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“Yes, yes,” I say before clearing my throat. “I mean I know about that. She’s busy.”

Elara’s eyes fly open. For one long second, there is nothing from the hallway.

Then Galina says, “Of course.”

Her footsteps move away.

Elara grabs my arm. “Why would you say that?”

“Because it’s true.”

“She knows,” Elle says, shaking her head.

“No, she doesn’t,” I say. “And even if she does suspect, I trust Galina to be discreet.”

Elara makes a small, horrified sound and tries to sit up, but the sheet is wrapped around both of us, and she only manages to pull me closer. Her breast brushes my chest, her knee slides higher along my thigh, and whatever panic she has is not strong enough to hide the way her body reacts.

I lower my mouth to her throat.

“Nikolai,” she whispers, but she doesn’t push me away.

“We have a few minutes.”

“We have breakfast.”

“We have a few minutes,” I repeat.

She looks at me like she wants to argue, but her hands are already on my shoulders.

I kiss her before she can find a sensible thought.

The sheet stays over us, trapping the heat between our bodies. I reach between her thighs and find her wet, and her breath breaks against my mouth. There’s no slow teasing this time, no patience, only both of us aware of the hallway outside, the house waking below, Galina knowing enough to keep her face blank at breakfast.

I get protection from the drawer and come back over her quickly.

Elara watches me, flushed and mortified and hungry, and when I push inside her, she bites down on my shoulder to keep quiet.

I groan against her hair. “Quiet,” I tell her.

“You be quiet,” she whispers back, then gasps when I thrust deeper.

I keep her under me, wrapped in the sheet, fucking her hard enough to make her grip my back. She tries to hold herself still, but her hips lift to meet mine again and again, and every time she makes a sound, I cover her mouth with mine.

She comes with her face buried against my neck, shaking silently except for one small broken breath of my name.

I follow soon after, because there is only so much discipline a man can claim with Elara tight around him and breakfast getting cold downstairs.

Afterward, she lies beneath me, breathing hard. “I’m never looking at Galina again,” she says.

“That’s up to you,” I say. “But by behaving guilty, you give her more info.”

Elara stares at me. Then she says, very seriously, “Why are you like this?”

I just shrug.

I get dressed first because if I stay in bed with her, I may not let her go for the rest of the day.

Elara sits up with the sheet clutched to her chest, hair loose around her face, still flushed from what just happened and annoyed that I can see exactly how affected she is.