Chapter 14
Fourteen
Cora
The man won't tell me where we're going.
Not that I’m complaining about being out of his underworld and enjoying some time in the daylight. But it would be nice to know.
I slide my hand across the seat and tease my fingers over his zipper, playing with the silver pull. We’re in a full-sized SUV so if I have to use my brand new seducing skills, I’ve got the room.
I cast a sideways glance to find a grin tugging at the corner of his lip.
“Cora,” he drawls, but the man forgot to weave in a warning. All I hear is a bona fide dare. My mind turns away from our destination and onto how to torture information out of my lover the fun way.
I reach for his zipper and this time I don’t tease. I pull it down and the hiss is sweet music.
With his hands on the wheel, I watch him inhale deeply. His chest expands and I can practically feel the heat cranking up in the cabin of the SUV.
His gaze blazes over me, teasing over my body. His hand follows in its wake, tracing over my breasts, swirling a finger over my nipple. He moves lower, his hand tracing over my stomach until his fingers slide between my legs.
Game on.
Good thing I opted for one of the two dresses he brought home for me. This one is the color of a summer sunset and should be used for that time of year but it’s too pretty to sit in a closet for nine months of the year.
I walked out of the bedroom after his incredibly informative instruction to "prepare for an outing," and the smile on his face hasn't fully left.
I grabbed a white cardigan and some buttery soft mid-calf boots. Right now I’m ready to strip it all off and climb over to his side.
"Tell me where we’re going and I’ll be a good girl.”
He chuckles warmly. “Try again. I happen to like it when you’re naughty.”
Hmm. Time for a new tactic. “Please? Tell me and I’ll do anything you want.”
He pushes the hem of my dress up to reveal my upper thigh. He rests his hand there and gently strokes small circles over my skin. "It’s a surprise."
"I don't like surprises."
"You'll like this one."
I shift in the passenger seat and study him the way I study a new varietal before I commit to stocking it.
In daylight, above ground, Rowan Volkov is a different creature entirely.
Underground, surrounded by black marble he is all about shadows and control.
Up here, with the sun slanting through the windshield and hitting the hard line of his jaw, the gray threading through his dirty-blond hair catches the light like filaments of spun silver.
The creases at the corners of his eyes deepen when the sun is too bright.
Flooded in light, he squints, stripping away the dark god vibe and making him more human.
The ink on his forearms disappears under the cuffs of his shirt, and the muscles in his hands flex every time he shifts the wheel. I watch the tendons move under tanned skin and my mind flashes to those hands on my hips yesterday morning after our run through the woods.
My thighs press together. The ache between them is a low, pleasant reminder of his touch.
"You're staring," he says without looking at me.
"You're driving me to an undisclosed location. I'm cataloging your face in case I need to describe you to a sketch artist." The batteries to my sass are getting a good recharge the longer we stay in the sunlight.
His mouth twitches with what I assume is amusement.
"You have my face memorized, sunshine."
He's not wrong. “Touché.” I slip my hand into his and slide our palms together. “I was really just thinking how much you’ve changed. We’ve changed, really if you think about it.
I guess one hardly ever thinks about it, but when you are forced out of your daily grind, you learn a lot about yourself. ”
“I’m following.” He squeezes my thigh as if to punctuate his words.
I turn in the seat and consider my next words. “It’s strange how one event can lead to another that totally blows your life apart. Sometimes in a good way. Sometimes in a not so good way.”
“That is true.” He pauses. “What is really on your mind, sunshine?”
“I wish you would tell me what made you walk away from me so many times. I know it must be painful, but I want you to know I’m here.”
“Thank you for that, my light.”
My light. That is a new nickname and it makes my heart warm.
I tighten my fingers around his. “I’ve lost a lot in the last few days, Rowan.
My shop, my freedom. I know the threat of the cops finding me and your son getting his hands on me is a very real danger, but I haven’t been this happy in…
ever. I don’t even care about missing my deadline.
That’s what I also meant. It’s like a veil has been peeled back.
My mother loved flowers and passed that on to me.
It grounded me and gave me purpose.” I hold my next thought for a few heartbeats as I watch the city go back.
