I tore open a pack of cotton. “I don’t like anyone.”
“True, including yourself,” she accused me, making me face her. She shifted, leaning back against the sink with my coat clutched in her arms.
“This event is important, Inna. Don’t act like I could have let a wound ruin it.”
“What can I do, anyway? We are already here,” she said, staring at my wound.
I pressed the cotton against the wound. The sting bit my flesh, but it barely registered beyond a dull ache. I had cleaned worse.
I flicked a glance at her and caught her staring at me as if she knew better how to handle this. She lifted her eyes to me and exhaled.
“Fine, I’ll help.” She trapped my coat between her knees and stepped in. Her hands slid over mine, taking control of the cotton and the antiseptic without asking twice.
“You think I’m incapable?” I asked, though I had already let go. Not because I needed her to do it, but because she was close enough, I could inhale her settling perfume.
“You dragged me here to do it, I know.” Her focus stayed on the wound, her fingers moving carefully as she cleaned it.
The men back there watched her like they were waiting for a moment when she’d be alone. I couldn’t leave her, not when she was draped in red and looked like an angel sent to earth. Shehad a way of standing out at these events, and people, especially men, never hid the way they stared.
She tilted her face up toward mine, close enough that her breath brushed my lips. Her brow arched. “What? Am I not doing it right?”
“What color are you wearing underneath?”
Her hands stilled, a flicker of disbelief crossing her face. She stared as if waiting for me to take it back. “Stop joking.”
My hand moved to the hem of her dress and began drawing it upward. She squirmed to stop me because both her hands were occupied. She stepped back, and I followed. The sink met her lower back, and she had nowhere left to go.
“You should stop.” Her hands paused on my shoulder.
I slid my hand up her thigh, over the curve of her hip, and found her underwear. I traced the waistband as she exhaled against my jaw. She was wearing lace panties, which raised the immediate question of whether the bra matched and whether the fabric was sheer enough to show her nipples.
“What are you doing?” she murmured.
I hooked my fingers into the waistband and drew the panties down, and she sucked in a breath. Her eyes dropped to watch what my hands were doing, and the coat she’d been holding between her legs slipped to the floor.
“Are you serious?” she asked.
“Very.”
“Fine, I’m wearing black. Now stop, someone could walk in. Dmitri!” Her hands flew to my shoulders as I lifted her and sat her on the edge of the sink. “You cannot be serious right now.”
I pulled the panties down and off her legs and brought them to my nose. Her mouth fell open, the color in her face shifting through several emotions. “What if someone walks in?”
“Are you embarrassed?”
“Am I—” She reached for them, and I moved my hand back.“Give those back.”
“Shouldn’t you be finishing the wound?”
“I will finish it when you give me my—” she lunged for the panties, but I pocketed them. “Dmitri!”
“Earn them back.” I ran a hand along the line of her neck, watching her pupils track the movement. “Otherwise, you walk into that event wearing nothing underneath. I find that genuinely interesting.”
“You are a psychopath,” she said with a flat certainty. “I am finishing dressing this wound, then you will give them back, and I will walk out.”
I leaned in until my mouth was close enough to her ear, and her posture changed. “That’s not how you earn them.” My hand slid under the hem of her dress again and moved upward. She shifted on the sink, her thighs pressing together around my wrist to stop me. “Open your legs.”
“Dmitri,” the word came out unsteady.
