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“I’m fine,” she says, her tone cutting.

“I’m not going anywhere,” I tell her, and her grip on my shirt loosens. She nods and lets it go at that.

I walk her upstairs, slowing my steps to an idling pace to match hers. On the stairs she catches my hand in hers.

“You still wait for me,” she says, pleased and a little smug.

“I told you I would not leave,” I croak.

“You always keep your promises.” She tightens her hand around mine.

I promised my father once that I would protect this family, destroy whoever stood in my way, and never let anyone see me bleed. Those promises taught me to weigh the cost of a thing before I ever say it aloud. That’s exactly why I cannot answer what Delaney and I are, even though I’m already in deep. Saying it would make it a promise, something immortal, and I’m not yet ready to pay what that particular one would cost me.

At her room she keeps hold of my hand, leaning on the handle of her door. “My father is throwing a party on the yacht this weekend,” she says. “He wants you there.”

“I will be there.” I shrug. “Tell Igor I would not miss it.”

“Bring your assistant along with you too.”

Something plucks tight in my chest, and my shoulders harden to steel. “Why bring her?”

“So she can see how these things are done.” Yelena’s smile is careful. “And so I can apologize to her properly, playing nice for once. I owe her that much.”

Swallowing her pride like this didn’t come easy to her, and I know it. If I had any decency I would say yes because of her apology and nothing else. But I want to say yes for an entirely different reason, and I’m not proud of it. An image arrives uninvited, Delaney on the sunlit deck of that yacht in a swimsuit, her thick lashes lowered against the glare, all those soft curves on open display, already halfway into an argument with me, flushing pink under my stare. The rush of heat that takes over my body drops straight to my groin, and I have to look at the window for a moment, taking slow, tortured breaths, before I answer.

“Fine,” I concede. “I will bring her.”

“Then it is settled,” Yelena says, her voice hushed.

“Stay with me,” she says, and lies down on the bed. The dark circles stand out sharper against the pale embroidered pillow. “You said you would not leave.”

I lie down on the outside edge of the bed, the way I did when we were children, and she rests her head on my shoulder.

“I miss when it was only us,” she says, and her fingers trail across my chest, sliding down toward my stomach, seeking out proof that I still want her.

Before I can stop her she swings a leg over and straddles my waist. Her rumpled skirt bunches up around her thighs and her hair spills down across my chest. I know exactly what she is reaching for.

“Get off,” I order, gripping her waist.

She doesn’t listen. Her hand presses down over me through my trousers, and her eyes go wide. “You’re hard,” she breathes.

My cock is hard, yes, and I’m incredibly horny. It’s hard because there’s a woman in a swimsuit filling my head, and she’s not in this room, and none of it has anything whatsoever to do with Yelena.

She takes my silence as an answer. “Your body still remembers me,” she says.

I catch her wrist and pull it off me. “Stop,” I say, with a harsh bite I have never once used on her.

She freezes, thrown, and all the color drains from her face. “But you want me. I can feel that you want me.”

I bite my tongue and don’t answer her, because the only honest answer has Delaney’s name in it, and speaking that name in this room, in this bed, would desecrate the whole fragile peace and tear it straight to the ground. Yelena is looking up at me, waiting, certain that a lifetime of history entitle her to what she’s reaching for. She’s not wrong about the history.

She’s wrong about what it buys.

I lift her off my waist and pull the blanket up over her. “Don’t use my body against me to prove a point,” I say. “Reality is harsh, and your heart cannot take this. I will keep you safe, Yelena. That has not changed. This part of it has.”

She grips the blanket, then turns her back on me and buries herself deep in it, knees to her chest. “I hate how considerate you are,” she mutters.

“Shhh. Go to sleep,” I tell her.