Page 44 of Belong to Me
"Your hands are shaking."
He put them in his pockets. "I have a meeting."
"Alexei—"
"Artem will be here at noon." He picked up the tablet. His movements were stiff, mechanical. A man reassembling himself in real time. "Stay in the penthouse until then. Biscuit needs to be walked. Use the terrace."
"You can't just—"
"I can." His eyes met hers, and the agony in them hit her like a fist. "I have to."
He walked out.
Not to his bedroom this time. To the front door. His shoes on the marble, his keys off the hook, the click of the lock. A different kind of retreat, a bigger one, because this time he wasn't hiding behind a door in the same apartment. He was leaving.
The penthouse was silent.
Biscuit padded over and pressed his enormous head against her hip. She dropped her hand to his ears automatically, and her fingers were trembling, and her legs were still unreliable, andher whole body felt like it had been taken apart and put back together in a new order.
Mia leaned against the kitchen counter. The one he'd pressed her against. She could still feel the ghost of his hands. On her waist. In her hair. Between her thighs.
She pressed her palms to her burning face.
A mistake.
He'd called it a mistake. He'd picked up his tablet and walked out like a man heading to the office after a routine morning.
But his hands were shaking.
And he'd whispered her name when he held her. Pressed it into her hair like it was the only word he knew. And the tremor in his arms when he caught her, that wasn't a man who'd made a mistake. That was a man who'd done the thing he'd been terrified of doing and discovered it was worse than he feared, not because it was wrong, but because it was right, and the rightness of it was going to destroy every wall he'd ever built.
Biscuit whined.
"I know, baby." She scratched behind his ears. Her voice was calm now. Calmer than it should've been, given that her knees still felt like water and her skin was still humming and the taste of him, cologne and heat and something that was just Alexei, was still on her lips from where his mouth had grazed the corner of hers en route to her throat.
She straightened up.
He'd called it a mistake. He'd walked out. He'd put his hands in his pockets to hide the shaking and told her to walk the dog on the terrace.
Last night, he'd closed a door.
This morning, he'd left the building.
The retreats were getting bigger. More dramatic. More desperate.
Which meant the walls were getting thinner.
Mia glanced down at Biscuit. He met her gaze with the patient, unsurprised expression of a dog who had been observing this particular human make questionable romantic decisions for two solid years.
"He ran," she told him.
Biscuit's tail thumped once.
"He'll come back."
Another thump.
She stood there for a long time. The penthouse was too big and too silent and still smelled like his cologne, and the counter was still warm where her back had been pressed against it, and the morning sun was filling every room with the kind of golden light that made Monaco look like a painting.