“I think I’m ready for what comes next, is what I am saying.” My heart trembles right along with my hands. He holds them tighter and we exchange a look before his eyes return to the road.
“If I am pregnant, I think a lot will change for both of us. Are we ready for that?”
What if he leaves me? What if he gets in trouble and goes to prison or worse, dies?
No. I kick those thoughts out of my head. I can’t let that kind of worry take hold. Rowan is not my father.
“I feel your worry, malyshka. You will always have me. I meant every word I said to you. I want you, heart, body and soul. If we’ve made a love child, I will cherish that life as I cherish yours.”
He raises my hand and presses a kiss to the back of my knuckles. Heat blooms over my skin and I feel strings forming over my heart tying us together.
“And if we haven’t?” I ask, my heart breaking at the thought of what that might mean.
“Then we try again and again.”
“You know, that just smeared a balm over the wounds my father created years ago by leaving us.”
There’s a long pause before Rowan has anything to say. I think the conversation can come to an end when he tells me a truth I never expected from him. “That is one of my sins, too and why Nikolai hates me.”
“You abandoned your son?” This is news to me. I go to pull my hand away from his, struck in the heart by the confession, but he tightens his fingers on mine.
“Nyet, malyshka. Please listen. Abandon, no. Not in that sense. I sent him to boarding school so my way of life would not touch him. It felt like abandoning him, but I knew it was for the best. My life was death, violence and blood. Sending him away turned out to be my biggest mistake. While away from my side, my father poisoned Nikolai against me.”
“Sounds like you had two evils to pick from.”
Rowan nods. “Yes.”
“Then you didn’t abandon him, Rowan. You tried to protect him.
If anything you might not have fought hard enough to keep him out of harm's way, but it sounds like you didn’t abandon him.
Not like my father did to me and my sister.
He left my mother with crushing debt and a broken heart.
He was her high school sweetheart and he just walked away. ”
Rowan raises my hand and kisses it softly this time holding it there for several seconds. “You are a kind soul, my beautiful beam of sunshine. Never let anyone steal your light. Not even me. Especially not me.”
We ride in silence for a few more minutes. His last words weigh heavy on my heart and mind the whole way to wherever we are going.
He takes a turn I don't expect, and angles the SUV down a ramp into an underground parking structure. The sunlight cuts to fluorescent in a blink, and the temperature drops by ten degrees in the span of three seconds.
"You know, you have a running theme," I say as the car descends another level.
"What theme?"
"Underground. Everything is underground. You live underground. You park underground. I'm starting to think you photosynthesize in reverse."
It’s good to hear him chuckle.
He pulls into a spot near an elevator and kills the engine. The silence fills the car, heavy and warm. He slants me a sideways look that says if he had the time he’d kiss the hell outta me. Instead he says, "Come."
He's out of the car and around to my door before my seatbelt releases.
The elevator is industrial. Brushed steel walls, concrete floor, the faint smell of machine oil and something sweeter underneath it, like old paper. He presses the button for floor two. We rise with a hydraulic groan.
"Floor two," I say. "Not a sub-basement? Not a hidden bunker? Are you feeling okay?"
He pulls me into his side and wraps his arm around me. "You're very funny today," he murmurs against my hair and then kisses the top of my head.
The doors open.
The smell hits me first.
Paper. Binding glue. Coffee. And beneath all of it, the warm, dusty sweetness of thousands of books sharing oxygen in an enclosed space.
“Where are we?”
I step out of the elevator and my boots land on polish hardwood floors that stretch in every direction.
The ceiling soars two full stories above me, and from it hangs a constellation of amber pendant lights that throw warm pools of gold across row after row after row of bookshelves.
The shelves climb from floor to mezzanine, connected by rolling ladders that slide along brass rails.
A wrought-iron staircase spirals up to the second level, where more shelves line a gallery that wraps the entire perimeter.
The railing is black iron twisted into vine patterns, and I file that detail away because my florist brain catalogs the beautiful pattern to use in my work.
In the far corner, a coffee bar hums with low music and the hiss of a steam wand. Two baristas work the machine. A cluster of armchairs circle a low table near the windows, where natural light slices across the hardwood and catches the dust motes drifting through the amber glow.