Page 189 of Ruthless Sin
The wooden cross has left an impression in my palm. The bevel at the top. The cross-piece. The small letters carved into the back. I press my thumb against them. I close my hand again.
She is in my palm. I keep her there.
Nico has watched me look at my hand. He does not speak. He does not reach for the cross. He keeps his hand at the small of my back and lets me have it.
Marco’s men on the bow are quiet.
The sky is gold at the horizon, gray at the top, pink at the line where they meet. I breathe. The cross in my hand. The chain at my throat. Nico’s hand at my back.
I said what I came to say.
Yelena heard it.
I know she did.
That is enough.
37
NICO
The lamp on the desk is on at low.
I am at the chair by the desk. I have been waiting.
Mila has come to my bed every night since we came home. She is at the doorway in the white shirt. Just the shirt. The chain at her throat under the collar. The wooden cross is on my nightstand beside the lamp where she has set it.
She does not stop in the doorway. She crosses to me and sits on my lap, her hands at my chest, her face close to mine.
I go hard the moment her weight settles.
She doesn’t kiss me first. She looks at my face. She has been doing this for days. Every morning when I come back from the back room. Every night when she comes to me. Like she is reading something written there that only she can see.
Her face changes. The tightness around her eyes goes.
She kisses me. Careful. Slow. Her hands stay flat on my chest like she is taking a reading.
She tastes like chicory. I kiss her back. I carry her to the bed.
I lay her on the bed and she lifts her arms over her head, then stops, drops them, reaches for my collar instead. Pulls me downto her. Her fingers at the buttons of my shirt, working them open one at a time, unhurried, her eyes on my face the whole time.
“I want to see you,” she says.
I let her.
She pushes the shirt off my shoulders. Her hands at my chest, my ribs, the scar at my side she has traced before. Her palm flat on the tape Giada put on and her eyes coming up to mine.
“Does it still hurt?”
“No.”
She presses lightly. Testing. Her mouth curves.
“Liar.”
I take the shirt off her. The chain stays. She is bare under it and I go still for a moment just looking at her in the low light, and she watches me look, and she does not look away.
“You’re staring,” she says.
