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“What are you doing?”Her memory whispers to me, the words riding on gasp after startled, pleasured gasp.“Aleks—Aleks, I—”And a devolution into moans, into her supple body writhing against me, my mouth open, delicately pleasing her between her thighs, holding her firm against the bed with my hands on her hips. The taste of her, flawless, a thrill; as she reached the edge and I held her there, writhing and squirming until she finally spilled over into climax, orgasm overtaking her body, her once loud pleading for me to continue becoming faint whispers, turning into a shuttered silence, until she was barely breathing…
“Hello?”
Her voice pulls me out of the sweet, smoky reverie that I hadn’t realized I’d slipped into. She’s watching me from the couch, her knees drawn up to her chest and her thumbnail between her teeth. Her hair is tousled and falling across one of her eyes, adding more mischief to the already playful quirk in her smile and glint in her gaze. She idly presses her thumb against her tongue, and I think of putting it in my mouth. That finger. That tongue.
Amongst other things.
“You’re remembering, aren’t you?” she asks, and damn, if I don’t wish she weren’t so perceptive. Is that new? Was she like that before? She’d always been a quick study, and more resilient than any other woman I’ve ever met. So quick to smile, even as the world falls burning down around her. “You’re blushing.”
I narrow my eyes at her, deciding to wipe the sweet memory from my mind, returning to the unfogged state of my mind.“Remembering what?” I ask coldly. “If you wanted to be worth remembering, you might have tried being less forgettable.”
She doesn’t even flinch, instead her smile dances on her face, unwavering. This time there’s less mischief hidden behind it. It almost looks happy, that smile, carefree. She has a whole lexicon of them, and I’m learning the difference.I am a quick study, too, Kat.
“You’re remembering,” she says again, surer than before. And to my surprise, she leans forward and stands, coming all the way over, past the coffee table, to pluck my whiskey glass straight out of my hand, fingers dancing around mine. “And you don’t want to—why is that, I wonder? It would have been easier if I had been forgettable. Is that right, Aleks?”
I glare at her, feeling anger seething up, hot between my ribs. “Do you like pushing my buttons?”
She grins. “Oh, yes.”
“I don’t much care for it.”
“Well, no,” she says, with a faux little look of confusion. “But then, you’re not supposed to. It’s just for me.”
But I do like that gall. It’s surprising. It’s sexy. Really sexy. And her light spirit…it somehow has managed, even in this annoying way, to make me forget about the world around me. The marriage being forced down my throat. Konstantin. The world waiting just outside that door.
Outsidethat door—it’s not in here, right now. It’s just us. Kat and I. Together.
Alone.
Many kinds of things happen when people are alone. I reach for the bottle and take a swig straight out of it, my eyes never leaving hers, heat burning between the two of us. Something is different about her today, and I can’t help but wonder what. Was it the surprise of the situation yesterday that caught her off guard? She was all nerves, all anxiety and stung anger.Today her humor has returned.Sunshine, I think again.Always finding it in her to look on the bright side, once that anxiety has slipped off like a second skin…
God, it’s a breath of fresh air. As much as I brood and glower, being with her even a night, even a day, I remember with this crystalline clarity why I fell for her once. And why it was so goddamn important to get away from her, to get the fuck out of her life and never look back. I knew I was painting a target on her. But every kiss, every shared moment that night, felt worth the bargain. Only then, the daylight came, and she guessed who I was, what I was, and I wouldn’t lie to her. And she agreed we would part ways then. Never look back.
Fate,I think,had something else in store.Anotherismof my mother’s, another superstition or stroke of providence, another turn of the tarot card.I don’t give a damn the force behind it, my killing his brother; Konstantin himself; Revenge, or the need for a wife—all I care about is that I’m here.
“You look at me like…”
I am looking at her. Closely. I thought my expression was its usual mask. What did she see in it? “I look at you like what?”
“Like…” Her cheeks burn a crimson, bringing my glass to her lips and taking a gulp, deeply, swallow after swallow, both hands wrapped around the crystal. Then she sighs, and lets her head fall back in a way that catches my eye, looking up at the vaulted ceiling with softening eyes. “You look at me like I’m a puzzle, or a riddle. Or a book in a language you don’t know how to read.”
“You see all of that in my face?”
She looks at me quizzically, then lifts up the empty glass and closes one eye, studying me through the warped diamonds of blown crystal. “That and more. Maybe it’s wishful thinking.”
“I’m certain that it is.”
“Are you? Are you that good at hiding what you’re feeling? Keeping it out of your face?”
“Yes. But at present that’s not the issue.” I lean forward, reaching for the glass. Our fingers dust one another, and it shocks me, as if an electric spark was sent through my heart. To her credit, her expression remains perfectly cool. She watches me take the glass from her and fill it again, taking a swig before handing the glass back to her.
“What’s the issue?” She asks me, her gorgeous, probing eyes flitting around, trying to read my expression. She’s making this impossible.
“The issue is that I wasn’t feeling any of that, so you can’t have seen it in my face.” In truth, of course, that was exactly what I was feeling. A cold frustration that I couldn’t read her more easily. When did she become such a slippery thing? So cocky and assured, even in a situation like this one?
It makes me want her. It makes me want to fuck her. It makes me want to put my hand over her mouth, and hold her down, showing her how much she can really read in my gaze. Pin her body with mine until she gave in completely and surrendered to me, because I know she would, and I know that she wants to.
So, what the hell is stopping me, then? Just what the hell am I so afraid of?
