Page 19

I uncurl my legs, sheets sliding under me, and turn toward him on the bed. My knees press against the side of his thigh. I lean in until there are only a few inches left between our faces. I can feel the heat of his breath. I can see the dark of his eyes in the low light.

This is a bad idea. Every part of me knows it. He is the reason I’m locked in this house. He is the reason the nightmares still come. Kissing him will only make the lines messier, harder to draw back later. I tell myself to stop. To sit back. To let the moment pass.

I close the last of the space and kiss him anyway.

It starts soft. Just my mouth on his, uncertain, testing. He goes still for a heartbeat. Then his hand comes up and wraps around the side of my neck. Fingers spread along my throat, thumb under my jaw, the full span of his palm measuring the size of it. The pressure is steady, controlled. I lean into it.

A low sound leaves my throat and disappears into his mouth.

His other hand finds my waist and pulls me closer in one firm motion. My chest presses against his. My hands flatten on his shirt, feeling the hard muscle underneath, then fist the fabric and drag him in. The kiss turns deeper, messier. Tongues meet.

His grip on my neck tightens, and a sharper sound breaks out of me, half moan, half gasp. The pressure on my throat sends a hard pulse straight down between my legs. My clit throbs against nothing, sudden and wet.

His hand at my waist slides higher, palm dragging up my side, then lower again, gripping my hip and pulling me tighter against him. Another moan slips out of me into his mouth.

I can feel him answering with a rough sound of his own. My fingers dig into his chest. His mouth is harder now, hungrier, and I open for it, chasing the heat, the solid weight of him, the way every place he touches lights up after weeks of nothing.

We stay locked like that, breathing into each other, his hand firm on my throat, the other holding me hard against him, my own hands restless on his chest. Another broken sound leaves me when his thumb strokes once along the side of my neck.

Then his hand on my hip stills. The grip on my throat eases. We both freeze at the same second, mouths still touching, the heat of it suddenly too clear, too real. I feel the exact moment the wanting turns into awareness of what we’re doing.

I press my fingers to my own lips without meaning to, like I’m checking whether that actually just happened.

“I should go.” His voice comes out rougher than I’ve ever heard it, none of its usual steadiness anywhere in it.

“Yeah.” My own voice isn’t much better, thinner than usual, still catching slightly on the way out. “Probably.”

Neither of us moves for a second. He stands first, slow, like his legs haven’t fully agreed to the decision yet, and pauses at the door with his back to me, one hand braced against the frame, shoulders held tighter than I’ve seen them in weeks.

“Get some sleep,” he says, and it comes out almost gentle, nothing like an order.

He’s gone before I can answer, the door clicking shut behind him, and I sit there in the dark long after his footsteps fade down the hall, my fingers still pressed lightly against my mouth, trying to figure out why the thing that should scare me most tonight isn’t the nightmare at all.

It’s how much I wanted him to stay exactly where he was, close enough that I could still feel the warmth of him even now, minutes later, sitting alone in a room that suddenly feels bigger than it did an hour ago, quieter too, in a way that has nothing to do with sound.

13

ARTEM

I can’t be near her without wanting things I have no right to want from a woman I brought into this house against her will, and that’s worse.

The kiss runs on a loop I can’t shut off. My hand at her throat, and the way she leaned into it instead of pulling back, the low sound that broke out of her against my mouth when I tightened my grip even slightly.

I’ve replayed that single second more times today than I’ve replayed anything in fifteen years of this business, and every time I get to it, my whole body responds like it’s happening again in real time.

Breakfast comes and goes without me at the table. I take a call I don’t need to take, sit through it without absorbing a single word of it, because my mind’s back in that room down the hall, her hands fisting in my shirt to drag me closer instead of pushing me away.

When Nadia mentions Harper skipped lunch, I tell myself it isn’t my business to chase down. I know exactly where she’d be if I looked, and I know exactly what I’d want to do with her the second I found her, which is precisely why I don’t go.

I have contracts to review, a shipment schedule to finalize, three calls I’ve let ring straight to voicemail because concentrating on any of it means getting the sound she made out of my head first, and I can’t manage it. Not today.

We cross paths once, late afternoon, both of us reaching for the same door at the same moment, and the exchange that follows is stiff enough to embarrass a stranger.

“Excuse me.”

“No, go ahead.”

A nod.