Chapter 9 #2
"No," I confirm, holding her face steady.
My thumb traces the line of her jaw, slow, deliberate, making sure she's anchored to me before I finish.
"I don't think I love you. I know I do. There's no thinking involved.
There hasn't been since I watched you swing a rolling pin at a man twice your size in a towel and gardening boots. "
Her smile heals a part of my soul. “That did it for you, huh?”
Her lips part. Color floods her cheeks and her eyes go wide, glassy with tears she's fighting to hold back. One escapes anyway, rolling down her cheek and over my thumb.
“When I’m near you all I can think of is the feel of your touch on me. Your warmth. The way you make me forget to breathe. And since we are being honest, I want to know what it would be like to lose my virginity to you. I don't know what to do with all that," she whispers.
I smile and brush the tear away. "Me either, malyshka." And that is another truth. The deadliest one I've spoken out loud in twenty years.
Before I kiss her again, I take her fork and wind a few noodles covered in sauce for her. "You need to eat. Let’s both focus on making sure you stay strong. The rest can come later."
She opens her mouth without argument and my hand steadies as I guide the fork between her lips.
Sauce catches at the corner of her mouth.
I swipe it away with my thumb and she turns her cheek into my palm, her eyes closing for a fraction of a second.
The trust in that small movement guts me.
No flinch. No pulling away. She leans into my hand like my touch is safe, and the weight of that faith presses against places inside me I stopped visiting years ago.
I wind another forkful. She takes it, chewing slowly, her gaze holding mine with a warmth that makes the underground brighter than any surface I've stood on. I've fed men information, fed operations money, fed enemies bullets. I've never fed a woman a meal and wanted to do it again tomorrow.
Once she is done, I stand and place a kiss on the top of her head. “Go relax. I have cleanup.”
I take our plates to the kitchen. While I clean she wanders to the window overlooking the lake.
Early evening gives way to night. Moonlight shifts across the compound and plays in the strands of her hair. I pause while loading the dishwasher, amazed by her ability to glow with golden light by day and then shine when the lady overhead bathes her in silver light at night.
She walks in two worlds.
I wrap up the cleaning of the kitchen and grab my tablet from my office. I return to the living room to find her on the sofa with a book.
I take the opposite end of the sofa and it’s not long before I have a tiny foot on my lap.
She wiggles her toes as she stretches her body out, her book abandoned. "I realize I know next to nothing about the man who has confessed his love for me. Tell me your favorite color?"
I'm reading a report on my tablet. Shipping logs that Luca sent over. I set my tablet aside and pick up her foot instead. Using my thumbs, I work her arches to the sound of thankful moans.
My cock thinks those are for it and hardens on command.
I focus on her question. Color? "Hmm. I don't have one."
She wiggles her toes again, this time giggling. "Everyone has a favorite color, silly."
"I don't."
She pushes to her elbows and I love watching the steel in her eyes solidify with determination. "Look at this place. It’s black."
"I didn't say black." That's because as of forty-eight hours ago it changed to violet. The color of her eyes.
She shakes her head with defiance. "Mmm…you were thinking it," she counters, wearing a smirk on her pretty pink lips.
I take her other foot and give it the same treatment. "As you wish. What's yours?"
"Easy. Sunshine."
This woman is going to be the death of me. "That's not a color."
"It is if you've ever stood in a flower shop at five in the afternoon when the light comes through the front windows and turns everything to gold.
" She pulls her foot free, crosses my living room to the windows.
Darkness covers everything in black ink beyond the glass.
She pushes off from the glass and walks toward me, bare feet silent on the marble.
"Sunshine is absolutely a color. It's the color of things that are still growing. Of warmth. Of mornings filled with laughter. It’s the color of a person’s heart, their soul and life. "
She stops a few feet from where I'm sitting. Her eyes shift in the light from the blue of the glimmering pool light.
"You should try it sometime. Standing in sunshine. You might like it."
I hold her gaze. The words that come out of my mouth are not the words I planned. "Maybe I'm standing in it right now."
The shift in her expression is subtle. A softening at the corners of her eyes. A breath she holds for half a second before releasing. Color rises in her cheeks.
"That was pure poetry."
"I do love a good line or two.”
"I’ve seen your massive poetry collection, Bratva man. That makes two things I know about you." She turns away, but not before I catch the smile she's trying to hide. "Don't worry. Your scary reputation is safe with me. I won't tell anyone you are a softy at heart."
I switch to her other foot and she melts deeper into the cushion. "What about the drawing? I've seen your sketchbook. The detail in your work is exceptional."
Her toes curl against my palm. "It's illustration.
Botanical illustration, specifically. I draw flowers and turn them into coloring books.
" She tucks her chin and the shyness that surfaces is different from anything I've seen from her.
This matters to her in a way that goes deeper than the shop or the flowers she sells.
"I sell them online. I have twelve titles so far. People seem to love them."
"Seems like more than a hobby."
"It is." She pulls her bottom lip between her teeth. "One day I want to see them on a real shelf. In a real bookstore. With a real display and maybe a little sign with my name on it." A self-conscious laugh escapes her. "Stupid dream, probably."
"That is not a stupid dream." I press my thumb into the arch of her foot and hold her gaze. "That is a beautiful dream, Cora."
The color that rises in her cheeks pushes me deeper in love.
She picks up her discarded book and reclines on the sofa, slipping her feet into my lap. We stay like this, her with her book and me with my tablet, for the next couple of hours. Comfortable silence that feels right.
Late evening arrives and I look over to find she's fallen asleep. The book rests open on her stomach, one hand still curled around the spine. Her breathing is deep and even, her lips slightly parted, and the silver light from the windows turns her hair into liquid mercury against the dark leather.
Two nights in that reading chair. Two nights on the couch. My spine, my knees, my pride. All sacrificed on the altar of keeping my distance from a woman I've already told I love.
Enough.
I set the tablet aside and ease the book from her fingers, marking her page before closing it.
She doesn't stir. I slide one arm under her knees and the other behind her back and lift her from the sofa.
She weighs nothing against me. Her head rolls into the crook of my neck and a soft exhale warms my skin.
I carry her through the corridor to my bedroom. The blue light from the pool follows us, rippling across the walls as I cross the threshold and lower her onto the mattress.
Her eyes flutter but don't open. She murmurs my name, half-asleep, and the sound of it stripped of all her sharp edges and armor guts me where I stand.
I ease the sweater over her head. She lifts her arms without waking fully, the way a child does when their parent undresses them for bed.
Trust made physical. My fingers work the button on her jeans and I slide them down her legs, keeping my eyes on the task and my breathing steady.
White cotton sits against her hips, simple and soft, and I leave it in place.