Page 6 of Obsessed Bratva Daddy
It came at a pace just a little too quick for the house. A second one followed, slower, catching the first by the collar.
He came around the arch with his hand on the molding and a question already half on his mouth.
"Did either of you see..."
He stopped.
He saw me.
For one beat his face did the thing a face does when it has been carrying something heavy and is allowed to set it down. The tension dropped out of his shoulders all at once. Not slowly. All at once, the way water lets go of a glass that has been tipped. His hand on the molding loosened. His mouth, which had been on its way to making a hard sound, settled into something smaller.
Then he put the lock back on. Quick. Almost graceful. If I had not been looking, I would not have seen it happen.
Almost.
I saw it.
"Don't be too obvious, Daniil," Jade said, deadpan into her coffee. "Sit. Drink something."
He sat across from me. Not beside. Across. He picked up the pitcher on the table without looking at it and poured water into my glass first, mine before his, before either of theirs, before anything.
He set the pitcher down.
He looked at me, full, for one second.
His eyes were a gray-green I had not been ready for. The joke he was always holding one inch behind his mouth was there, butit was thinner than it had been the night before in the hall I could not remember.
Then he looked away. On purpose. He picked up his own cup and gave the morning his profile, as if to give me back the part of the room he had just taken.
He doesn’t want me to see how he is looking at me yet.
I picked up the water glass. I drank because he had poured it. I drank because the floor was steady now and I wanted to keep it that way.
"So," Lily said, after a beat, eyes on Daniil over the rim of her mug. "Lesser devil. You sleep at all?"
"Some," he said.
"On the couch," I said, before I caught it.
Three pairs of eyes touched me at the same time. Lily's were laughing. Jade's were not surprised. Daniil's came back to me on a half second of delay he did not entirely manage.
I looked at the melon on my fork.
"He sleeps wherever the job drops him," Jade said, dry. "Once it was a closet. He convinced it that it was a five-star hotel until morning."
"I am a charming guest," Daniil said.
"You're an unpaid one," Lily said.
"Family rate."
"There's no family rate. There is family, there is the rate, and you have never been on the right side of either column."
He took it on the chin and smiled. It was a good smile, the kind that did not quite reach his eyes, because his eyes were busy not looking at me and not looking away from where I was. He held it until Lily was finished, sipped his coffee, and set the cup down with the care a man uses on something he does not want to break.
I bit the inside of my lip. The corner of my mouth went up anyway. I dropped my gaze to the plate before it could do more than that.
I ate slowly. Pear. A bite of toast with butter that tasted like a farm. Two sips of tea Lily had pushed at me without comment. The room around me ordered itself into things I recognized. A pepper grinder. A bowl of salt. A small jar of honey with a wooden dipper that had been licked clean by a child at some point. The house had grown around a child.
