Chapter 7
Salvatore
At five in the morning, I gave up pretending I intended to sleep.
The penthouse kitchen was dark except for the lamp over the stove and the blue light of my phone. The lake beyond the glass looked like hammered steel. I stood at the counter with cold coffee in my hand and replayed the kiss for what was probably the hundredth time.
Her fist in my tie.
Her mouth hitting mine.
The taste of whisky and anger. The small sound she made when I pulled her against me. The way her body had softened for one second before fear came back and locked every muscle.
I had wanted to follow her when she left the office.
I had wanted to put her against the hallway wall and ask exactly what she needed to feel safe enough not to run from my hand. I had wanted to hear her say it. Better, I had wanted to hear her refuse to say it until I made patience feel more dangerous than surrender.
Instead, I had stayed where she left me.
Four hours later, I was still hard whenever I thought about her pulling my tie.
This was undignified.
It was also the least of my worries.
I was holding the key. Rosalia’s key.
Back then, I had intended to give it to her.
I had intended to learn every quiet part of her.
Her meals. Her sleep. The exact tone that made her stop carrying the world for a while.
She wanted rules and praise and a hand at the back of her neck.
She wanted to call me Daddy in private and have me understand that the word meant more care, not less respect.
Then my father died.
I became responsible for my brothers almost immediately. Our mother needed a son who did not fall apart. The eastern office needed somebody willing to become colder than the men who thought grief had made us weak.
So I became useful.
Rosalia waited two years for me to become human again.
I never did.
I looked at the key. Let the light play over it. I couldn’t make the same mistake again. Couldn’t fall for someone who I’d end up letting down.
Bare feet—or nearly bare feet—moved behind me.
I turned.
Yelena stood in the kitchen doorway wearing the dark grey cashmere jumper and soft black socks.
Nothing else was visible. The jumper came down to the middle of her thighs.
Her hair was loose, tangled from sleep, dark honey over one shoulder.
Her face was bare. No diamonds. No paint.
No armor except the pale eyes assessing me from across the room.
My whole body answered her at once.
Not gradually. Not politely.
Blood went low. My hand tightened around the coffee cup. Every disciplined thought in my head narrowed to the bare strip of thigh between cashmere and sock.
She noticed.
Of course she noticed.
Her gaze dropped to my hand around the cup. Then it traveled slowly over my rolled sleeves, my open collar, and my face. She looked at the cut she had made and let her mouth curve.
“You look terrible,” she said.
“You look happy about that. Figures.”
“I slept again.”
“Glad to hear it. I have to say, I noticed you.”
“It’s annoying.”
“You slept on my floor with my dog on top of you. It was difficult to miss.”
She came into the kitchen. Slowly. The jumper shifted against her legs with every step. She knew exactly what she was doing now. I saw it in the way she reached above her head for a mug she did not need from a cabinet she knew was empty.
The hem rose.
Not far. Far enough.
Christ.
She glanced back over her shoulder and caught me looking.
“Something wrong, Scordato?”
“No.”
“You’re holding that cup like it insulted your mother.”
I set it down before the handle broke.
Her smile widened by half a degree. Victory.
“You’re enjoying this,” I said.
“A little.”
“At least you’re honest.”
“Only when it causes trouble.”
She put the mug on the counter and leaned one hip against the marble. Her eyes moved to the key.
“What’s that?”
“Nothing for you.”
“That was not my question.”
“I know. But even so, that’s the answer you’re getting.”
Her brows lifted. “You’re very commanding before breakfast.”
“Yelena.”
The way I said her name stopped the game.
Not entirely. Nothing stopped her entirely. But she straightened, watching me.
“There will be no more kissing,” I said. “No sexual touching. Not while Kiryl remains in your father’s house and you depend on us for shelter and protection. Not while I am in a position of power over you. You are vulnerable.”
Silence settled between us.
Her expression went glacial. “But I’m the one who kissed you.”
“I remember.”
“I initiated it.”
“As I say, I remember.”
“I wanted you to kiss me back. I begged you to.”
“Yes.”
“And now you’ve decided I’m not allowed to choose what I want?”
“No.”
“That sounds remarkably like what you decided.”
I walked around the island and stopped with it between us. Necessary architecture.
“You are competent,” I said. “You can choose. You can also change your mind. A free choice has to be safe to withdraw.”
“It was safe.”
“You froze when my hand went under your jumper.”
“I pulled away. I didn’t freeze.”
“Even worse. So I let go.”
“Believe me, I know.”
“Because that is the bare minimum. I need enthusiastic consent, not pulling away.”
