Chapter 6
SIENNA
He’s barefoot, shirt sleeves rolled, dark trousers low on his hips like he threw them on in a hurry. No jacket. No tie. His hair is slightly disordered, and somehow that makes him look more dangerous, not less.
Ethan lets go of me at once.
The relief is so sudden my knees almost buckle.
“Father,” he says, and the word comes out thin.
Viktor doesn’t look at me first. He looks at Ethan.
Only Ethan.
I’ve never seen a man’s face go that empty.
“What,” Viktor says, very quietly, “do you think you’re doing?”
“It’s not what it looks like.”
“Then explain it.”
Ethan glances at me, then away. “We were talking.”
Viktor takes one step into the room. “No,” he says. “You were drunk. You were in her room. And you were laying hands on a woman who told you to let go.”
The silence that follows is suffocating.
Viktor keeps walking toward us. “It concerns me now.”
The floorboards barely creak under him. He isn’t hurrying. He doesn’t need to. There’s something about the way he moves when he’s angry that makes speed irrelevant.
Ethan looks at him, then at me, and something ugly twists in his mouth. “You think this is about her?” he says. “She’s a fucking joke.”
I can feel the shape of Ethan’s fingers there already, hot and angry against my skin. I pull the robe tighter around myself and back toward the bed, not far, just enough to put a little more space between me and both of them.
Viktor notices that too.
His jaw tightens. “Out,” he says.
Ethan doesn’t move. “Father—”
“Out.”
This time the word cracks through the room like a shot.
Ethan flinches.
Actually flinches.
For one second I think he might still argue. Then his gaze flicks to me, sees something in my face, and whatever he finds there finishes it. Shame, maybe. Or the fact that I’m terrified. Or that none of this is ambiguous anymore.
He takes one step back. Then another step.
Viktor moves aside just enough to let him pass, but not much. Not generously. Ethan goes by him with his shoulders tight and his mouth set hard, like he’s swallowing words he knows better than to say.
At the door, Viktor says, without turning, “You will stay away from her for the rest of this weekend.”
Ethan stops.
“And if you ever touch her like that again,” Viktor continues, still in that same terrible calm, “you will find out how little patience I have left for your mistakes.”
Ethan says nothing, and a moment later he walks away.
The silence after that is worse.
Because now it’s just me and Viktor.
I’m shaking badly enough I have to fold my arms to hide it.
Viktor closes the door quietly behind him and turns to face me. Then his gaze drops to my wrist. “Let me see.”
I hesitate. I should tell him I’m fine. I should say it doesn’t matter. I should keep my distance from him and from this whole impossible night.
Instead I give him my hand.
His fingers close gently around my wrist and turn it under the low bedside light. The marks are already coming up, faint and angry, the shape of Ethan’s grip starting to bloom against my skin.
Viktor’s thumb brushes just beneath them.
The touch is careful. His face is not.
I can feel the anger in him without him saying a word. It’s there in the set of his mouth, in the stillness of his shoulders, in the way he keeps his head slightly bent over my arm like he’s making himself stay quiet by force.
His thumb moves once over the sore spot, light enough that it shouldn’t do much. It still makes me suck in a breath.
His eyes lift to mine. “I should have done more.”
Something twists in my chest.
I shake my head. “You already did too much.”
“No.”
“You shouldn’t be here either,” I say, and my voice comes out thin and unsteady.
His hand stays on my wrist. “I know.”
He doesn’t let go.
The room feels very small all of a sudden. The bed behind me. The closed curtains. The rain at the window. His body close enough that I can feel the heat coming off him, close enough that the scent of him is all over the air now, dark and clean and male.
I should step back.
I don’t.
He releases my wrist slowly, but instead of moving away, he lifts his hand to my face. His knuckles skim my cheek. My jaw. The touch is almost nothing, and it still sends a shiver through me.
His eyes drop to my mouth.
Mine drop too. That’s the mistake.
One second we’re standing there breathing the same air, both of us knowing exactly how bad an idea this is, and the next he’s closing the distance between us.
One hand goes to the back of my neck. The other braces against the wall beside my head as he backs me into it, and then his mouth is on mine.
I gasp into the kiss.
He takes that sound and deepens it immediately, kissing me like he’s been holding it back by force and has finally run out of patience. Hot, hungry, relentless. His hand tightens at my neck, not hurting, just keeping me there while he slants his mouth over mine and takes what he wants.
