. “So, I think we didn’t define our boundaries.”
He chuckled. “Are there going to be boundaries between us?”