Her jaw tightened. “You make desire sound like a compliance audit.”
“With you, at present, it needs one.”
“How romantic.”
“I am not trying to be romantic.”
“That much is clear.”
She pushed off the counter and walked toward me.
One step.
Then another.
I stayed where I was. She stopped on the other side of the island, close enough that I could smell sleep-warm skin and the faint soap from the bathroom.
“You want me,” she said. “I know you want me. You can’t deny it. Don’t even try.”
“Of course I want you.”
The blunt answer made her blink.
I continued before either of us could mistake honesty for permission.
“I want you badly enough that I will not trust myself with convenient reasoning. Your brother is under guard. You have no safe home. Your money and travel documents came through my people. If I touch you now, every yes comes with those facts standing behind it.”
“And if I climb over this counter and kiss you again?”
“I’ll put you down.”
Her lips parted.
“Gently,” I added.
Heat entered her eyes. Pale grey turning bright.
“You’re frightened of me,” she said.
“No.”
“I think you are.”
“I’m frightened of wanting more than I have any right to take.”
The teasing left her face.
For one unguarded moment, she looked younger. Not childish. Simply tired. A woman who had expected another man to deny wanting anything except possession and had instead been handed an answer she did not know where to put.
Then she recovered.
“Very dramatic,” she said.
“I haven’t slept.”
“Because of me?”
“Yes. Because of the kiss.”
Her fingers curled against the edge of the counter. Her gaze dropped to my mouth. I watched her remember it. I felt the memory in my own body, immediate and brutal.
She wet her lower lip.
Deliberately.
“Then I hope tonight is worse,” she said.
“I hope you think about sliding your hard cock into my tight, wet little pussy. I hope you think about my lips around your tip, and me chugging down your come like the little slut I want to be for you. I hope you’re hard all night and you get no relief—none. ”
She picked up the empty mug and walked out.
I remained in the kitchen with both hands flat on the marble until I could trust them again.
Ididn’t sleep that night. Not one wink.
The next morning, the house servants were in—cleaning, tidying, keeping the place going. It was peaceful, until I heard a tray hit the dining-room floor at eight-twenty and broke into enough pieces to turn six armed men toward the sound.
I moved through, sleep-addled, to see coffee running over the pale carpet. A silver pot rolled under a chair. White porcelain scattered around the maid’s shoes.
She froze.
The guard who had entered too quickly looked down at the stain. He had come through the door with one hand beneath his jacket, reacting to a noise in the corridor. The maid had startled, turned, and lost the tray.
“Look what you did,” he snapped. “Do you know what that carpet costs?”
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” She dropped to her knees among the shards. “Please, I’ll clean it. Please don’t tell the housekeeper. I can pay—”
“Stop.”
Yelena reached her before I did.
She crossed the room in three fast steps and crouched beside the girl, the oversized jumper replaced now by black trousers and a fitted cream sweater. Her hair was tied back. No jewelry. Still, every person in the room looked at her.
She took Lucia’s hands before the girl could grab broken porcelain.
“Did you cut yourself?”
“No, miss. I’m sorry—”
“Hands.”
Lucia showed them.
Yelena turned them palm up, then checked her wrists. Calm. Thorough. The same woman who had tried to put a brooch through my eye now inspected a frightened maid’s fingers as if nothing else in the room mattered.
“She dropped it,” the guard said.
“No,” Yelena replied. “I knocked it while reaching for my coffee.”
That was a clean lie. Effortless.
The guard frowned. “I saw—”
“You saw the end of an accident.” She looked up at him from the floor. “Go get towels. Cold water, not hot, unless you’d like to set coffee permanently into wool.”
He went.
He did not appear to realize he had obeyed her until he reached the door.
Yelena turned back to Lucia. “Are they deducting breakage from your wages?”
The girl glanced toward the housekeeper.
Yelena followed the glance. “Are they?”
“Sometimes,” Lucia whispered. “It’s all right. I need the job.”
“For yourself?”
“My younger sister. She’s still in school.”
Something changed in Yelena’s face. It was small. A softening around the mouth, gone almost before I caught it.
“How old?”
“Sixteen.”
Yelena picked up the largest piece of the broken cup. “Then we’ll be careful with your wages.”
“Miss, please don’t. If they think I complained—”
“They won’t.”
The housekeeper arrived with a broom and stopped at the sight of Yelena kneeling on the carpet.
“No money comes out of her pay,” Yelena said quietly. “The tray was my fault.”
“It wasn’t—” Lucia began.
Yelena looked at her.
The girl stopped.