Then the armor slides back into place. I watch it happen in real time, the softening of her brow replaced by careful neutrality, the vulnerability shuttering behind the journalist's gaze.
"This doesn't change anything." Her voice is steady. Almost convincing. She gestures between us, at the tangled sheets and the indent her body left beside mine and the whole damn night that just rewrote every rule she's tried to enforce since the day I brought her here. "Last night. Staying. It doesn't change the deal or the arrangement or what this is."
I tuck a strand of dark hair behind her ear. Let my thumb trace the line of her jaw.
"If that's what you need to believe."
"It's what I know." But her voice wavers on the last word, the crack so small only someone watching for it would catch it.
"You're a terrible liar, Onyx."
"And you're a terrible influence." She pulls back, putting distance between us, and the loss of her warmth against my skinhits sharper than any blade. "I can't afford to feel this. Not here. Not with you."
"Why not?"
"Because feelings make you stupid. And stupid gets you killed." She swings her legs off the bed, finds my t-shirt on the floor. "I learned that from watching my mother."
The mention of her mother tightens the air. She pulls the t-shirt over her head, the collar catching on her chin before she tugs it free.
"Your mother was killed by feelings?"
"My mother was killed by trusting the wrong man." She pauses at the bathroom door, one hand on the frame, her fingers curling against the wood. Her back is to me but I can read the tension in her shoulders, the rigid line of her spine.
She doesn't look back.
But she doesn't close the door behind her, either.
I stare at the ceiling as she turns on the shower. I press my palm flat against the mattress where her warmth still lingers. Bring it to my face and breathe in the ghost of our mingled scents.
Everything has already changed. She knows it. I know it.
She’s mine.
Ten
Onyx
Five days at The Foundry and I've had more sex in that time than I can count on both hands. Kon is insatiable and my body has become a willing traitor to every rational thought I've ever had. I swear if I wasn't on the pill I'd be scared of walking away with the Bratva Beast's baby.
My hand freezes on my coffee mug.
The pill. My birth control. The little white packet that lives in my bathroom cabinet at my father's house.
Ugh. Fuck me!
I haven't taken a single pill in five days.
The realization drops through my stomach and lands somewhere around my knees. I've been so consumed with surviving, with the investigation, with the six-foot-four Russian who keeps feeding me omelettes and orgasms in equal measure, that I completely forgot I'm not protected.
Five days. Five days of unprotected sex with a man who finishes inside me every single time and has never once asked the question.
Rule number one of investigative journalism: pay attention to the details.
Apparently that rule doesn't apply when the details involve my own reproductive system.
I take a slow sip of coffee and force my breathing to stay even. Okay. Okay, this isn't a crisis. Five days isn't ideal but it's not a guaranteed disaster. I just need to get my hands on a new prescription. Which means I need to ask the man who bought me at auction to pick up my birth control pills, which is a conversation I definitely want to have over breakfast while he's wielding a spatula and looking at me with those dark eyes that make me forget my own name.
I make a mental note to bring it up after food. Preferably when he's not standing close enough to smell. Proximity to Kon Vetrov significantly reduces my capacity for responsible decision-making.
