Page 26 of The Breath Before Forever

A surprise that had delighted her.

Except that joy was also stained with everything left unsaid between them, too. She couldn’t forget that. At least, she didn’t until he swallowed her in his bar-like arms, burying her face into his chest while his hands wandered from her shoulders to her lower back.

Another horn blared while the Rolls rocked from the speed of a vehicle racing around theirs. It didn’t register to Vaslav or Vera, and the kiss he placed to the crown of her head was all she needed to keep her firmly in place.

She even grabbed fistfuls of his sweater. Thin, soft cashmere that she had pulled out of his closet for him and picked out her own dress for the day accordingly.

Little things, sure.

But they meant everything to her.

He’d made it all the more difficult for her by not allowing her those things—as little and simple as they might be—over the past few days, and Vera had not managed it well. He didn’t tell her to leave their bed. She did that because silence alone was better than silence with him beside her.

She only noticed that the light had switched back to red at the intersection when Vaslav had urged her face higher with his hands under her chin while he nuzzled along her throat with his soft, warm lips. She didn’t try to calm the galloping beat of her heart that he could surely feel when he lingered on her pulse point before his hands cupped her chin. He tipped her head back further, offering him ample room to drop a kiss, firm and lingering, against her lips.

“That is not how you should ever feel,” he told her. “My words are weapons, and sometimes silence is the mercy.”

Vera’s lower lip trembled from the emotions she failed to quell. “Okay.”

As lame as it was, she couldn’t think of anything else to say. He pressed another kiss against her mouth before she could get another word out. Somehow, she found the courage to speak the words that she should have said many nights ago when he made it clear she had crossed a line for him.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, the words breathless as fast between a rising hiccup and water welling in her eyes.

She didn’t want to cry.

There wasn’t even a reason.

“I know you are,” he murmured.

All at once, he pulled away to resume his previous position in the driver’s seat. One of his hands stayed firm on her thigh, though, high underneath the hem of her skirt where he could grab tight enough that she was sure his fingerprints would be left behind by the time he let go.

She didn’t mind.

Yet, his voice was still cold when he stared out the window to wait for the light overhead to once again turn green, and said, “But after today, Vera, you’ll know why you should be sorry, too.”

“I know why.”

Perfectly well.

Her wrongdoing was clear.

Vaslav sighed. “No, kisska, you won’t until you meet her. Trust me on that.”

*

Vera had just enough time to settle her emotions, and blink away what tears might remain, before Vaslav pulled the Rolls off on the brick-lined entry drive of a restaurant with wide bay windows featuring heavy, black drapery. She hadn’t even properly read the name on the sign, only partly snow-covered, and their vehicle came to slow stop under the towering car port.

“Igor will have only recently given your parents the news that we won’t join them as originally planned,” Vaslav said. “Try to act like you were recently told the same. We’re a passing moment in this day, Vera, and for good reason.”

While his hand had left her thigh to shift the vehicle into park, it wasn’t long before his palm found its former home ... still warm from how he left it. Only this time, his hand went even higher under the skirt of her grey cashmere dress with a gentle rub that had her breath catching hard in her lungs.

“You say that like this was always the plan,” she replied. “Was it—or was the chance to visit your mother today just a convenient excuse?”

He shrugged.

She tried not to glower. “At least tell me the truth.”

Vaslav’s icy gaze drifted from Vera’s face to somewhere behind her through the window. She didn’t turn to look for what he saw, but she didn’t need to when he explained, “Important people will hear interesting things over the course of your parents’ dinner with Igor. How long it takes word to travel about those things is the only real variable to what will happen in the end. I’ve chosen to remove myself from the equation as much as possible, but that might not make you or I safe.”