I’m starting to care about him.
***
We don’t go back to my apartment.
Dimitri’s penthouse overlooks the city from a height that makes my stomach drop when I look out the floor-to-ceiling windows. Everything is clean lines and expensive materials, curated emptiness that feels more like a showroom than a home.
“Drink?” he asks, already moving toward the bar.
“Sure.”
He pours something amber into two glasses, hands me one. Our fingers brush, and electricity shoots up my arm.
I take a sip to cover my reaction. The liquor burns smooth and warm, nothing like the cheap wine I usually drink.
“You’re nervous,” Dimitri observes.
“I’m terrified.”
“Of me?”
“Of this.” I gesture between us. “Whatever this is.”
“What do you think this is?”
“I don’t know. That’s the terrifying part.”
Dimitri sets his glass down, takes mine and does the same. Then he steps closer, close enough that I have to tilt my head back to maintain eye contact. Close enough that I can see the faint scar along his jaw, smell the subtle scent of his cologne mixed with something uniquely him.
“I’m going to kiss you,” he says quietly.
His mouth meets mine, and everything else disappears.
The kiss starts controlled—careful, almost tentative, like he’s testing boundaries. Then my hands find his shoulders, his settle at my waist, pulling me closer, and control shatters.
Heat floods through me as his tongue sweeps against mine, as his fingers dig into the soft flesh of my hips hard enough to leave marks. I’ve been kissed before, but never like this. Never with this kind of focused intensity, like I’m the only thing in the world that matters.
Dimitri walks me backward until my shoulders hit the window, cool glass against overheated skin. His mouth moves to my jaw, my throat, finding the spot where my pulse hammers and lingering there.
“Tell me to stop,” he murmurs against my skin.
“No.”
His hands slide up my sides, thumbs brushing the underside of my breasts through the dress. I gasp, arching into the touch, and he makes a sound low in his throat that sends liquid heat pooling in my belly.
“Bedroom,” he says, voice rough.
I nod, incapable of words.
He takes my hand, leads me through the penthouse to a room dominated by a massive bed. The city glitters beyond the windows, a million lights bearing witness.
Dimitri turns to face me, and for a moment we just stare at each other. I can see the tension in his shoulders, the rigid control he’s maintaining, the want that mirrors my own.
“I’ve never—” I start, then stop. Swallow hard. “I haven’t done this before.”
His expression shifts. “Sex?”
“Any of it. Not… not seriously.”
