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Then Timofey lays his hand on my shoulder.
I’m not even sure when he stood up and walked over to me. But here he is, broad enough to block out all of the light from the window behind him. He’s ringed in a golden glow.
“She’s fine, Piper. She was just being protective.”
“Okay.” I nod dumbly. “But why…?”
“Why me?” he asks, guessing where I was going. “I asked her the same question.”
“What did she say?”
He fills his barrel chest with air and breathes out slowly. “She seems to think I care about you.”
I can’t stop myself from looking up at him. The hope in my eyes must be painfully obvious, but I’m too tired to try to hide it. “She said that?”
“She said that I look at you.”
I frown. “That’s all it takes for her to hand me over to someone? They just need to look at me? Glad to know the bar is so low it might as well be on the floor.”
“Do a lot of men look at you?”
“What?” I ask, distracted.
“Do a lot of men look at you like this?” Timofey’s pupils are blown wide, the black eating away the ocean blue. He hasn’t moved any closer, but there is less air between us. It’s like negative pressure. Like I’m being drawn into him.
“No one has ever looked at me the way you do.” The words are out of my mouth before I can stop them. I don’t care, though.
It’s the truth.
He hooks his finger under my chin and tilts my face up to his. “Do you want me to take care of you, Piper?”
It’s not just me being dirty-minded this time. He’s saying exactly what I think he’s saying.
“I—What do you—Do you even care about me?” Every question churning inside of me tries to get out at once.
“Well, you aren’t dead. So that has to mean something.” There’s a hint of a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth, and I realize he might actually be teasing me.
“What, though?” I rasp. “What does it mean?”
Slowly, almost as if he’s trying not to spook a wild animal, Timofey hooks his hands around my hips and pulls me against his body. He walks me back toward the bed, and I’m so stunned that I let him.
He sets me on the edge of the bed and my robe falls open. Timofey presses his thumb to the exposed skin between my breasts and drags it down, over my sternum and across my stomach.
I suck in quickly like he might realize I’m pregnant if he touches my stomach. But he doesn’t seem to notice.
“WhyamI still alive? What does that mean?”
“It means I haven’t dealt with you the way a don should.”
My brows pinch together. “Should I be dead? Do you…do you wish I was dead?”
My dream from this morning plays against the backs of my eyelids between every blink. Timofey making love to me even as he wished me dead. Worse yet, the echoes of him saying as much while we were both awake ring in my ears.
I want to say I’d never let that happen, but right now, my body is aching for him. I’d put up with a lot to have the gnawing, burning need inside of me soothed.
Instead of answering, he pushes my robe the rest of the way open. My breasts are swollen and tender—yet another pregnancy sign—and he bends forward and smooths the flat of his tongue over my nipple.
Goosebumps explode across my skin as he sucks it between his soft lips and kisses the pebbled skin.