I kiss him back before I can think.
God help me, I kiss him back hard.
All the shock and fear and humiliation of the night collapse into this one terrible, perfect mistake. My hands clutch at his shirt. His body presses in close, solid and warm and overwhelming, and everything about him is too much in exactly the way I remember.
He makes a low sound into my mouth when I open for him, something rough and pleased that goes straight through me.
I’m shaking again, but for a different reason now.
His mouth leaves mine only long enough to drag down my jaw and into the line of my throat. I tip my head back against the wall and give him room without even meaning to. His lips press against my skin once, twice, then his teeth catch lightly and I make a helpless sound.
“Sienna,” he says against my throat.
The way he says my name makes my knees weak.
I slide my hands up into his hair, and that seems to undo something in him. He kisses me again, harder this time, his body crowding mine, his thigh pushing between my legs just enough to make me feel how badly I want more.
This is insane. This is the worst idea I’ve ever had.
And I can’t make myself stop.
My robe is falling open. His hand leaves the wall and slides down my side, over my waist, pulling me closer. I can feel how turned on he is, hard and hot against me, and the knowledge of it makes me dizzy.
His palm moves lower, spanning my middle as he kisses me again.
Then he freezes.
The change is instant. His mouth stills against mine, his hand stops, and his whole body goes rigid. For one awful second, I don’t understand why.
Then I do.
His hand is resting on the curve of my belly.
Not just resting, feeling. Really feeling it.
He pulls back just enough to look down between us, then back up at my face. I see the exact moment the thought lands. The exact moment disbelief collides with certainty. His hand stays where it is.
“You’re pregnant?”
I can’t speak. My heart is slamming so hard it hurts.
He looks down again, more carefully this time, at the shape I’ve spent months hiding under loose clothes and good posture and strategic layers. In the dark room, in a robe half-open, with his hand on me, there is no hiding it now.
His eyes lift to mine. The expression on his face is unreadable for half a second. Shock. Confusion. A dark kind of focus.
Then, very quietly, “Is it mine?”
Panic answers for me before I can think.
“No.”
Viktor goes still. His hand remains against my stomach for one suspended moment, and in that moment I understand exactly how badly I’ve mis-stepped. He heard the fear in it. He heard how quickly it came.
His eyes stay on my face. “No?” he repeats.
I shake my head, trying to gather myself, trying to sound steadier than I feel. “It isn’t yours.”
For a moment he says nothing. The room feels quieter than it did a second ago, as if the kiss, the heat, all of it has fallen away and left only this.
“Then whose is it?”
My throat tightens. I should have prepared for this.
I’ve spent months preparing for this, for questions, for discovery, for the possibility that one day I might have to say something convincing.
But standing here with him looking at me like that, all I can think about is getting out from under the truth before it breaks over both of us.
“My ex’s,” I say.
Something shifts in his expression, not anger exactly, but attention narrowing. “Your ex,” he says, very quietly.
I nod.
He takes his hand off me then, and the loss of that contact is immediate. It leaves a cold space behind, one that makes me hate myself for noticing. He steps back just enough to look at me properly, as if he’s rearranging the whole night in his head and finding it different now.
Then he asks, “What was Ethan doing outside your room?”
I say nothing.
His eyes stay on my face. “And how do you know him?”
Crap.
This is exactly what I was trying to avoid. Not tonight. Not like this, with my heart still pounding from the kiss and my body still reacting to him and the marks on my wrist beginning to darken under the light.
I should have expected it. Of course I should have. He isn’t stupid. He saw enough downstairs to know there was history there, and enough just now to know Ethan didn’t come to my door by accident.
Still, I had hoped for a little more time.
I pull the robe tighter around myself and look away for a second, trying to get my breathing under control.
The room feels too warm now. Too small. Viktor is close enough that I can still feel the echo of him against me, his mouth on mine, his hand at the back of my neck, and now all of that has curdled into something tense and exposed.
“He was drunk,” I say at last.
Viktor waits.
“He came here after the dinner. He was angry. He started talking, then he grabbed me.”
His face hardens, though he says nothing. I know that isn’t enough for him. I know he’s still waiting for the part that explains why Ethan was here in the first place.
I let out a breath and force myself to meet his eyes.
He asks again, quieter this time. “How do you know him?”