I bite my lip. “Thanks.”
I take the plate with me and march down the long stone corridor toward Viktor’s study, fully aware that the man I am about to confront could have me on a plane back to Ohio by morning. I’ve got to do this now, before I chicken out.
My mouth,I tell myself.My mouth, getting away from me again.
I reach his door and knock once. Hard.
The heavy wooden door opens. Viktor’s eyes lock onto mine, surprised.
I open my mouth before I can stop myself. “We need to talk about your daughter.”
Chapter Four
Viktor
My brain stalls.
I had assumed Madam Petrova was at the door, bringing my afternoon coffee and the day’s correspondence. Instead, the sexy human female I have spent the last fifteen hours trying very hard not to think about stands in my doorway in a sweater the exact color of the summer sky. The scent of her reaches me at the same instant, and my fangs lengthen. My cock instantly thickens in my pants. Hell, will this exquisite torture ever end?
I step back, hold the door open, and say only, “Come in.”
She walks past me into the study.
I close the door behind her.Mistake.Then purposely move behind my desk, putting the heavy mahogany between us like a barrier.
She sets a small plate with a cookie on the side table just inside the door, without explanation. I recognize the plate. Itis from the household’s good china, a thin gold rim, the House Draven crest at the edge.Madam Petrova, of course it was you.
Hazel stands in the middle of my study like she owns it.
I get a good look at her in full afternoon light. Kissable lips, small waist, long legs, her hair loose around her shoulders. A small smudge of something, jam, perhaps, from Lily’s breakfast, at the cuff of her left sleeve. She looks tired, resolute and breathtaking.
I want to put her on this desk and bite her.
I gesture to one of the leather chairs across from me. “Sit.”
She perches on the edge of the chair, hands folded in her lap.
I sit behind the desk and wait.
The female takes a deep breath. “I want to talk to you about dinner.”
I blink.Dinner?This is wholly unexpected. I had expected a complaint about her quarters. A renegotiation of her contract. Possibly a request to return to America. Some interpersonal disturbance with the household staff. “What about dinner?”
“Madam Petrova told me that you take dinner alone in your study every night.”
I nod.
“And that Lily takes dinner alone in the nursery. With her nanny. Every night. And these nannies have been different Krovenians because of staff changes.”
I grunt in agreement.
“And that this has been the arrangement for two years. Is that correct?”
A cold flare goes through me before I have even decided how to respond. I do not break her gaze. “That is correct.”
“Viktor.” A pause. She is choosing her words. “I would like that to change.”
My jaw clenches. “You are questioning how I parent my child.”
