Page 7 of Baby for My Ex's Brother

“Mm.”

“Don’t ‘mm’me. It’s been a long night.”

“It has,” he agrees, his hand shifting slightly at my back.

I lose my train of thought.

We finish the dance without talking. That’s fine. It’s better than fine—I’m not, generally speaking, someone who needs to fill silence, and Ivan clearly isn’t built for small talk.

What heisbuilt for, I’m not sure. But I’d like to find out.

Pressed up against this wall of a man, there are all kinds of things I’d like to know about him. Something deep inside me melts when I’m in his arms, and I don’t know how to pretend otherwise. Ever since he stole me away into a coat closet, I’ve felt this thing I don’t really understand.

I’ve never had a one-night stand before, but I think I get the appeal now.

When the song ends, Ivan doesn’t step back immediately. There’s a beat—half a second, maybe less—where we’re still close, and the next song hasn’t started, the room moving around us without noticing we’ve stopped.

His head tips down at the same time mine tips up. His sinister eyes narrow to my lips as he crosses the invisible border between us.

I meet him there, pulse throbbing in my ears, my chest, and lower.

When our lips brush, there’s a spark. I grip his collar and pull him close to me so I can ignite it. His mouth parts, and his tongue glides over mine, all vodka and questionable choices.

This.This is what I need.

We don’t say goodbye to Hugo. We don’t say goodbye to anyone. The reception continues behind us. The cake will be cut, the bouquet thrown, the band will play another two hours of songs for people who’ve had enough champagne to dance badly and not mind.

But none of it matters.

The elevator doors close, and Ivan Fedorov kisses me as though he’s already decided how this ends.

His hand comes up to my jaw, tilting my face to his, and the other finds the small of my back and pulls, and I go—because what else would I do, what possible argument exists against this. The marble wall of the elevator is cold through my silk dress, but he’s not cold at all.

Sure, I’ve been kissed before. I’m on fire now.

His mouth is certain in the same way the rest of him is certain, like he’s never done anything without full commitment once in his life, and I feel it from my jaw to my knees, which have become unreliable. My hands find the lapels of his jacket and hold on, mostly for structural support.

He pulls back just far enough to look at me. His thumb traces my lower lip, unhurried, studying the effect of what he just did with the calm attention of a man taking inventory.

“Camera,” I say, because my brain has produced this word and I’m not sure why, but it turns out to be correct. There is, in fact, a small camera mounted in the upper corner of the elevator, its red light patient and unblinking.

Ivan looks at it. Then he shrugs off his jacket in one motion and drapes it over the camera mount with the ease of a man who’s done exactly this before or is simply constitutionally unbothered by improvisation.

The red light disappears.

“No camera,” he says, and comes back to me.

This kiss is different—deeper, unhurried now that the variables have been managed, his hand sliding from my jaw into my hair. He finds the pins holding it up and removes two of them with a patience that’s somehow more devastating than urgency wouldhave been. The dark mass of it falls partially loose, and he makes a low sound against my mouth.

Then his hands move. The silk of my dress is thin enough that it isn’t much of a barrier, and he seems aware of this in a very specific way—palms against my waist and then my hips.

The vengeful side of my mind speaks. “If Hugo could see you now…”

The thought arrives and dissolves just as fast, because Ivan’s mouth has moved to my jaw, my throat, and I lose the thread entirely.

“We should discuss whatyoulike,” he says against my neck. Low and even, like we’re having a perfectly normal conversation, and his hands aren’t doing what his hands are doing up my dress.

I lean my head back against the wall. “Now?”