Page 21 of Nikolay

I blinked at him. “Did you just roll your eyes at me?”

His expression went still in that irritatingly aristocratic way of his, as if the question itself had introduced an odor to the room.

“No.”

Clipped. Dismissive. Beneath him, apparently.

I snorted. “Well, that’s convenient.”

He didn’t answer that. His gaze had gone to the stack of romances near my knee, all glossy covers and dangerous men and women with enough sense to know trouble when they kissed it anyway. He bent and picked one up from the rug with two fingers and then a full hand, as though resigning himself to contamination.

It was one of my favorites; the poor thing. Dog-eared in three places. Margins crowded with pencil notes and profanity. Spine cracked to hell from rereading. He held it at eye level and examined the damage like it constituted a character witness against me.

I stayed where I was, chin lifting a fraction.

The cover art alone would’ve offended him. The heroine’s throat bared beneath a man’s hand. The title in silver script that practically purred impropriety. But it was the signs of use that seemed to draw him: the softened corners, the penciled comments crowding the edge of one page, the warped place where I’d once read it in the bath and nearly ruined chapter fourteen.

“This,” he said.

He didn’t finish the sentence. Maybe he expected the book to speak for itself.

“Yes,” I said. “A book.”

His eyes cut to mine. “I am aware.”

“Congratulations.”

He exhaled through his nose, slow and visibly patient in the way men got when they thought women were being silly on purpose. “You annotate these.”

“Sometimes.”

He flipped a few pages. I saw one of my notes in the margin and prayed briefly it wasn’t one of the filthier ones. Then I decided I didn’t care if it was.

His mouth flattened. That was answer enough.

“You look scandalized,” I said. “You should sit down before the shock takes you.”

“I am not scandalized.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“Maddie.”

My name in his mouth came out low and warning-soft, the way a storm might speak if storms wore expensive shirts. Once, that tone would’ve made my pulse skip for all the wrong reasons. Three weeks of his disapproval had cured me of being sweet about it.

“A majority of women read those books,” I said flatly. “Including your sister, by the way.”

That stopped him for one sharp beat.

I didn’t let up.

“And even if she didn’t, a man who spends the better part of his evenings running a sex club has no standing whatsoever to look scandalized by my reading material.”

The room went still enough that I heard the house breathe.

His jaw ticked. Not dramatic. Just one hard muscle working near the hinge like it had taken offense before the rest of him could decide what to do with it.

He lowered the book.