10. Chapter 10 #2
When that was done, I straightened my skirt, braced both palms on the counter, and bent over the sink while I turned on the faucet.
Cold water ran clear and sharp.
I wet a paper towel first and pressed it to the back of my neck.
The shock of it made me suck in a breath.
Then I cupped my hands under the stream and splashed drops of water there directly, once, twice, three times, until the heat under my skin backed off enough to stop feeling like a fever.
The ringlets that had escaped my high ponytail dripped cool water down the side of my throat.
I caught them with my fingers and pressed my damp palms flat to the counter again, looking at myself in the mirror like I might find some explanation there for why destiny apparently had the sense of humor of a drunk sadist.
My lipstick had held. Barely.
My cheeks were still pink. My eyes looked too bright.
“You are a grown-ass woman,” I told the face in the mirror. “Get a grip.”
It was not a very inspiring speech, but it was what I had.
I reached for a paper towel, dried my hands, then gathered up the used black lace panties in one fist because I was not leaving evidence of my personal collapse in the employee trash can for anybody with curiosity and a nose. I unlocked the restroom door and stepped back into the corridor.
And walked straight into a wall of man.
A hand caught my upper arm before I could bounce off him properly.
I jerked to a stop with a curse already halfway out of my mouth and tipped my chin back.
Nikolay.
Of course, it was Nikolay.
He filled the narrow hallway in that unfair way he had, all broad shoulders and tailored dark suit and quiet, dangerous composure, the fluorescent light flattening nothing about him except perhaps the last illusion that he belonged anywhere near the practical guts of the club.
His amber eyes were brighter here, stripped of candlelight and velvet and stage glamour. Too direct. Too warm. Too awake.
I stared at him one second, then two.
“Are you stalking me?”
For one impossible heartbeat, I thought he might deny it with that grave prince face of his.
Instead, he laughed.
The sound went through the corridor low and rich and wholly genuine, startling enough that I forgot to be offended for a second.
It was nothing like the cold, precise humor he usually deployed when he wanted to keep somebody at arm’s length.
This laugh had body to it. Warmth. It filled the narrow space and seemed too large for the fluorescent misery of the hall, like something old and easy had broken loose from him without permission.
“Stalking?” he repeated, still half-laughing. “What a word.”
“It’s an accurate one.”
His mouth was still curved when he said, “I had business in the back corridors.”
I looked past him at the concrete walls, the locked storage doors, the absence of literally any princely reason to be there, then back at his face. “Sure you did.”
Something moved again at the corner of his mouth. He knew exactly how absurd he sounded.
“Are you quite all right?” he asked.
I almost laughed myself at that. The exact same question, the second time in less than ten minutes, and somehow it landed entirely differently from his mouth.
Not gentle. Not warm. Not even insincere.
It carried a kind of dark amusement, like he already knew the answer and wanted to hear what version of the lie I’d choose.
“I’m allowed breaks,” I said.
“You are.”
“Then congratulations, mystery solved.”
I made to step around him.
He moved with me.
Not fast enough to startle. Not slow enough to give me room. Just one precise shift of that huge body and suddenly my back met the corridor wall with a soft thud, cool concrete through my thin top, and he was there in front of me close enough to make the air change.
My pulse stumbled.
“Nikolay—”
He leaned in.
Not to kiss me.
Worse.
He inhaled.
Slow. Deliberate. Unhurried as sin.
His eyes had dropped to the fist clenched at my side, the one still holding the balled-up black lace, and some expression I could not name moved over his face and vanished. Interest first. Then heat. Then something rougher than either.
“What have we here?” he murmured.
Before I could decide whether to hide my hand behind my back like a guilty teenager or slap his away on principle, he reached down and closed his fingers around my wrist.
My whole body went alert.
He did not squeeze hard. He did not need to. His hand was large and cool and impossibly sure, circling my wrist in one clean band of control before he lifted it between us. My fist remained closed around the damp scrap of lace. He looked at it once. Then at me.
And then he brought my hand toward his face.
I should have stopped him. I know I should have.
Maybe the truth was I froze because some part of me could not quite believe he was doing this.
