I wasn’t ready to decide what that meant.
I pushed myself up on one elbow.
Everything ached at once.
My thighs ached. My hips felt loose and tender. Between my legs, a deeper soreness pulled a quiet breath from me before I could stop it. Not pain exactly. Not regret either, which would have been easier to explain to myself.
A dark mark shadowed the inside of my wrist where Vadim’s mouth had been.
I touched it with two fingers.
A bruise would have made sense. A bruise would have belonged to the world I knew. Gennady’s fingers. A wall at my back. A man making a point because he could.
This was different.
The mark was small and dark and chosen.
My face heated before anyone was even in the room to see it.
I reached for the robe and slid out of bed too fast.
I moved too fast. My knees buckled, and I caught the edge of the nightstand with one hand before I cursed under my breath.
The door opened.
Vadim stepped in and stopped just inside the room.
He wore dark trousers and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled to his forearms. No tie. No jacket. His black hair was still damp from a shower, combed back but not quite as severe as it had been in the auction room. Morning light caught the faint mark near his jaw and the reddened split across his knuckles.
His gaze went first to my hand on the nightstand, then to my face.
“Sit down before you fall,” he said.
My spine straightened on principle. “Good morning to you too.”
His mouth changed by a fraction. Not a smile. Something close enough to irritate me.
“Good morning, Nadia. Please sit down before you prove a point to the floor.”
“That’s better.”
“Is it working?”
“No.”
I sat anyway because my knees were traitors and because the robe had started to slide off one shoulder.
Vadim crossed the room slowly enough that I had time to tell him to stop if I wanted to. He didn’t come to the bed. He went to the tray instead, poured water into the glass, and carried it to me.
I took it. “Did you sleep?”
“For a few hours.”
“Where?”
“In the chair.”
My gaze moved past him to the wide leather chair near the windows. A folded blanket hung over one arm.
