Katerina is sitting on the bench with her back to me.
Her coat is gone. Her hair falls loose over one shoulder. The room is dim enough that the cream of her sweater and the pale line of her neck stand out against the dark wood and the black lacquer of the piano.
She doesn’t hear me at first. Or maybe she does and chooses not to stop.
The melody falters only when I step farther in.
Then she lifts her head and sees me reflected in the piano’s gloss. Her hands go still on the keys. For one second, neither of us says anything.
Then she turns on the bench, eyes wide, face flushed from either the fire or the music or the fact that she was just caught reaching backward with me.
“What are you doing here?”
I shut the door behind me. Then I turn the lock.
The small click is enough to make her stand at once.
“Roman.” Her voice is warning and breath at the same time.
I walk toward her slowly.
She takes one step back from the bench, then another. “You can’t just?—”
“Yes, I can.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one you’re getting.”
She shakes her head. “No.”
“No what?”
“No to this.”
I stop directly in front of her. Close enough that I can smell her shampoo, the faint clean scent of her skin, the little spike of fear and want that rides under both.
“This,” I say, “is you playing our song in a locked room.”
Her face flushes deeper. “It’s not our song.”
“Then why are you shaking?”
“I’m not shaking.”
I lift one hand and slide my knuckles along the inside of her wrist. The tremor runs straight through her.
Katerina inhales sharply. “Roman.”
“Tell me not to touch you.”
She says nothing.
I take the silence and move closer, until the piano presses into the back of her thighs and there is nowhere left for her to go but into me.
“Tell me you don’t want this,” I say quietly.
Her mouth parts.