Maybe it was because his face had gone so intent all at once, all the polished reserve stripped down to appetite and curiosity braided together.
Maybe it was because the hallway had narrowed to fluorescent buzz and his thumb at the inside of my wrist and the terrifying fact of being seen in the wake of my own body’s betrayal.
He closed his eyes and breathed in.
Just once.
His jaw went slack for the smallest moment, as if the scent had hit him lower than language. When his eyes opened again, his pupils had blown wider, amber darkened toward honey and fire, and something in my stomach flipped over hard enough to make me grip the panties tighter.
My voice, when I found it, came out much steadier than my pulse deserved.
“Sir,” I said, “that is inappropriate.”
His gaze lifted to mine.
For one moment, I thought he might apologize.
Instead, he took the panties from my hand.
Not snatched. Not grabbed. Simply unfolded my fingers one by one with his free hand and removed the ruined lace as though relieving me of some delicate object I had no business carrying.
Then he held the little scrap of black fabric in front of him for a moment, absurdly formal about it, like he was considering a rare artifact under museum light.
“Yes,” he said quietly. “I suppose it is.”
That should have been the end.
It was not.
He folded the panties once. Twice. His movements were neat, almost absentmindedly elegant, and so wildly obscene in context I could only stare.
Then he slipped them into the interior breast pocket of his suit jacket with the same calm care a man might give a pocket square or a letter he intended to keep close.
I just looked at him.
He adjusted the lapel lightly over the pocket and exhaled through his nose.
“But fuck,” he said, his voice gone lower now, roughened at the edges in a way I had never heard from him before, “if that’s not the most delicious thing I’ve smelled in ages.”
Heat flared up my throat so fast I felt dizzy with it.
He lifted one hand.
Two fingers touched my cheek.
Just that.
One unhurried pass from cheekbone to jaw, cool skin against overheated skin, so light it should not have burned, and yet it did. It felt less like a caress than a claim he had not earned and knew it, which somehow made it worse. My breath caught. I hated that he heard it.
Then he stepped back.
Distance rushed in so abruptly it made me aware of how narrow the hallway really was, how loud the fluorescent lights had gotten, how hard my heart was trying to punch through my ribs.
Nikolay straightened his jacket with one efficient tug at the front, composure settling back over him piece by piece like a man redressing after doing something he had no intention of regretting.
“I’ll let you get back to work, Madelyn.”
He said my full name like he had every right to it.
Then he turned and walked away down the corridor, broad back receding under the bad white lights, and left me standing there with my cheek still warm where he had touched it and my ruined black lace tucked over his heart.
By the time I made it back to the main floor, I had rebuilt myself the way women usually did—badly, impressively, and one breath at a time.
The purple light met me first, softening the world back into vice and shadow.
Then the music, low and steady under the floorboards.
Then the smell of Obsidian again: liquor and perfume, heat and blood and expensive restraint.
My tray waited where I’d left it on the bar.
Kyra slid it toward me without comment, though one quick look from her took in enough of my face that I knew she could tell I’d gone on break one person and come back another.
“Thanks,” I said and gave her Ironwood’s order.
She tipped her chin once and quickly placed their order on my tray.
I picked it up and stepped back into my section.
Everything felt a fraction too sharp for a minute.
The edge of the tray against my palm. The brush of my skirt against my thighs.
The memory of cool fingers on my cheek. The hot, impossible knowledge of what sat in the inner pocket of Nikolay’s suit jacket right this very second.
But there was comfort in the brutality of a task.
A woman could survive almost anything for the length of a shift if enough people needed refills.
I had just set the tray on the Ironwood table when Sage stood and motioned for me to join him just beyond their booth.
Not dramatically. Just enough to pull me beyond earshot of the others while leaving me room to move if I wanted it.
“Madelyn.”
He said my name like a gentleman instead of a trap.
His dark eyes moved over my face once, attentive and exact. The read of an alpha. Not invasive. Not careless either. He was looking for changes, and I suspected he had found them.
“Are you quite all right?” he asked.
The question hit me almost hard enough to laugh.
Twice in one night.