13. Sofia #3
His gaze drops to my mouth. Then to my neck. The bite mark is still there, though fainter now. I know because I checked it in the mirror this morning like an idiot.
His attention lingers, and my skin heats beneath it.
“What did he tell you?” Damir asks.
“Nothing.”
“Grigori is smarter than he looks.”
“He looks fairly smart.”
“He will be pleased.”
“He also told me some doors are locked for a reason.”
Damir’s eyes return to mine. “And yet here you are.”
“Yes,” I say. “Apparently I have a complicated relationship with doors.”
His mouth almost curves. Then his gaze shifts to the photograph on the desk, and the room cools again.
“You want to ask about Elena,” he says.
I swallow. There’s no point lying. Not to him. He can probably hear my thoughts forming and judge them for structure. But then I have another thought. Elena, so that’s her name.
“Yes.”
“No.”
The answer is immediate.
My anger flares. “You don’t even know the question.”
“I know enough.”
“That is very convenient for you.”
His hand on the wall flexes once. “Some stories are not yours.”
“I became your wife yesterday.”
“That doesn’t make you entitled to every corpse in this house.”
The words hit hard, and I flinch before I can stop myself. Something in his face changes, but I’m too angry to care.
“No,” I say quietly. “Apparently being your wife only entitles me to guards, rules, surveillance, and a ring tied to my finger with string.”
His eyes sharpen.
I keep going because self-preservation has left the building. “You want me here. You want my name, my cooperation, my obedience when it suits you, but I’m not allowed to know whether the man I married actually killed the wife before me?”
Silence. The question sits between us like a lit match.
Damir’s face gives away nothing. Nothing at all. That terrifies me more than rage would.
I expect him to move back. I expect him to threaten me. I don’t expect his free hand to close around my waist and turn me fully against the wall.
The breath leaves me in a rush.
His body comes against mine, not crushing, not hurting, but close enough that every part of me becomes brutally aware of every part of him. His thigh presses between the layers of my skirt. His hand stays at my waist, fingers firm through the fabric.
“Sofia,” he says.
My name sounds different now.
Not a warning. Not quite.
Heat opens low in my stomach.
I hate my body. I hate it so much.
“This is not an answer,” I whisper.
“No.”
“Then what is it?”
His gaze moves over my face, slower now. “A reminder.”
“Of what?”
“That if you keep pushing at locked doors, you may not like what opens.”
I should say something clever. Something cutting.
Something Sofia-like.
But his thumb moves once at my waist, and the thought disappears.
The room becomes too small. He’s too close.
Too warm. Too calm. His bandaged hand remains against the wall beside my head, but the other slides from my waist to my hip, then lower, gathering the fabric of my dress with a patience that makes my mouth go dry.
“Damir,” I say.
His eyes darken. “Tell me to stop.”
My breath catches.
There it is. A door. A real one.
Not locked. Not forced. Offered.
I stare at him, heart hammering against my ribs.
I should tell him to stop.
I should.
Instead, my fingers curl into the front of his shirt. “That is a very unfair thing to say when you already know I’m reckless.”
He chuckles slightly before he kisses me.
It’s not like the church. There is no audience.
No blood on stone. No old families watching.
No Dmitri bleeding and cursing behind us.
Just the study, the sea beyond the windows, the photograph on the desk, and Damir’s mouth taking mine like he has been waiting since breakfast for me to give him a reason.
The kiss starts deep and turns rough almost immediately. My back presses into the wall. His hand tightens on my hip. My fingers climb to his shoulders, then his neck, then into his hair because apparently the part of my brain responsible for dignity has died quietly and left no note.
His hair is softer than I expected. That feels like an offense. He makes a low sound against my mouth when I tug, and the sound goes straight through me.
“Careful,” he murmurs.
“No,” I breathe, because I’m not. Because I don’t want to be.
That does something to him.
His hand slides under my dress. I go still for half a second, shocked by the directness, by the heat of his palm against my bare thigh, by the sheer fact of him touching me there in his study while I’m still angry and frightened and embarrassingly, painfully wet.
He notices.
Of course he notices.
His mouth leaves mine, and his forehead almost touches mine as his hand moves higher.
“You are very angry for a woman this wet,” he says.
I gasp. “You are very smug for a man who lives in a cliffside murder castle.”
His fingers pause at the edge of my underwear.
His eyes hold mine. “Do you want me to stop?”
The question is quiet. Clear.
Cruel, because I know the answer.
“No,” I say.
His fingers slip beneath the fabric.
My breath breaks.
“Oh,” I whimper. Oh God.