Chapter 13
VIKTOR
I’m surprised to find Sienna with my sister.
That surprise lasts only a second. Long enough to feel it, not long enough to show much of it. But it’s there. Enough that I stop in the hallway and look from one woman to the other, trying to understand what, exactly, I’ve walked into.
Sienna looks caught between anger and disbelief. Anna looks like herself: composed, self-possessed, already halfway to pretending the conversation was less important than it was.
That alone tells me it was important.
“What are you doing up so late?” I ask Sienna, because it’s the simplest question available and because her face still looks too tired for more of this.
Then I turn to Anna. “You know my sister?”
Sienna’s face changes at that.
Whatever had shocked her was already there before I arrived, but my saying the word sister makes it worse. She looks at Anna, then at me, and for one brief second, I can almost see her mind rearranging something.
Anna notices it too. “She recognized me,” she says quickly.
It’s too quick.
Sienna doesn’t speak. She just keeps looking at Anna, and then at me, and I dislike how blindsided she seems.
I turn to my sister. “When did you get here?”
“This afternoon.”
“And you didn’t think to tell me.”
She lifts one shoulder. “You seemed occupied.”
That is not an answer, but it sounds enough like one that I let it pass for the moment.
My attention goes back to Sienna. She still looks unsettled. Not frightened exactly. More like she has just discovered there’s some part of the story everyone but her has already read.
Anna, seeing where my attention has gone, changes the subject almost at once.
“I only stopped because I heard there had been trouble,” she says. “Clearly I picked a bad time.”
“You usually do,” I say.
She ignores that.
Sienna finally looks at me. “You didn’t mention you had a sister.”
No accusation in it. That almost makes it worse.
“No,” I say. “I didn’t.”
Anna lets out a quiet breath. “Well, now she knows.”
I look at her. “That’s enough.”
For once, she hears the tone and doesn’t push. She glances at Sienna, then back at me, and whatever she sees seems to tell her there’s more here than she wants to step into.
“I’m going to bed,” she says.
Neither of us stops her.
She starts down the corridor, then pauses and looks back at me. “Try not to make things worse.” Then she leaves.
The hallway feels quieter after she’s gone, but not easier.
I look at Sienna. She folds her arms and says nothing, which tells me two things at once: she wants answers, and she has no intention of asking the first question plainly.
“What happened?” I ask.
She gives a small, humorless breath. “You tell me.”
Interesting.
“I wasn’t here,” I say.
“No,” she says. “You weren’t.”
I step closer, not enough to crowd her, only enough to stop pretending this is casual. “Sienna.” Her eyes lift to mine. “What did Anna say to you?”
She hesitates. Not long, but long enough to tell me the answer matters.
Then she says, “Not much.”
I almost smile at that. Almost.
“Not much doesn’t usually leave people looking like that.”
“And what do I look like?”
“Tired,” I say. “Confused. As if you just found out something you weren’t expecting.”
She looks away for a second, then back. “Maybe I did.”
I wait.
She doesn’t continue.
Of course she doesn’t.
I know my sister well enough to understand the possibilities. Anna can unsettle a room by choosing one sentence over another. If she decided to be difficult, she was. If she decided to be protective, she was probably worse.
But I still don’t know what she actually said. And Sienna is clearly not ready to tell me.
So I shift to the one thing I can say for certain. “You should be asleep.”
That gets the faintest change in her face. Not amusement, exactly. A little disbelief.
“That’s what you’re going with?”
“For now.”
She shakes her head. “You are impossible.”
“Yes.”
That almost earns me a real smile, but not quite.
I study her for another moment. She’s exhausted. Too much has happened, and she wears tiredness honestly no matter how hard she tries not to. Whatever passed between her and Anna added something new to it.
I step closer before I can think better of it.
She looks up at me, still tired, still unsettled, still carrying too much in that tense little line between her brows. My hand goes to her waist almost on instinct, fingers settling over the soft curve of her dress as if they already know the place.
She goes still. “Viktor,” she says quietly, “someone may see us.”
I lean in, my mouth close to her ear. “I don’t care.” The words come out rougher than I intend.
Her breath catches, but she doesn’t melt. Not yet. She keeps enough sense for both of us.
“But I do,” she says.
Fair.
