It’s somewhere I could imagine my grandparents living back in their day. The nostalgia’s distracting. So unlike the modern sacrifices to interior decoration that Inessa’s studying at school.
This is warm and…a home.
“This one?”
I should probably be annoyed that he can read me this well.
The windows are small in here, but I can see from the distant lights that it overlooks a lake and a?—
“Is that a stable?”
“Yes. Empty for now.”
For now…
That if I want horses, I can have horses goes unspoken.
I peer at him over my shoulder, for long enough that he frowns.
It takes a lot to unnerve a man like him…
Grabbing my earlier confidence, I stride over to him, turn to face the bed when I’m a half foot away, and ask, “Unfasten my buttons?”
Deathly silence is my only answer.
Then…
“Did O’Donnelly fasten them?”
That low, pissed grumble would terrify anyone else.
But not me.
“He’s like a brother. Do you want to fuckyourbrothers?”
His lip curls in a sneer as he grouses in Russian while unfastening the small buttons that run down the length of my top.
The relief as the band around my neck releases comes as a shock.
That Harrington could have used my clothes against me has me tensing up. Maxim misreads it, though, and clucks his tongue.
“Calm down,korovka. I won’t bite.”
I tilt my head so I can look over my shoulder again, amused that he’s switched his endearment out. “Truthfully? I wish you would.” His pupils dilate.That fast. “But I’m not scared of you. I was thinking how Harrington could have yanked on the neck band and choked me if he had wanted to.”
“First blood,” is all he says.
“I know, and choking doesn’t count. He could have used it to incapacitate me. I-I’d have thought… My hands are dirty. I didn’t think you’d want that.”
His knuckles run along my spine, glancing over the nodules and making me shiver—again—in the process.
“When I learned about the rites, my initial response was to ask you to pull out.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because if anyone understands the need for a purpose, it’s me.”
Whatever I expected him to say, it wasn’t that.
