Page 151 of Marrying My Ex's Brother
I should carry her to bed.
I don’t. I lie there with my arm around her and watch the last of the fire fade.
At some point, sleep takes me too.
I wake to a door banging shut, the sound cracking through the quiet house. My eyes open immediately. For one second, I don’t move. I listen.
Anya is still asleep against me, warm and soft, her face turned into my chest.
Then I hear footsteps outside the drawing room.
Someone has found us.
24
ANYA
I wake because Yaromir moves.
At first, I don’t understand where I am. There’s heat against my cheek, something hard beneath my palm, and the faint smell of smoke in the air. My body aches everywhere, deep and unfamiliar, the kind of ache that makes memory return before thought does.
The fire. The rug.
His hands. His mouth.
My face heats before my eyes are fully open.
Then I hear it. A door closing somewhere outside the room.
Yaromir is already awake. Completely awake. His body goes still beneath me in a way that makes my own heart start beating faster.
“What is it?” I whisper.
He doesn’t answer immediately. He listens. That frightens me more than the noise.
I lift my head from his chest and realize, all at once, what we must look like. I’m half draped over him on the rug in front of the fireplace. My dress is destroyed somewhere near the table. My hair is loose and tangled. The emerald necklace is still lying on the table where he put it before everything happened.
And I’m naked except for his shirt, which is open and barely covering me.
Oh God.
I sit up too quickly and wince.
Yaromir’s eyes move to my face at once. “Careful.”
“Someone is here.”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
His jaw tightens. “Larisa.”
Of course. Of course it’s her.
Before I can move, he reaches for his shirt and pulls it properly around my shoulders. It’s already half on me, but he buttons it quickly, one button after another, his fingers steady while mine feel useless.
I stare at him. He’s completely calm.
