I set the phone down and walk to the wardrobe. Inside, hanging in neat rows, are silk blouses, tailored trousers, cashmere sweaters in neutral tones. Workout clothes. Evening wear. At the bottom, a row of shoes, each pair in a different size.I run my fingers along the fabrics and feel the weight of what this represents. He didn't just prepare a room. He prepared a life.
In the bathroom, I find products arranged with military precision. Face cream, body lotion, shampoo and conditioner that smell like summer. A toothbrush still in its packaging. A silk robe hanging from the door, midnight blue, and when I put it on it fits like it was made for me.
I run the bath. The water fills the clawfoot tub, steam curls, and I lower myself into the heat and let it pull the tension from my muscles. I stare at the ceiling and think about Rovin Mostovoi standing in a doorway, telling me the timeline is his, and the look on his face when I agreed.
I close my eyes. The water laps at my collarbone. Somewhere beyond this door, beyond this hallway, in a bedroom I haven't seen yet, the most dangerous man in the city is awake, thinking about me.
I know this the way I know certain truths about weather or gravity. He is awake, and he is thinking about me, and the distance between our doors is a kind of electricity that I can feel humming through the walls.
I sink deeper into the water and smile.
Rovin
I don't sleep.
This is not unusual, I sleep poorly under the best of circumstances, my mind running scenarios, calculating outcomes, planning the next day's decisions before the current day has ended. But tonight, the insomnia is different. It has dark hair and whiskey-coloured eyes and a spine like a column of fire visible through the open back of a black dress.
Claudia Hartley is sleeping fifty feet from my bed, and I am sitting in my kitchen at three in the morning, drinking water and thinking about the wordchildren.
She said it with intent. The way a general saysvictory, with full understanding of what it requires and absolute willingness to pursue it. She told me she wanted to give my name to children who would inherit something unbreakable, and I felt the words settle into my bones like a prophecy.
I want her.
The intensity of it surprises me. I’ve wanted women before, I’ve taken them to bed with the appropriate mutual understanding, and have watched them leave in the morning without particular attachment. My relationships have been clean, transactional, and brief. They have served a purpose, and the purpose has never been permanence.
Claudia is different. Claudia walked into that room and restructured my understanding of what I need, and she did it in under five minutes.
I keep thinking about her hands. The way they managed the silverware at dinner. The way they folded in her lap during our negotiation. The way her fingers tightened, just slightly, when I said the wordheirs. She wants what I want. She wants it with the same clarity and the same ferocity, and that symmetry between us is the most intoxicating thing I have ever encountered.
I finish the water. I set the glass in the sink.
Her door is closed. I walk past it on the way to my own room, and I stop. I don't touch the handle. I stand in the hallway and I listen, and I hear nothing, which means she is either asleep or lying still in the dark.
Both images undo me.
In the morning, I am in the kitchen before she wakes. I make coffee and say good morning to the housekeeper. I consider breakfast and decide against it until she comes down.
She appears at seven-thirty wearing one of the outfits from the wardrobe I had prepared, a cream cashmere sweater and dark trousers that fit her well but not perfectly. Her hair is damp, tucked behind her ears. Her face is bare and beautiful. A small birthmark that wasn’t visible last night shadows her left eye lid.
"Good morning," she says. Her voice is different. Softer. The careful composure is still there, but it has been loosened by sleep, and I can see the woman underneath the tension of last night.
"Sit," I say, and gesture to the island. “Greta will prepare whatever you want for breakfast.”
She turns to Greta and says, “Just toast please, but I’m happy to make it myself.”
Greta smiles and shakes her head, before shooing Claudia towards the stool I’ve pulls out for her. She sits.
She reaches for the coffee. Black. No cream. The same way I drink mine.
She begins to take a sip, but as soon as the hot liquid touches her lips, her eyes close and her shoulders drop an inch. She swallows, keeping her eyes closed, and exhales slowly.
“It’s too long since I had good coffee,” she states, then opens her eyes and fixes them on mine. "Did you sleep?" she asks.
"Yes."
"You're lying."
I look at her. She flashes her eyebrows and takes another slow sip of coffee, looking at me over the rim of the mug. She sees through me and I find that exhilarating.
