Page 73 of Obsessed Bratva Daddy
"Lily."
"Yes?"
"What is this for?"
She lifted her glass at me. The mischief on her mouth had teeth in it now.
"I heard about the kiss you gave another man," she said. "This will smooth his mood."
I laughed before I could stop myself, then tried to cover it with my hand.
"This is inappropriate."
"What's inappropriate about it? That it shows everything? You'll be out of your clothes inside two minutes anyway."
"Shut up, Lily."
"I'm only being practical." She lifted her glass higher. "I'm married to a man like that one. I know the math. You wear this, he loses ten minutes of his life standing in a doorway. You stand still and let him. Then you go to his room. Get ready. Wait."
"You sound like a general."
"I'm a ballerina. Same thing." She nudged the second glass toward me with her toe. "Drink half. Not all. You want your edges."
I took a small swallow. Cold and bright and a little floral, and it went straight to the bottom of my stomach.
"Go," she said, soft now, the tease gone out of it for one beat. "He has been waiting longer than you think."
I folded the silk back into the tissue, gathered the rope handles, and went.
I held the bag against my ribs the whole way down the hall. Did not look at the men at the end. Did not look at the housekeeper who came out of the linen closet and said good evening to my shoulder. It felt like everyone in the house could see straight through the brown paper to the wine red silk inside.
Daniil's door was unlocked.
I let myself in and closed it behind me with my back. The room was dim. He had not been up here to turn the lamps on. His coat lay over the chair the way he had left it earlier, one sleeve trailing, the lining dark against the wood. The bed was made. The whole room smelled like him, that clean wool and cold air and the faint warm note of his skin I had learned the shape of in pieces over months.
I went into the bathroom and shut that door too.
I changed slowly. I did not want to rush it. The bralette ribbon ties took me two tries. The panties slid up cool against my skin. The robe was the lightest thing of all, weightless on my shoulders. I tied the sash, then made myself look up.
The mirror gave her back to me. Wine silk. Dark hair down over her shoulders. Collarbones I did not usually notice. The bralette did exactly what Lily had warned me about. It did not hide anything. It framed everything. My cheeks were already pink before I left the bathroom.
I stood there for one whole beat being shy. Just one. Then I stopped.
I was not doing this because someone had told me to. I was doing it because a man with bruises still healing on his ribshad decided in a garden somewhere that I deserved a word, and somewhere between the kitchen and this mirror I had decided I was going to make him work for the saying of it.
I went back into the bedroom.
I did not know whether to sit on the bed or stand at the window or lean against the dresser. The bed felt like cheating. The window felt like a stage. I chose the dresser. I crossed the room in bare feet, set my hand against the wood, and turned so the lamp glow caught the silk on my hip and not my face. I let the sash sit a little loose. I waited.
The door opened.
He came in talking to someone over his shoulder, coat folded over his forearm, two words of Russian going out into the hallway, and then he stepped through and saw me and the two words stopped.
His coat hit the floor.
I almost laughed. I did not. I held still against the dresser and watched his face do what it did. His pupils blew wide so fast I saw it happen in the lamp glow. The jaw set. His breath caught on something halfway in and did not come back out clean. The small scar at his temple went a shade paler against the rest of him.
He did not move.
