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"Remember that shop we stopped to look in that first afternoon? With all the clocks," he clarified as my gaze finally fell on it.
A brushed pewter necklace chain with a pewter and deep blue clock face, the little thinnest hand steadily ticking around.
It wasn't diamonds or rubies or whatever women were supposed to want to get from a man. But it was the best present I had ever gotten in my life.
"I figured you would think of me as you wear it, when you hear it," he said, sounding almost a little worried, like he thought it wasn't what I would have wanted.
My gaze moved up to him, the smile that pulled at my lips making the wetness that had pooled in my eyes spill over, slip down my cheeks.
"Don't," he demanded, shaking his head, at masculine loss over feminine tears, reaching upward, swiping the streaks away with his big fingers. "Don't do that. It's nothing," he insisted.
"It's not nothing," I shot back, reaching down, grabbing his hand, pulling until he moved to a seating position as I pressed the necklace into his hands. "Put it on me," I demanded, half turning, gathering my hair, lifting it up.
There was a pause as, I imagined, he fumbled with the lobster clasp, before I felt him move in closer, had the cool metal slip between my breasts before lifting upward as he secured the clasp, pressing a kiss right below it.
"Thank you," I told him. "I love it," I added, though what I really wanted to say was you.
I love you.
But I felt like I couldn't say that, or at least, couldn't say that first. I didn't want to mess anything up. Things were going too well.
So even though it seemed like it was ready to burst out of me at any point in time, I kept it down, held it tight.
We had time.
Or so I thought at the time anyway.
"Now you can purr yourself to sleep," he told me, pulling me back down onto his chest.
"I wasn't purring," I told him, shaking my head.
"No?" he asked as his hand started sifting through my hair again, making a little noise escape me. "What was that then?"
"Shh," I told him, smiling huge because he couldn't see me, happier than I had ever been, happier than I even knew was possible.
I stayed there five nights in a row with him as my uncle was out of town, only stopping back at the house to change out clothes, blushing as Ali made little comments in somewhat butchered, but endearing, English about my glow, and how she wondered how I got that.It was on the sixth night when I showed up at his door because he'd told me he had an important business call, and couldn't come get me, that I walked into his room, and immediately knew something was off, something was different.
There was a charge in the air, something jumpy, skittering over my skin uncomfortably, making me feel itchy, anxious as Mikhail paced in front of the windows for a moment before realizing I had let myself in with the card he had given me a few days before.
"You alright?" I asked, pausing in pulling my purse off my shoulder, never before having seen his jaw tight, his brows knitted fiercely, his hands clenched into fists. Everything about him spoke of agitation, of anger. It was sparking off him. It was what had charged the room so uncomfortably.
I had thought I had seen it all, all his sides, his ups especially, but also some of his lows when his eyes would get sad and far away, when he would become silent and distant.
But this?
This was new.
And new was always a little unsettling.
That said, there was something about this new that felt foreign, that felt almost, maybe, a little dangerous.
I mean, it wasn't like I thought he was going to hit me. I believed it down to my core that he wouldn't hurt me. He wasn't the type. But even though the logical sides of my brain said to relax, there was a primal pull, something that spoke of generations of women made weak and small at the hands of men, that had me stiffening, that had a strange tightness constricting around my throat.
Seeming to sense those sensations, he took a slow, deep breath, letting it out with a small hiss, something that made the tension leave his shoulders, his jaw, that allowed him to send me a small smile that in no way reached his eyes.
"Work," he told me, shaking his head. "I have a client threatening to pull a deal that could mean the end of my business because of a file I can't get."
"A file?" I asked, brows furrowing. "Why can't you get it?"
"Your uncle has it," he told me, turning suddenly away, looking out the windows, tension pulling at his shoulders again as his arm rose, hand raking through his hair. "In his office," he specified, and there was something strange in his voice, something strangled, holding his real voice hostage. "But..."