I kiss the side of her neck anyway. Just once at first, slow and warm, letting my mouth linger there long enough to feel her pulse jump. Then again, a little lower. She makes a soft, frustrated sound and her fingers catch at my sleeve.
“This is exactly my point,” she whispers.
I smile against her skin. “I know.”
She exhales, then pulls back just enough to look at me properly. “If I go with you, will you stop doing this in the hallway?”
I think about lying.
Instead I say, “For now.”
That earns me a tired look. “You are impossible.”
“Yes.”
She looks as if she wants to argue more, but she’s tired enough that practicality wins. Good. I don’t trust myself to keep standing here in an open corridor with her this close and not forget every reason I should behave like a man with patience.
She starts to move past me.
I stop her with a hand at her waist. “No.”
Her eyes narrow. “No?”
“I’m carrying you.”
Absolutely not, her face says.
“I can walk.”
“You can. I’m not interested in that option.”
“Viktor.”
“You nearly fell today.”
“I was caught.”
“That is not the reassurance you think it is.”
She opens her mouth, sees from my face that I mean it, and closes it again with visible annoyance. Good. I prefer her annoyed to unsteady.
I bend and lift her before she can start over.
She lets out a quiet breath, one arm going around my shoulders on instinct. “You are outrageous.”
“I’ve heard.”
I settle her more securely against me and start toward the stairs.
She’s warm in my arms, familiar in a way she should not already be, and my body notices that far too quickly. The line of her legs under the dress. The weight of her against my chest. The scent of her hair. All of it works against my judgment.
Halfway to the stairs, my mind pulls briefly to Ethan.
I had gone looking for Sienna earlier and found my son instead, standing alone near the terrace with a face full of bad temper and injured pride.
He looked as if the day had failed him personally.
Maybe it had. Maybe that was enough to make him dangerous.
Last night when I had threatened to cancel the wedding, he was pissed off.
For one brief, unpleasant second, I wonder if he could have had something to do with the champagne after all.
Ethan is cruel when it costs him nothing.
Careless. Vain. Weak in ways that have disappointed me for years.
Poisoning a bridesmaid by accident in public at his own wedding breakfast would require a degree of nerve and competence I don’t think he possesses.
And if he had tried something that stupid, I suspect he would look different now. Less offended. More frightened.
In my arms, Sienna shifts a little and looks at me. “What are you thinking?”
“That I was right.”
“About?”
“You needing to be carried.”
She gives me a look that should discourage me and somehow only makes me want to kiss her again.
By the time I reach my door, she’s quiet, one hand resting lightly against my chest, too tired to keep arguing and too wary to relax completely.
I open the door, carry her inside, and close us into the room again.
Only then do I set her down carefully on the edge of the bed and look at her for a moment longer than I should.
The second I do, she reaches for me.
Not cautiously. Not like someone weighing consequences. Her hands go to my shirt, fists in the fabric, and she pulls me between her knees with a sound that is half frustration, half need.
“So much for resting,” I murmur.
She looks up at me, tired and flushed and too honest to pretend now. “You’re the one who brought me here.”
“That’s not the same as permission.”
Her mouth curves, small and dangerous. “Then stop me.”
I should.
Instead I kiss her. Hard enough that she falls back onto the bed with a breathless sound, taking me with her.
My hands are everywhere at once. Her face.
Her waist. Her thighs under the light fabric of her dress.
Hers are no better, pushing my jacket off my shoulders, dragging at my shirt as if she can’t get enough skin fast enough.
This is exactly what I did not intend.
Exactly what I want anyway.
We kiss like we’ve been interrupted too many times already.
Mouths open, breath shared, hands restless and greedy.
There’s nothing measured left in it now.
No patience, no pretense that we are being careful with each other.
Only the fact that the moment I touch her, she answers, and the moment she answers, I lose what little restraint I still had.
“Sienna,” I say against her mouth.
She makes a low sound that almost undoes me.
I push her dress up her thighs and kiss my way down her throat, her chest, the tops of her breasts, the warm skin above the edge of her bra. She arches under me, fingers in my hair, and I can feel the wet heat already waiting between her legs when I slide my hand there.
“Christ,” I mutter.
She’s soaked again.
Her hips move at the first pass of my fingers, searching shamelessly, and I can’t help the rough smile that hits my mouth.
“We really are making terrible decisions,” I say.
“Then stop talking.”
That earns her exactly what she wants.