Chapter 15 #2
I quickly take in the room — an elegant design of simplicity like the rest of his home. A baby grand piano sits as the focal point in the center of the room. The piano, a stunning matte white, lends a contemporary air.
Shades of white, gray, and black create an atmosphere of calm and tranquility.
The walls feature a handful of framed prints I can’t see in the dimmed lighting.
The floors are polished hardwood, the furniture sparse — a coffee table, a few end tables, a few elegant armchairs, and a simple white leather sofa.
The last notes of music fade.
“How long have you been there?”
He doesn’t turn around to look at me. I adjust the belt on my robe, viscerally aware that it’s an exercise in futility.
“Long…enough.” My words are quickly swallowed up in the expanse of the room.
He doesn’t turn to look at me. I stare at his naked back.
The tiger’s eyes stare back at me. A shiver of awareness runs down my spine at how strong he is, even bent over the piano, showcasing every inch of his chiseled back.
My pulse spikes when he turns to me, and his eyes meet mine.
“Come here, Aria.”
My heart leaps in my throat. I’m not sure why. He’s only asked me to come to him. I haven’t done anything that would make him want to punish me.
Have I?
I walk to him, powerless to disobey. Has he conditioned me, this quickly, that I leap to his command?
As I draw nearer, my body responds to the deep tone of his authoritative voice. The way his eyes watch my every move. Halfway to him, he rasps out a sharp command.
“Lose the robe.”
The robe is warm and comfy, but his gaze warms me more thoroughly.
I lose the robe. The gorgeous little garment likely costs more than my weekly salary, and yet it falls to the floor like so much wrapping. I step away from the warmth of the robe at my feet. He didn’t tell me to lose the slippers, so I walk toward him stark naked save for the fluffy white slippers.
Have I imagined that crinkling at his eyes? The slight twitch of his lips?
Shaking his head, he chides me in that deep rasp that drags over my skin and makes my nipples pebble. “Testing me, Aria? You haven’t learned any lessons at all yet, have you?”
“What? Me?” I ask, holding his gaze, the picture of innocence. “You told me to lose the robe.”
“Fair enough. Lose the slippers as well.”
With a belabored sigh, I step out of the fluffy slippers.
He crooks a finger at me.
When I’m close enough for him to touch me, he reaches for me and draws me onto his lap. He’s still wearing boxers, but nothing else, so when I sit on his lap there’s only a whisper of fabric between us. His large, rough hands slide across the small of my back and lace behind it.
“Why are you up?”
“I couldn’t sleep. I’m starving. Why are you up?”
“I don’t really sleep. Haven’t for years. Did I wake you?”
I shake my head. It’s almost sweet that he cares. “No, not at all. That was beautiful. Feinberg?”
His eyes widen and his brows rise. “You know Feinberg?”
“I do. I studied composers for a prereq in college.”
“You studied composers years ago in college and yet immediately identified an obscure Russian composer,” he concludes, disbelieving.
“I didn’t just identify the composer. That was Piano Sonata number twelve…Opus forty-eight, no?”
He blinks.
I shrug. “I’m not just good at coding. I have an excellent memory, which is partly what makes me so damn good at coding and hacking. I have perfect recall.”
“Really,” he says, a statement, not a question. He’s thinking this over.
“I told you I had skills you could use, and I wasn’t exaggerating,” I say with a not-so-modest shrug. It’s nice to actually be admired for something for once. “How do you know Feinberg?”
Holding my gaze, he seems to be mulling things over.
With every question I ask about him, I’m delving deeper into his background — who he is, and how he became this person.
Revealing personal details makes him vulnerable, and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that Mikhail Romanov is hardly someone who allows himself to become vulnerable very easily.
“When I was enlisted, I was under the command of an officer who was obsessed with Feinberg. Whenever we had the chance, he played the music over and over again. I became obsessed, too. It was my lullaby and my comfort. There’s something about Feinberg’s music that makes me… I don’t know how to describe it.”
“Feel emotion?” I whisper. Could it be that he understands this?
He stares at me for a long minute before he finally nods. “Yeah. You could say that.”
I swallow. “Me, too.”
He gives my hand a gentle squeeze. “Do you play?”
I don’t answer at first. Do I play? Well, yes, I do, but not well. I always wanted to, but my parents couldn’t afford classes.
“Why the hesitation, little hacker?” he asks softly, then holds my chin and brings my gaze back to his when I look away.
