Chapter 20
CHLOE
Lily's text was a single line. Come to my room. Bring nothing. Bring yourself.
I read it twice over my mug in the kitchen, set the mug down, and went.
The compound at this hour had its own quiet. The big west windows were going apricot in the late autumn light. Two of Alek's men stood at the end of the corridor with their hands folded, and they both pretended not to see me when I passed. It still warmed the back of my neck.
Lily's door was open a crack. I pushed it with two fingers.
She sat cross-legged on her bed in a cream silk robe, two glasses of something pale on the side table and a stiff little paper bag tucked beside her knee. Tissue paper fanned out of the top. Her hair was loose. Her mouth was already curving before I made it all the way in.
"Close the door," she said.
I closed the door.
"Sit."
I sat. The mattress was deep enough to feel like a hand catching me.
"I have a gift for you," she said, and pushed the bag into my lap with both palms.
"For what?"
"For being you. And for a small operational reason. Open it."
I parted the tissue. The first thing my fingers met was lace, and under the lace something cooler and heavier.
Silk. Deep wine red, almost black in the folds.
I drew it out one piece at a time. A little bralette with thin ribbon ties at the shoulders, lace cups, silk band.
Panties to match, ribbon ties at the hips.
Over the top, a sheer robe in the same wine silk, long sleeves, a sash you could pull with one finger.
I held the bralette up by its ribbons and felt my face go hot.
"Lily."
"Yes?"
"What is this for?"
She lifted her glass at me. The mischief on her mouth had teeth in it now.
"I heard about the kiss you gave another man," she said. "This will smooth his mood."
I laughed before I could stop myself, then tried to cover it with my hand.
"This is inappropriate."
"What's inappropriate about it? That it shows everything? You'll be out of your clothes inside two minutes anyway."
"Shut up, Lily."
"I'm only being practical." She lifted her glass higher. "I'm married to a man like that one. I know the math. You wear this, he loses ten minutes of his life standing in a doorway. You stand still and let him. Then you go to his room. Get ready. Wait."
"You sound like a general."
"I'm a ballerina. Same thing." She nudged the second glass toward me with her toe. "Drink half. Not all. You want your edges."
I took a small swallow. Cold and bright and a little floral, and it went straight to the bottom of my stomach.
"Go," she said, soft now, the tease gone out of it for one beat. "He has been waiting longer than you think."
I folded the silk back into the tissue, gathered the rope handles, and went.
I held the bag against my ribs the whole way down the hall.
Did not look at the men at the end. Did not look at the housekeeper who came out of the linen closet and said good evening to my shoulder.
It felt like everyone in the house could see straight through the brown paper to the wine red silk inside.
Daniil's door was unlocked.
I let myself in and closed it behind me with my back.
The room was dim. He had not been up here to turn the lamps on.
His coat lay over the chair the way he had left it earlier, one sleeve trailing, the lining dark against the wood.
The bed was made. The whole room smelled like him, that clean wool and cold air and the faint warm note of his skin I had learned the shape of in pieces over months.
I went into the bathroom and shut that door too.
I changed slowly. I did not want to rush it. The bralette ribbon ties took me two tries. The panties slid up cool against my skin. The robe was the lightest thing of all, weightless on my shoulders. I tied the sash, then made myself look up.
The mirror gave her back to me. Wine silk. Dark hair down over her shoulders. Collarbones I did not usually notice. The bralette did exactly what Lily had warned me about. It did not hide anything. It framed everything. My cheeks were already pink before I left the bathroom.
I stood there for one whole beat being shy. Just one. Then I stopped.
I was not doing this because someone had told me to. I was doing it because a man with bruises still healing on his ribs had decided in a garden somewhere that I deserved a word, and somewhere between the kitchen and this mirror I had decided I was going to make him work for the saying of it.
I went back into the bedroom.
I did not know whether to sit on the bed or stand at the window or lean against the dresser.
The bed felt like cheating. The window felt like a stage.
I chose the dresser. I crossed the room in bare feet, set my hand against the wood, and turned so the lamp glow caught the silk on my hip and not my face.
