Then he says, more quietly, “Do you love her?”
That one stays in the room for a second. I look at the whiskey in my hand and think of Sienna in my bed, in the hallway, behind the locked door. I think of her face when she’s angry. The way she sounds when she says my name. The way my whole body goes on alert when she’s hurting.
I think of how quickly that happened. And how little I care that it was quick.
“Yes,” I say.
Maksim doesn’t look surprised. Just disappointed for me, maybe. Or worried.
“That’s worse than wanting her,” he says.
“I know.”
He finishes his drink and gets up. At the door, he stops and looks back at me. “Then don’t lie to yourself and call it something easier.”
I frown. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means don’t pretend this is just sex because sex would be simpler. It isn’t, and you know it.”
I say nothing.
He gives me one last look. “Get some sleep if you can.”
Then he leaves.
I’m alone again. The whiskey is still in my hand. The house is still quiet. Nothing is solved. But at least one thing is clear now.
It isn’t just sex.
It hasn’t been for a while.
I leave the study and start back toward my room.
The house is mostly quiet now. Not silent, but close. Lamps left on in the corridors, carpets swallowing sound, the kind of late-hour stillness that makes every instinct sharpen whether you want it to or not.
I’m halfway down the gallery when I feel it.
Not a sound exactly. Just presence.
My body reacts before my mind does. I turn at once.
Camille is standing a few feet behind me.
She’s smiling. Not warmly. Not nervously. Just as if being found out in a dark hallway past midnight is not in the least awkward for her.
I look at her for a second, then say, “What are you doing up so late? It’s your wedding day tomorrow.”
She comes a little farther into the light. She’s changed out of whatever she wore to dinner and into something softer, but she still looks composed. Too composed, maybe. Hair brushed smooth, face washed clean of most of the day, but not all of it. There’s strain there if you know where to look.
“I couldn’t sleep,” she says.
“That makes two of us.”
She studies me for a moment, hands clasped loosely in front of her, and I have the odd thought that most men would make the mistake of underestimating her in exactly this posture. Pretty. Controlled. Decorative.
They would be wrong.
I’ve never thought Camille was someone who could be harmful. Vain, certainly. Entitled, often. Her family has connections that matter, and not the public sort they bother mentioning in magazines or at fundraisers. Quiet ones. Useful ones. The kind that make a marriage worth considering even if affection is thin and the bride herself comes with more appetite than discipline.
