It costs me because he doesn’t move to stop me at first, and the absence of his hand feels immediate and offensive. I smooth my shirt unnecessarily and aim for cool amusement while my pulse still ricochets off every rib I possess.
“Well,” I say. “I see your social skills remain catastrophic.”
He raises a brow. “Leaving already?”
The question is too neutral to be casual. That alone nearly undoes me. I force a smile anyway. “I do, against all evidence, possess a little dignity.”
His brows lift. “Debatable.”
“Yes, well.” I move around the island before I can do something embarrassing like climb him again. “I’ve intruded enough for one morning.”
He doesn’t answer, and that silence is dangerous because it gives me room to imagine things I have no business imagining. That he wants me to stay and is trying not to ask. That his stillness means as much as his old fire used to. I know better than to trust silence.
Silence is where men like us hide our worst impulses and call it control, so I head for the door.
The walk from the kitchen toward the entry foyer is not long enough to steady my breathing or my pride. Leaving now is wise and necessary. I have already had more than I came for simply by being allowed into his morning. I came to see him about business and got my answer. He let me in, answered me, then put his hands on me and called me a brat with enough remembered heat to make my whole body ache.
That should be enough.
I reach the door but don’t even make it to the handle.
One second, I’m moving, and the next, I’m slammed back against the wood so hard the impact knocks the air out of me in a sharp, involuntary sound. Nikolaj’s hand is at my throat again, controlling the line of me while his other palm braces flat beside my head.
The force of him against me is immediate and breathtaking. I barely have time to open my mouth before his lips are on mine.
This kiss is different from the one in the gym. That one had been confirmation, collision, and recovered instinct erupting out of both of us at once.
This is angrier, less about remembering the map, and more about punishing me for trying to leave with even a shred of composure intact.
He kisses me like I’ve earned it by being unbearable, and he resents every second of how much he still wants to do this. I answer him instantly, because apparently, I learned nothing from the first collapse.
My back presses into the door as his body pins me there. The sound I make into his mouth is embarrassing and impossible to stop, and he swallows it down like he remembers exactly how.
When he pulls back, it’s only far enough to breathe. His forehead almost touches mine, and the hand at my throat remains there, fingers spread.
“Don’t show up here uninvited again,” he says.
The sentence hits me like cold water.
For a second, I just stare at him, trying to reconcile the kiss with the words. Trying not to let my face show how quickly my heart can still break on command.
“Wh-what?” I say, quieter now.
He closes his eyes for one brief moment, jaw tightening. When he opens them again, all that kingly control is back, though not enough to hide what it’s costing him.
“We’re not heirs anymore,” he says. “This isn’t Vintermoor. We’re not boys climbing through windows and pretending the world can’t touch us if we’re quiet enough. We’re kings now, and if you keep showing up in my house, people will get the wrong idea.”
I almost laugh at the absurdity of that. The wrong idea. As if there is any idea more dangerous than the right one. “And what is the wrong idea, exactly?”
His gaze hardens. “Don’t.”
“What?” I ask softly, because I want to hear him say it, because I’m a masochist where he’s concerned and always have been. “That you once loved me?”
The silence that follows is not denial; it’s worse. It’s memory, fury, and grief all colliding behind his eyes.
“I know I loved you,” he starts. “I know that now. I know I loved my enemy enough that they tried to rip it out of me and failed. I know I would’ve chosen you over blood, over duty, over everything they built me for. I know that, Vincenzo.”
Hearing it spoken aloud in that tone, factual and stunned and almost disbelieving even now, splits right through the middle of me.
