Page 81 of Ruthless Sin
The cicadas are at their late pitch through the window. The household is asleep. The room is dark.
I count my breaths.
My body won’t still.
It was Yelena.
Yelena looking at someone who wasn’t me. Smiling at someone I couldn’t see.
Yelena.
I don’t say her name out loud. I haven’t said her name out loud since before the first basement.
My chest caves on the exhale.
My throat is tight. My eyes are burning. Something presses up behind my sternum and I push it back down with my next breath.
I haven’t cried since before. I’m not starting now.
I get out of bed. The chain at my throat, my nightgown, the folding knife in my pocket from habit not fear, bare feet on the wood floor. I need to still. I need to sleep. I can’t do it alone tonight and I know it and I’m going anyway.
My feet know the way. The hallway is dark. The compound is asleep. My hands won’t unclench the whole walk there. His mouth was on mine in the library and his heartbeat was against my palm when I put my hand flat on his chest, and I haven’t stopped thinking about it since, walking barefoot down a dark hallway toward a man who kissed me like that.
His door is open an inch. It’s been open an inch every night.
I stand in the doorway.
My hand on the doorframe. The wood is cool under my palm. From somewhere outside, footsteps on gravel and the low murmur of a radio at the perimeter, Marco’s men doing their rounds, the compound keeping its watch while the house sleeps. He’s breathing on the other side of the door.
I push the door open.
He’s awake.
He’s in bed, under the covers, no shirt.
The watch is on the nightstand. His phone, face-down on the wood.
I don’t look at it.
The sheet is at his waist. His chest is bare. The light from the hallway catches the line of his shoulder, his collarbone, the place where his throat meets his chest. The muscle at his shoulder.The line of his ribs. The hollow at the base of his throat where his pulse is.
He turns his head and sees me, and nothing in his face moves.
He doesn’t sit up or reach for me or speak.
He waits, then in a low voice.
"Couldn't sleep."
My throat is still tight. My hands are still fisted at my sides. I look at him. I nod once.
Quiet. Rough.
"Tebe nado spat'." You should sleep too.
He looks at me. A beat. Another.
His eyes are dark.