I let the sash sit a little loose. I waited.
The door opened.
He came in talking to someone over his shoulder, coat folded over his forearm, two words of Russian going out into the hallway, and then he stepped through and saw me and the two words stopped.
His coat hit the floor.
I almost laughed. I did not. I held still against the dresser and watched his face do what it did.
His pupils blew wide so fast I saw it happen in the lamp glow.
The jaw set. His breath caught on something halfway in and did not come back out clean.
The small scar at his temple went a shade paler against the rest of him.
He did not move.
"Does this look good on me?" I said.
It came out softer than I meant. The nerves in my throat turned it into a question and a tease at once.
He breathed once, on purpose, like a man pulling himself back.
"Devastating," he said. Low. No give in it. "I want to tie you up and never let anyone else look at you again."
The silk on my skin warmed half a degree.
"Then tie me," I said. "And remind me whose I am."
He crossed the room.
Four long strides and the fifth was already his hand at the back of my neck.
His mouth landed on mine before I had time to take a real breath, and the kiss was not careful.
He kissed me like a man who had been holding the inside of his ribs together since the garden.
One hand fisted in my hair at the base of my skull.
The other splayed wide and hard at the small of my back and pulled me into him until the dresser stopped meaning anything.
My palms went up his chest, found the steady drum under the cotton, and stayed.
He turned us. Two steps, and my back met the wall beside the dresser, a soft thud of silk on plaster, his thigh sliding between mine and staying.
I felt the line of him through his trousers, hard and patient and already decided.
My breath went small in my throat. His teeth caught my bottom lip and dragged, and the heat in my belly dropped low and sat there.
His hand came up from my back to my jaw, gripped, tipped my face exactly the way he wanted it, and the kiss went deeper.
Somewhere in the middle of it I felt his control slip. A quarter inch, no more. His hand tightened in my hair past gentle, eased, tightened again, like a man counting himself down on purpose. The low sound he made in his throat was not a sound I had heard from him before.
"Careful with me," he murmured against my lip. His breath was uneven. "I am not going to be careful with you."
"Promise?"
He bit my bottom lip, gently, on the word.
He stepped back an inch. Just one. The cold of the room rushed in between us and I missed him already.
His hands went to the knot at his own throat and his eyes did not leave mine.
He pulled the silk loose slowly, watching me watch him, one motion and then another, and slid the tie free of his collar with the patience of a man enjoying my face.
He let it hang doubled across his palm. The dark silk caught the lamp.
I watched him.
He watched me watch him.
He lifted my wrists between us, both of mine inside one of his, and the silk went cool against the inside of my forearm.
He wound it once. Twice. He was gentle with the wrap and not gentle with the knot.
Then he slid two fingers between the silk and my skin and tested the give, careful, the way a man checks the things he intends to be rough with later.
"Too tight?"
I shook my head. I could not have spoken if I tried.
He lifted my bound hands to his mouth and kissed the inside of my left wrist where the pulse was already running fast for him.
Then the right. His eyes stayed on my face the whole time.
He was asking me a question the entire length of that knot, and I gave him the answer with mine.
Something hot and bright moved under my skin at the thought of being his to handle, all of me wrapped in his color, his silk, his decision.
"Good girl," he said, and the floor under me did something soft.
He walked me backward to the bed by the silk between my wrists.
Each step was a small careful tug that made my breath catch.
He sat me down on the edge of his mattress, laid me back against his pillows, lifted my bound hands and set them above my head on the cool cotton, and left them there.
Then he took one step away from the bed, and he stood, and he looked at me.
He gave himself the view. He gave me the time.
The lamp caught the wine red of the robe where it had fallen open at my thigh.
His eyes went slow. My mouth. My throat.
The hollow at the base of it where my pulse was beating.
The lace cups. The dip below my ribs. The ribbon ties at my hips.
Bare feet crossed at the ankle on his blanket.
Bound wrists resting where he had put them.
He took a second longer than he needed, and I saw his chest move through his open shirt, in and out, not steady. His jaw worked once.