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"I’m so sorry you had to deal with that, Solomon," she murmured to me, and she reached out across the table, her hand grazing across mine for a moment. "I can’t even imagine..."
For a long moment, she gazed at me, and I just stared back at her, the hairs on the back of my neck standing up. Those big, brown eyes, looked almost like they were dotted with specks of bronze, glimmering in the light pouring through the window beside us.
I drew my hand back quickly. I wasn’t going to start staring at her like that. I was working for her, for God’s sake, and the last thing I wanted was to allow some fleeting attraction to get the better of me. Just because she was hot, just because she was talking to me about my past, it didn’t mean that I had to let myself get drawn in to her. She was probably just doing this as some kind of long game, some kind of play to make me less attentive when she was in the apartment so she’d have a better chance of sneaking out undetected.
"It’s fine," I replied bluntly, grabbing the coffee again. I could still feel the spot where she had touched me, the graze of her hand against mine, burning into my skin, lighting up like she had branded me.
And I knew, right then and there, that this job was more than what I had expected it to be. And that I might be in deeper than I had imagined.
And maybe that million dollars wasn’t going to be enough for me to keep my hands off of her when she touched me like that.
Chapter Seven – Olya
I stepped out of the shower and grabbed the robe hanging from the back of the door, wrapping myself up in the luxurious fabric and breathing a long sigh of relief. There, that was better, wasn’t it?
I headed over to the mirror to do my skincare routine and apply my hair oil, trying to focus on anything that would ground me at this moment and keep my mind from straying to the men who were sitting on the other side of that door.
Because of Solomon and Alex? Yeah, they had been all I’d been able to think about these last few days, and it was starting to drive me fully insane. At first, having them around had been a pain in the ass, trapping me in this place unless I was accompanied by one or both of them, unable to so much as set foot outside without one of them shadowing me. But now...
Now, I couldn’t help but notice how damn hot they both were. And there was something about knowing they were meant to keep their hands off of me that made it even hotter. I knew my father would have lost his mind if he’d known that I was thinking about them like this – they were around to protect me, not to pleasure me. And yet...
And yet, with every passing day, I found myself craving more. I found myself watching Alex as he made coffee in the morning, his hands moving confidently, the muscles in his arms flexing with every motion; watching Solomon as he leaned next to the door, waiting for Alex to take over his shift, running a hand through his hair distractedly. And I knew I wanted them, from someplace deep down inside of me, burning in a way I couldn’t deny.
Which was a problem. A serious problem. Because they were keeping me locked up here, and there was no way I was going to let myself start crushing on the men who were, functionally, my jailers. They were here because they had been paid to be, not just because they had decided they didn’t want to be apart from me. I needed to remember that. They might have had girlfriends of their own, lives outside of this – my father was likely paying them well enough that they were willing to take a step back from it for a while, for this year they had been paid to watch over me.
And I couldn’t forget that. I couldn’t forget that they were here as part of my father’s plan to keep me safe, keep me under his control. Not that he would ever have called it control, of course – he would have insisted he was just doing whatever he could to keep me safe, and maybe there was something to that. Maybe I should have believed him.
But I had lived in this city a long time before I had gone to Hungary, and I had never faced the kind of threat that would have required these two men watching over me. I knew my father had his reasons for trying to keep me under wraps, but he couldn’t deny me my freedom, could he?
He didn’t understand all the dreams I’d had before I had come back to the USA – he didn’t know everything I had planned for when I was finally graduated. He’d given me a stipend, a part of the family fortune to do with what I wanted, and I had decided I wanted to use it to buy a bookstore – a place full of old, lost tomes that people could purchase and read, and maybe even some reprints of work that had been lost to time over the years. That’s what I’d pictured myself doing when I got back, not this, not just hanging around my apartment with a couple of guys watching over me the whole time...
In reality, I knew they weren’t keeping me from anything. They weren’t stopping me from going out and finding a store to start my work in. But, having them over my shoulder, I felt self-conscious, as though they would judge what I wanted to do with my life. Especially after hearing about everything Solomon had been through as a teenager, as a kid, they would likely think I was just some spoiled rich girl who had no idea how good she had it.
I threw my hair up in a bun, tied the robe around my waist, and headed out to the kitchen to get something to eat – or, at least, that’s what I’d been intending to do until I saw Solomon and Alex standing there instead. Both of them glanced over at me, and I froze to the spot, a heat rushing up my neck. I had thought one of them would be on watch and the other would be in their room like they usually were, but instead, they were both right in front of me.
"You okay?" Alex asked, and I noticed his eyes sliding down my body – I suddenly felt exposed, but it wasn’t exactly a bad feeling. I nodded, trying to keep my expression casual.
"I’m fine," I replied, making my way to the kitchen. This was my place, wasn’t it? I wasn’t going to let these two get in the way of me making myself something to eat...
I brushed past Alex, close enough that I could feel the pressure of his arm against my side. Both of them were watching me, as though waiting for me to do something, say something. I could feel their eyes on me, both sets of eyes, and it was making me a little weak around the knees. I opened the cupboard, pulled out some takeout menus, and laid them on the counter in front of me to peruse so I could decide what it was I wanted to eat.
"What are the two of you doing in here?" I asked, doing my best to keep my voice casual. I didn’t want either of them to think I was looking too hard at why they were here. I didn’t want them to clock on to the fact that I was so aware of them, so aware of how close they were to me right now.
"Just discussing our shift schedules for the rest of the week," Alex replied calmly. He never seemed flustered by anything, and it drove me a little crazy, especially when I felt as though I was barely able to control myself.
"Why, is there a change of plans?" I asked as I ran my finger down the side of one of the menus, trying to pick out a dish. In truth, I could hardly take in the text in front of me, my mind too focused on the two men watching over me to think of much else.
"No," Solomon replied, flashing me a smile. "Unless you’ve got something planned we don’t know about."
"Oh, I’ve got so much planned," I teased, turning to them and crossing my arms over my chest. "Wouldn’t you like to know..."
"Yeah, we would," Alex replied, meeting my gaze steadily. "Anywhere you’re going, one of us has to go, too."
"Unless I can sneak out without you noticing," I mused out loud. I knew the very notion of it would piss Alex off, and, sure enough, his jaw tensed when I mentioned it.
"You can’t," he replied, and Solomon nudged him, as though reminding him that I was only joking.
"Hmm, I could try," I suggested, and Alex narrowed his eyes at me. I wasn’t sure exactly what I was doing here, exactly what my intentions were. Frustration? A response? Something to get them to admit that there was tension here, no matter how much they seemed determined to deny it?