“Hesitation?”
A corner of his lips quirks up and he mutters something unintelligible in Russian.
“That isn’t really fair that you just randomly speak a language I don’t.”
“You’re brilliant. You could learn Russian if you want to.”
Maybe I like the sound of enigmatic words in his sometimes-harsh mother tongue.
I shrug. “Maybe I will. I don’t play much, no.
My parents couldn’t afford piano lessons, so I used to sneak into the back of the school gymnasium so I could listen in on piano lessons some of the kids took after school.
I did my best to listen and then practice when no one was there, but it’s a hard habit to hide, and the other kids eventually found out.
” I want to change the subject. The memory of my shame when I was discovered still burns. “So you enlisted, then?”
“I did.”
No further elaboration. Interesting.
“How long?”
“Twelve years.”
Whoa. Twelve years. That’s a long time.
“Are any of the tattoos you have related to the army?”
His accent thickens. “None. These are all Bratva.”
Bratva.
The way he says it makes me shiver.
“Can you tell me what they mean?”
“Eventually, maybe.”
As he talks, I’m aware of his hardened length pressed up against my butt, and my own body tightly coiled with arousal that snakes around my belly and pulses between my thighs. Once wasn’t enough.
“I didn’t know you were in the military.”
A hint of ice flickers in his gaze. “There are many things you don’t know about me, little hacker.”
I do what I’ve longed to do — reach my hand to the stubble on his chin and cup his jaw. Though he stiffens, he allows it, and I don’t need him to tell me this is an allowance he likely affords no one else.
“There are many things I don’t know about you, yes. But there are many things I do.”
The roughness of the stubble on his chin bites into my palm, sending awareness and a pulse of need between my legs. I wonder what it would feel like if that stubble scratched my thighs…
“I know you can be ruthless. You have no qualms about violence and taking human life if you feel it’s justified.
You’re skilled with weapons and not just the ones you hold – you’ve conditioned your body to be used as a weapon, too.
You don’t like clutter, lies or disorder.
You have routines and systems in place because you run your family like you’d run the military.
You are direct with your words and instructions. ”
I swallow. “You take care of what’s yours.” I look away, suddenly bashful. “I mean, your home is beautiful.”
“Thank you.”
I have the sudden desire to lay my head on his chest. For just a little while, to stop carrying the burden of my constantly churning mind, fear of what happens next, and the ever present need to be on high alert.
“Am I wrong?”
He shakes his head. “No.”
Encouraged, I continue. “You are courageous and determined. Action-oriented with little fear of the aftermath. You are a natural-born leader. Assertive. Resilient. Protective and likely resourceful as well.”
He narrows his eyes but doesn’t respond.
I take a bold step and brush the pad of my thumb across his full lower lip, my voice a whisper now.
“You struggle with vulnerability. You can be aggressive and impatient, and I’d hazard a guess you’re total sh—absolutely terrible at obeying those in authority over you. ”
He grunts. “Very good censoring your language.”
I shrug. My stomach gives an audible growl.
“You need food, Aria.”
I do need food, but I like sitting here with him. It’s quiet and intimate, a magical time when no one can interrupt us or remind us why we should hate each other.
“Mhm.”
Another growl. Do tigers growl?
“Is there something you’d like in particular?”
I laugh. “It’s like three o’clock in the morning, nothing’s open.”
With a shrug, he shakes his head. “That doesn’t matter.”
Wow. The power he yields. I’m sure he has his grip on much more powerful things like politics, economics, corporations, or the media, but the fact that he could wake up the local owner of a pizza parlor to make me a pepperoni pizza in the wee hours of the morning is a bit impressive.
“Something simple might be nice?”
“Simple we can do.”
He lifts me off his lap and stands me in front of him.
“The only problem is, I don’t know exactly where your kitchen is.”
Quirking a brow, he gives me a piercing look. “I don’t recall telling you you’d join me. While I’m gone, I’d like you sitting cross-legged on this bench with your hands resting on your thighs. Wait for me in that position.”
I frown. “What if I have to use the bathroom?”
“Do you have to use the bathroom?”
“Well, no, but I might have to.”
“I won’t be long.”
“What if there’s an emergency?”
“There won’t be an emergency but if there is one, you’ll call out to me.”
Huh.
I sit obediently with my legs crossed and my palms on my thighs as instructed. “And if I don’t?”