Page 63 of Ruthless Sin
His hand on my back doesn’t move. His chest rises once, slow.
His voice comes from above, quieter than mine.
“Vsegda.”
Always.
He stays. I stay.
The warmth of him is the last thing before I sleep.
The light at the window changes before he does.
I open my eyes.
His face is close. Dawn light across his cheekbone, the shadow beneath it. His eyes are open and on mine. I have not seen them this close before. Dark. Steady. The same as the basement but softer now, and I don’t look away.
He’s awake.
The hand on my back is exactly where it was when I fell asleep.
He looks at me and doesn’t speak.
The lines at the corners of his eyes are deeper than they were when he crouched beside the bed. His eyes are bloodshot.
I open my mouth. My voice is rough from sleep.
“Idi spat’.”
Go to sleep.
He lifts his hand off my back and stands.
He looks at the bed, then the rug beside it, then at me.
He lies down on the rug next to my bed, black pants on cream wool, and one corner of the sheet trails off the edge of the mattress near where his hand rests.
I am jealous of the floor. It gets to feel his warmth and I don’t. I want to be closer to him. I want his arms around me and his breath against my hair and I want to press my face into his chest and stay there, and I don’t know how to ask for that. I’ve never asked anyone for that. He is the first person I have wanted to ask.
He closes his eyes. The line of his shoulders drops an inch.
He sleeps.
I do not move.
I’ve never seen a man asleep this close to me. Not safely.
The shape of his brow in the dawn light. His lashes against his cheek, dark, longer than I expected. Then his right hand, curled loose near his face, the sheet corner touching his knuckle.
I want to touch his hand. I want to close my fingers around his and hold on. I don’t. But I watch his hand until the light moves across it and my eyes go heavy.
He used to sit on the floor outside my door. Now he’s on the floor inside it. That is the distance between where we were andwhere we are, and I don’t have a name for where we are, and I don’t need one yet.
The light moves across the rug. The first bird is on the magnolia outside the window.
I say it quiet.
“Spi, Nico.”
