Page 63 of Nikolay

I reached for a paper towel, dried my hands, then gathered up the used black lace panties in one fist because I was not leaving evidence of my personal collapse in the employee trash can for anybody with curiosity and a nose. I unlocked the restroom door and stepped back into the corridor.

And walked straight into a wall of man.

A hand caught my upper arm before I could bounce off him properly.

I jerked to a stop with a curse already halfway out of my mouth and tipped my chin back.

Nikolay.

Of course, it was Nikolay.

He filled the narrow hallway in that unfair way he had, all broad shoulders and tailored dark suit and quiet, dangerous composure, the fluorescent light flattening nothing about him except perhaps the last illusion that he belonged anywhere near the practical guts of the club. His amber eyes were brighter here, stripped of candlelight and velvet and stage glamour. Too direct. Too warm. Too awake.

I stared at him one second, then two.

“Are you stalking me?”

For one impossible heartbeat, I thought he might deny it with that grave prince face of his.

Instead, he laughed.

The sound went through the corridor low and rich and wholly genuine, startling enough that I forgot to be offended for a second. It was nothing like the cold, precise humor he usually deployed when he wanted to keep somebody at arm’s length. This laugh had body to it. Warmth. It filled the narrow space and seemed too large for the fluorescent misery of the hall, like something old and easy had broken loose from him without permission.

“Stalking?” he repeated, still half-laughing. “What a word.”

“It’s an accurate one.”

His mouth was still curved when he said, “I had business in the back corridors.”

I looked past him at the concrete walls, the locked storage doors, the absence of literally any princely reason to be there, then back at his face. “Sure you did.”

Something moved again at the corner of his mouth. He knew exactly how absurd he sounded.

“Are you quite all right?” he asked.

I almost laughed myself at that. The exact same question, the second time in less than ten minutes, and somehow it landed entirely differently from his mouth. Not gentle. Not warm. Not even insincere. It carried a kind of dark amusement, like he already knew the answer and wanted to hear what version of the lie I’d choose.

“I’m allowed breaks,” I said.

“You are.”

“Then congratulations, mystery solved.”

I made to step around him.

He moved with me.

Not fast enough to startle. Not slow enough to give me room. Just one precise shift of that huge body and suddenly my back met the corridor wall with a soft thud, cool concrete through my thin top, and he was there in front of me close enough to make the air change.

My pulse stumbled.

“Nikolay—”

He leaned in.

Not to kiss me.

Worse.