Page 124 of Boardroom Ties
“May I?” he asks.
I don’t know what he means, exactly. But I nod anyway, because at this point, I’d nod at anything he asked me.
He brings my hand to his mouth. He parts his lips and slides them down over the tip of my ring finger, and then further, until the cold metal of the band hits the warm, wet edge of his mouth. He sucks, very gently, and the ring slides up over my knuckle and onto his tongue.
I feel the platinum drag against the soft inside of his cheek. Then he pulls his mouth off my finger entirely, the ring still inside, his eyes never leaving mine.
He turns his head, parts his lips, and lets the ring drop into his cupped palm.
My finger is suddenly weightless. After four years of that weight, the lightness feels almost unsettling.
“Better,” he decides.
“Matvei, I don’t—” I have to stop to clear my throat. “I don’t know what to do with myself when you do things like that.”
“Then don’t do anything.” He closes his fist around the ring. “Just sit there and let me.”
Then, to my shock, he rears back his arm and flings the thing across the room like he’s skipping a stone on a pond.
It hits the floor with a tiny ping, bounces twice, and skitters under the couch.
“Matvei!” It’s half a yelp, half a hiccup. I’m up onto my knees before I even realize I’m moving. “What thehell— You can’t just—Matvei, he’s going tonotice?—”
“He’s not going to notice a damn thing tonight.”
“You don’t know him like I do!” I clamp my palms on my thighs to keep them from shaking. “He notices things. He found thevitamins, Mat! You don’t understand, he—he… You just—you just flung a four-carat diamond under the sofa and you think he…”
Matvei smiles darkly. “It’s just a ring.”
“Yeah, but it’s worth?—”
“Listen to me.” His thumb traces the shell of my ear. “It is a piece of metal with a rock attached. That’s all. The man who put it on your finger doesn’t own you. Not a single cell of you, nor the cells you’re growing. As far as I’m concerned, he’s not here in this room with you right now. Only I am.”
My eyes fill up.Dammit.I know a checkmate when I see one.
But after all these years of fighting, I hate the sensation of being cornered. I want to argue. And even if I lose that fight, then I want to crawl under the couch and put the ring back on, because the smooth, naked, ringless skin of my finger feels so terrifyingly exposed, like Matvei peeled off a layer of armor and left me out here in the cold.
Instead, I make a wretched whimper and pitch forward into his chest.
He catches me. His arms come around my back and one of his hands cups the base of my skull, fingers threading into my hair, holding me there against the warm, dark fabric of his tuxedo shirt.
“Hush now,” he murmurs into the crown of my head. “I’ve got you.”
His mouth moves against my hair. The kiss is so light I’m not sure it’s a kiss until it happens again, and then a third time, at my temple. He smells like he always smells. Rain on pine trees. A river in a forest somewhere that I’ve never been but that I keep dreaming about anyway.
I tilt my face up. His eyes are right there. Blue, tired, and completely, ruinously focused on me.
Then, when my lips are there for the taking, he finally takes mercy and kisses me.
Slow.
So slow.
Not like in the hospital, when he was angry and starving, proving a point. Not like any other time, either.
This kiss is something else. This kiss is the kind of kiss a man gives a woman when he isn’t trying to take anything from her, when the only thing he wants is to give her something back that’s been stolen.
His lips brush mine. Pull away an inch. Come back. His hand at the nape of my neck guides me closer, and his other hand spreads wide and warm at the small of my back, right at the spot where Raymond’s hand has lived for four years.
