Page 211 of Dark King Daddy

My heart pounded in my chest.

“You think you’re ready for that? You’ve barely mastered furniture,” I said.

Daniil glanced down at the chair he’d drawn. One leg was still making a bid for independence.

“I’m ready for a more interesting subject.”

“A table, maybe? Build on what you know.”

He put down the pencil and looked at me.

“You heard me, Little One. Clothes . . . off.”

Oh.

We had been married for months. I knew that look. It still made me lose the next clever thing I’d been about to say.

I slid off his lap, leaving the blanket behind, and picked up the sketchbook.

“Bring the pencils.”

His chair scraped back before I reached the kitchen door.

I smiled all the way up the stairs.

In the studio, I switched on the lamp and drew the curtains against the February night. Daniil came in carrying the canvas roll and my blanket. He draped the blanket over the back of the green chair, then checked the radiator.

“You’ve brought provisions.”

“Your studio is freezing.”

“I was about to make a very impressive entrance.”

“You can still impress me in a warm room.”

He turned up the radiator. I angled the lamp toward the chair. He moved the chair six inches to the left.

I moved it back.

He looked at me.

“The light,” I explained.

“I can move the lamp.”

“Or you could stop touching the chair.”

“Is this what your contractors put up with?”

“My contractors adore me.”

“Do they know that?”

I pointed at the stool beside the drafting table. He sat, with the faint smile of a man who had every intention of being difficult again.

I set the sketchbook in front of him. He untied the green ribbon and spread out the pencils. Seeing them there gave me a small, ridiculous rush of happiness. I’d stood in the art shop that afternoon worrying about paper weight. Now he was testing a pencil on the corner of a page, and there was nowhere else he wanted to be.

“All right,” I said.