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“Do you want to go in?” He chuckled.
“No.” She backed away and smiled up at him. “I just didn’t know what kind of store it was.”
“Liar.” They had a standoff in the street, both of them grinning at each other.
People flowed around them like they were stones in a river, but Konstantin didn’t seem worried about being in the way. He always gave the impression of being completely self-possessed. How could she have ended up on a . . . date . . . with someone like him?
Varushka always imagined that if a man was going to show interest in her, he would be from a neighboring village. In her fantasies he was wealthy enough to have his own farm and a vehicle. If someone had told her she’d be dating someone as exhilarating as Konstantin she would have laughed herself silly.
“Well . . . I guess I wouldn’t mind going in if you want to look around,” she conceded.
His hand closed around hers and he pulled her to the door. “Look around? You don’t go into a candy store to look around. You go in to buy candy.”
Half an hour later they left the store with two bulging paper bags, which they soon had to transfer into their other bags because they were starting to tear from the weight. Both of them were laughing like children. It made her want to kiss him.
“If you thought that was fun, you’re going to love Halloween.”
“Halloween?” she asked, grimacing. “Isn’t that evil?”
“No, here it just means you dress up in a costume and get free candy. I love it.”
She snorted. Of course someone who looked like the devil would love Halloween.
Varushka pulled a cherry-flavored lollipop out of one of the bags, removed the wrapper, and put the paper in her pocket. She popped the ball of it into her mouth just as she realized Konstantin was watching her.
Twirling the candy around, she sighed with pleasure, the sugar waking up her taste buds. There was a slight crack in the candy and she explored it with her tongue. His dark eyes, narrowed and gleaming, followed every move of the lollipop.
“What?”
He arched a brow but didn’t respond. As they turned down a side street, his fingertips brushed across her ass cheek again, and guilty pleasure made her heart falter.
She was trying hard to be good and not encourage his overfamiliarity with her, but the way he touched her always made her want more. No wonder American girls were rarely virgins when they married if they went through life unchaperoned. The strength she’d gotten from talking to the priest was fading.
Living alone in a house with a man like him, even if he was being a gentleman, was too much temptation. She didn’t go into his bedroom, but even the sight of him roaming the house in jeans and no T-shirt made her desperate to touch and be touched. How could something that felt as good as his hands on her be wrong?
“Do you want to go home now, or do you want to do something else while we’re here?” he asked, gazing around at their surroundings for the first time on their shopping trip—as though he was trying not to look at her.
Varushka shrugged, then stopped on an empty stretch of sidewalk. “I’m not hungry after eating all that candy. Is there anything else to see around here?” She put her lollipop back in her mouth and sucked. He watched her with sexy, half-lidded eyes.
A shiver prickled her skin. “Why do you keep looking at me like that?”
He crowded her with his body, backing her against the building’s brick wall. Feeling menaced and turned on, she fought the urge to rub up against him.
Don’t encourage him. A virtuous woman wouldn’t accept this kind of behavior in a suitor.
Should she push him away? She didn’t want to, not even a little. If anything, she wished they were alone in their house. Better that they weren’t.
“Konstantin, what are you doing?” She blinked up at him.
“You are going to be the death of me, woman,” he growled.
“Is it the candy?” she asked, holding it up between them. “Every time I put it in my mouth you stare.”
He shook his head as though he was in pain.
“Do you want to taste it?” she offered. “I don’t mind.”
Konstantin said some very bad words in Russian, and she trembled, breathless, hoping he’d forget he was a gentleman. He sighed, then pulled away from her.
