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It was a chant in his head.
“You were glaring at him the entire time.”
That she had noticed his reaction made satisfaction sizzle through him. “That’s what you came to discuss with me, in the middle of the night? After leaving your poor husband to his own devices for eight months?”
One bare shoulder rose and the robe slipped farther down to her elbow. “Why, Aristos?”
“Will you answer my questions too,glykia mou? I have two decades’ worth of them.”
She licked her lower lip, a flash of trepidation in her eyes that she quickly masked. “Yeah, sure.”
He took a step closer, hoping to shake the equanimity she wore like a second skin.
Craning her head up to look at him—he’d forgotten how small and curvy she was—she said, “Why?”
“Why what, Mira?”
“Why were you so angry with Caio?”
He shrugged. “I was jealous, not angry.”
A quick, all-consuming perusal of him. “What do you have to be jealous of?”
He shrugged, wondering how such a clever, beautiful woman could have no clue when it came to him. “I don’t like him touching you so much. Don’t like how bloody perfect you look together. Even Rao thought so at one point.”
Her mouth fell open, and her eyes grew into large pools. “Caio’s like a brother to me. And he belongs to Nush, even if she never acts on it. I’d never even dream of going there.”
“Nush and Caio, huh?” he said, feeling a sudden expansiveness in his chest. Suddenly, it made complete sense. He’d liked the sneaky little hacker from the moment Mira had introduced her little sister Anuskha to him. Just as much as he liked the troublemaker sister, Yana. There was something about seeing the three Reddy sisters together and the bond they shared that called to the wounds that had never healed inside him.
She nodded, her chin tucking down into her chest. Her head popped back up, as if it worked on a spring, and Aristos smirked.
Her palm landed on his chest and gave a gentle push. Pink scoured her round cheeks even as his heart thundered under her touch. “Could you please use the damned towel while we talk? It’s... You’re distracting me and I have something important to talk about.”
“You’re the one who interrupted my nighttime routine,” he said in a sulky voice, masking the tension that dug into his muscles. “You do it.” There was a fire he’d never seen in her eyes tonight and Aristos followed the thread of it. “I dare you, Mira,” he whispered, like he used to do all those years ago when she still liked him.
When she’d laughed with him. When she’d treated him with kindness and affection that had been like rainfall over parched earth.
Her brown eyes blazed with anger. “Is everything a game to you? A challenge? A dare?”
“Is that why I gave you so much space and time to be with your family? To let you care and mourn for your grandparents without intruding on what you consider sacred, without demanding you stick to our arrangement?”
Her eyes kept searching his, as if she could see into the truth of him if only she tried. With a sudden huff, she grabbed the towel from his shoulders. Aristos swallowed as her fingers danced over his bare flesh, branding his skin, burning through him.
They lingered over his abdomen before she cinched the towel around his hips. His erection was now nothing but a source of pure torment.
Leaning back against the bed, she took a deep breath. Preparing her spiel, he’d no doubt.
“How much longer do you need?”
“For what?”
“To come back home.”
Hesitation danced in her face. “I...”
“I let you go once without question,pethi mou. I won’t be repeating that mistake. This time, we have an ironclad contract, Mira.”
“What do you mean ‘once’? And what will you do if I break the contract? Sue me for deserting you?”
