Chapter Twenty-one
Inna Grace
For the two days that passed, I kept reminding myself that I liked soft men.
Gentlemen. Men who treated a woman as if she were worthy of care.
Men who used their hands for holding rather than gripping, who did not shove themselves into your mouth as if making a point.
I had a whole list of what I preferred. I recited it like scripture since the night Dmitri fisted my hair and proved every item on the list was a polite lie.
The memory didn’t leave me alone, nor did the feeling of his grip on my hair and the burn in my throat.
The look on his face held me in place as if my discomfort were decorative.
He made sure I wasn’t going anywhere. The way his head fell back, and that grunt left him as if it pulled something honest out of a man who kept everything locked.
That was what drove me insane. Not the act itself, but the evidence that I made him look like that. And the inconvenient heat that flooded through me every time the memory surfaced was a problem.
I wanted to try it again. Worst? I wanted to try that, but in a different way.
But I liked soft men, I reminded myself. I liked being handled as if I might break.
I suspected Dmitri did that deliberately. He let me see him naked, let me touch him, let me taste his cum, and let me live with that memory. I couldn’t stop imagining what else he could do with that much control over me. The positions he could fix me made my brain short-circuit embarrassingly.
The problem was, I wasn’t even his type, which was confirmed again by the fact that he disappeared after that night.
The first night was a relief, but the second night, I became aware of it.
If he wasn’t going to come back tonight, I would run out of comfortable names for it.
It would be somewhere between wanting to avoid him and wanting to know where he was.
I told myself that he was busy. He owned what appeared to be half the city and answered to no schedule.
Men like Dmitri did not come home because they were expected.
Still, a quieter, less flattering thought kept surfacing: maybe he brought me here so he could bring another woman to the penthouse freely.
I checked my phone. It was five in the evening.
Cole was somewhere in the house. If he wasn’t with his tutor, he was reading, and if he wasn’t reading, he was wandering the mansion like an explorer. The swimming pool was his favorite, and the beach was where he went when he was tired of the pool.
I left the room and went downstairs into a house that never stopped moving. Staff drifted from one end to the other with purpose, always doing something.
Grandma was nowhere in sight. I was avoiding her after she asked how Dmitri and I met. Since the honest answer was that I stole his money, I decided that distance was a better solution until Dmitri returned.
I went to the kitchen, where I found the maids already preparing dinner. Anita stood at the island, mid-slice, her knife pausing the moment she saw me walk in.
“Ma’am, is there something you’d like?”
“I came to help.” I moved to the sink and washed my hands.
“Ma’am, I really don’t think that’s necessary.”
I reached for a knife, and Anita tried to take it, but I stepped back and held it behind me like a child trying to hide a toy.
“Look, I love cooking, and I’m slowly going insane doing nothing, so I will be helping.”
“I can’t allow you to —”
“Let her do it.” Grandma’s voice arrived before Anita argued further. We all turned as she stepped inside, carrying an empty glass. “Bring the mushrooms and the green beans. They need sorting. I’ll help too.”
Anita took the glass from her. “Madam, are you sure?”
She waved her off and moved to the island, pulling out the chair and lowering herself into it. I noticed the small effort she’d put in there, but she straightened her back as though the effort hadn’t happened at all.
“In fact, Inna and I will make dinner.”
The staff exchanged glances before they quietly retreated. Anita set a basket of mushrooms and a bowl of green beans in front of Grandma and left the kitchen as well.
I turned back to the counter and picked up where Anita left off, working through the vegetables with more focus than they strictly required.
This was already a mistake. I could have found Cole and walked him down to the beach, or spent the evening on the hammock pretending I wasn’t thinking about Dmitri.
Both were excellent options that I had voluntarily surrendered and came here only to fall into her trap.
Grandma leaned forward and inspected my pile. “You are too serious,” she said.
“I’m chopping vegetables.”
“You look like you are interrogating them,” she teased.
I glanced down at my posture. My stiff shoulders and a grip on the knife suggested a personal grievance. “I didn’t realize they were suspects.”
She laughed, and it reached her eyes. “Relax. They are only vegetables. They will not testify against you.”
I smiled because, despite everything, she was easy to be around.
She picked up a mushroom and brushed a speck of dirt off it. “When Dmitri was a teenager, he refused to let anyone in the kitchen while he cooked. He would lock the door.”
“He cooks?”
She nodded. “Very well.”
I snorted before I could stop myself. “Coffee doesn’t count. And I’m fairly certain warming water disqualifies a person, too.”
Her laughter came easily. “You think that is all he can do?”
“I’m certain of it.” I stacked the chopped vegetables into the bowl and reached for the next one. “Men like him are built for boardrooms and intimidating people in hallways. Not kitchens.” And other things, I did not add, thinking of the closet and the specific grip of his hand in my hair.
“Get to his good side, and he will surprise you.”
I raised a brow. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”
“Believe what, exactly?” The voice came from the doorway, and the air in the room shifted before I even turned around.
Dmitri stood there, his shirt open as usual, looking directly at me with that faint curve at the corner of his mouth. My eyes dropped to where the shirt fell open, and the edge of the tattoo showed on his chest. Heat moved through my stomach.
I looked back up. It meant nothing. The relief spreading quietly through my chest meant nothing either.
Grandma didn’t miss a beat. “Your wife thinks you are only capable of boiling water.”
“Is that so?” He stepped inside and began unbuttoning his cuffs, folding his sleeves back as if he were ready to prove something. I needed to say something before Grandma started reading the room and finding things that were hidden.
“You disappear for two days and expect me to believe you know how to cook?” I said.
He stopped by the sink and washed his hands without looking at me. “I left for work, not for a cooking class. Some things a man simply carries with him.” He reached past me for my knife. “Watch and learn, wife.”
Grandma laughed while I was trying to hold myself together. Dmitri stood close enough that his cologne reached me. I needed to locate my self-control before whatever was happening in my chest made a decision.
“She doubts your abilities.” Grandma sounded delighted.
I cleared my throat. “I don’t doubt, but I assess.”
His eyes cut to mine. “And your assessment?”
“Unqualified.”
Grandma burst out laughing again. Dmitri scoffed with dignity, as if he had been insulted by better people and survived.
He pulled a mixing bowl from the cabinet, cracked an egg one-handed against the rim, and reached for the flour.
He measured nothing but combined everything with the confidence of someone who knew what they were doing.
“Good old days,” Grandma said, straightening in her chair. “I missed this.”
I looked between the two. “He is actually doing it.”
“You underestimate me.” Dmitri tilted a portion of batter into the heated pan, and the kitchen filled with a soft sizzle.
“What can’t you do?” I asked.
“Nothing,” He glanced over with a wink before turning back to the pan. Why was that hot?
I picked up a cloth and wiped a section of the counter that didn’t need wiping.
My hands needed something to do, so I rearranged the bowl of green beans for no reason.
But I watched him anyway. The way he handled the pan, adjusting the heat without looking at the dial, and moving through the kitchen with ease.
It was not meant to be attractive, yet it proved enticing. Why was he good at everything? He should be subject to some kind of regulation.
My brain, without my consent, placed those hands on my body instead of the pan. Moving the same way, with that same certainty, the pleasure sitting in my stomach became less polite.
Whatever was wrong with me needed an urgent doctor’s appointment.