Chapter 6 #3
He’d removed his jacket. That should not have mattered.
It did. The dark shirt beneath fit his shoulders too well, the sleeves pushed back over strong forearms dusted with dark hair, and a silver bracelet at his right wrist — a simple chain, elegant, unremarkable, except that one section near the clasp had gone dark, almost burned.
He saw her looking and lowered his cuff. Too late.
“What happened to your bracelet?”
“Nothing.”
“That’s becoming your favorite word.” She folded her arms. “A stranger broke into my apartment after I posted a video of an old book. You appeared the next morning and bought the entire estate connected to that book. Men attacked us, and you got stabbed, and somehow you didn’t need a hospital.
Now I’m in a house with invisible gates and secret stairs and whatever an outer ward is. What am I supposed to believe?”
His expression didn’t change. She hadn’t expected it to.
“That I will protect you,” he said.
“That isn’t an explanation.”
“No.”
“Do I get one?”
His jaw tightened. “Yes. When I can give it without placing you in greater danger.”
“That sounds convenient.”
“It is not.” The words came out rough — not loud; Demetri did not need volume, and his control made every shift in his voice feel larger, so that the roughness struck low in her, physical, a hand where there was no hand.
“Am I a prisoner?” she asked.
His eyes flashed ruby, there and gone. “No.”
“Can I leave? Tonight?”
“If that is what you choose.” The answer came instantly, and he stepped aside from the doorway so the whole path out of the room opened behind him.
“You may leave this house whenever you wish. A car and a security team will take you anywhere you choose. If you want a hotel, I’ll secure one.
If you want to leave the city, I’ll arrange it.
If you want me to remain ten miles from you, I’ll do that as well. ”
His face was carved from control. Only his hands betrayed him — closed at his sides, not quite fists, the tendons standing out.
“But?” she asked.
“There is no but.”
“There’s always a but.”
“Then this is the exception.”
The ocean struck the cliff below them, once, twice. Nica looked toward the balcony, where fog pressed against the glass. “What do you want from me?”
His silence changed, and she felt it; heat spread beneath her blouse before he said a word.
He came into the room and stopped several feet away — far enough not to crowd her, close enough that she caught his scent, cedar and warm skin and that scorched, impossible heat beneath both, and her mouth went dry.
“You asked me that at the auction house,” he said.
“I couldn’t answer then. Now I can answer part of it.
” His gaze lowered to her mouth. Her lips parted.
His eyes darkened, the gray going deep and warm at the center.
“I want you here because you are in danger. But that is not what you asked.” The muscles in his throat moved, and for the first time since she’d met him, Demetri Vasiliev looked uncertain — which, absurdly, made him not less intimidating but more.
He took one step closer, and her pulse kicked, low and hard. “I want your time,” he said. “I want your attention. I want the opportunity to know you.” She stared, and he went on, calm and grave, as though announcing a corporate acquisition. “I intend to court you.”
A laugh escaped her before she could stop it, bounced off the bookshelves, and died. Demetri did not smile.
“You’re serious,” she said.
“Completely.”
“You met me yesterday. You don’t know anything about me.”
“I know you climbed a ladder after your employer ordered you down, because leaving a single crate undocumented offended you. You drink tea and forget it until it’s cold.
You read Russian when you are tired because the language comforts you.
You pretend hunger is an inconvenience because admitting you’ve neglected yourself would mean correcting the habit.
You apologize when other people frighten you.
You dislike closed doors behind you. You touch the scar above your eye when you’re deciding whether to lie. ”
Her hand flew to her eyebrow, and his gaze followed it. Damn him.
“You cataloged a dangerous collection alone for six weeks,” he said, “and treated every object with more care than the man who stole them ever gave the people he took them from. You are brave when you should be cautious, and cautious when you deserve to be brave.”
The room had gone too quiet. Nica’s arms loosened, and she didn’t know what to do with the pressure beneath her sternum.
Compliments were easy when they were generic — pretty, smart, sexy, the words a man used because he wanted access to her body.
Demetri spoke as if he’d studied her. As if what he saw mattered.
As if he’d spent the one day he’d known her learning her the way she learned a manuscript, patiently, page by page, and had found the whole of her worth the reading.
It undid something in her that flattery never had.
She reached for humor, because she always did.
“You left out my charming ability to fall off industrial equipment.”
“You did not fall.”
“I absolutely fell.”
“I caught you.” His voice roughened on the last word, and the memory moved between them — his arms beneath her, his heat, his hand trembling as it left her waist — and she felt it move through her body all over again, the phantom weight of being held by him.
Nica swallowed. “That doesn’t mean you know me. ”
“No.” He stepped closer. “It means I want to.”
She could have backed away. The worktable pressed against her hip, but there was room to move around it; the open doorway remained behind him, the control panel waited in the bedroom, one touch and the doors would lock him out.
She stayed where she was. She noticed she stayed, and could not honestly tell herself it was only nerves that kept her feet on the floor.
Demetri lifted one hand, then stopped, his fingers hovering beside her face.
“May I?” The question slid over her skin like the heat of him.
She nodded. He touched the loose strand of hair against her cheek, nothing more — gathered it with absurd care and drew it behind her ear, the back of his knuckle brushing her skin, and heat followed the touch down her throat and pooled low and shameless.
He was close enough now to see the dark ring around his irises, close enough to count the black lashes, close enough to kiss.
Her body leaned before she caught it. His nostrils flared, and something in his face went taut and hungry, as though he’d caught the exact moment her body gave her away.
The silver bracelet at his wrist made a faint sound — not a clink, a crack — and Demetri jerked his hand away, pain crossing his face, fast and brutal and then gone.
“What happened?”
“Nothing.” He stepped back, and the distance felt like a door slamming, his right hand closing around the bracelet beneath his cuff. “You should eat. You’ve had coffee and half a pastry since morning.”
“How do you know that?”