A short, humorless laugh leaves him. “Depends. Is this the part where you pretend yours isn’t just quieter about it?”
“Touché.”
He watches me for a second longer than comfort allows. “You’re looking at me differently.”
The fact that he notices makes irritation flare through me, quick and defensive. “You flatter yourself.”
“Maybe.” His mouth curves slightly, but there’s no real mockery in it. “Still true.”
I should lie, instead I say, “I didn’t realize how it worked.”
He narrows his eyes at that. “What?”
“Your family.”
Something in his face stills. “That’s vague.”
“I’m being polite.”
“Don’t bother. I’m not.”
I glance up at the hotel, then back to him. No one close enough to matter. Good. “The eldest protects. The youngest inherits.”
His expression doesn’t change. That alone tells me enough.
“So you hear things,” he says.
“I pay attention.”
“Dangerous habit.”
“I could say the same about you.”
He leans one shoulder against the wall, studying me with that same infernal focus he uses when he’s trying to decide whether to fuck me, fight me, or take apart something I’ve said. “And what’d you conclude, Vieri?”
That I understand you more now. That I want to touch every bruise your father leaves where nobody can see. That I should run in the opposite direction because a man being made intoa weapon is no safer than a loaded gun, just because he kisses well.
What I say instead is, “That you’re not as untouchable as you act.”
His gaze sharpens. “Nobody’s untouchable.”
“No,” I say. “But some people work very hard to look it.”
A quiet beat passes between us, then Ruslan laughs softly, and there’s nothing pleasant in it. “You think figuring out my father owns a leash means you understand me now?”
“I think,” I say carefully, “that maybe I understand enough to know the arrogance isn’t the whole picture.”
His jaw flexes once. “You shouldn’t want anything to do with the whole picture.”
I hold his gaze anyway. “And yet.”
“And yet,” he echoes.
The garden is dim and too narrow and suddenly charged with the kind of tension that has very little to do with sex and everything to do with recognition. That’s somehow worse.
His mouth twists faintly. “You really should get better instincts where I’m concerned.”
“I’d say the same to you.”
