Page 160 of Marrying My Ex's Brother
“At many people.”
“At me?”
His eyes roam over my face before he shakes his head.
I touch his chest, right over his heart, feeling it beat hard beneath my palm.
He looks down at my hand. Then back at me.
Neither of us speaks. Steam wraps around us. Water slides down our bodies. Somewhere below us, the house is awake now, full of secrets and judgment and old women with sharp tongues.
But here, in the shower, his arm is around my waist and my hand is on his chest.
For a few minutes, the world feels smaller than the Volkov name.
For a few minutes, it is only him and me.
After the shower, Yaromir wraps me in a towel like he doesn’t trust the fabric to do its job properly.
“I can dress myself,” I tell him.
“You almost fell asleep standing up.”
“I did not.”
“You put your forehead against my chest and stopped speaking for almost a minute.”
“That wasn’t sleep. That was peace.”
His mouth almost curves.
The bathroom is still full of steam. My legs feel weak, my skin warm and too sensitive, my body carrying the deep, delicious ache of him. I should be embarrassed by how quickly I have learned to want him again and again, but embarrassment is becoming harder to hold on to when he looks at me the way he does.
Like he has already seen every part of me and still wants more.
He leads me into the bedroom and sits me on the edge of the bed. “Stay,” he says.
I lift my brows. “Like a dog?”
I can see him rolling his eyes.
I watch him move through the room, still damp from the shower, trousers low on his hips, hair wet and pushed back from his face. His scar looks darker when his skin is warm. The silver in his hair catches the low light. He looks less like a monster now and more like a man who has spent too long letting people believe he is one.
He opens one of the drawers.
Then he stops. His shoulders go still. His hand remains inside the drawer. His head lowers slightly, as if whatever he has found is not something he expected to see, but something he has been waiting for anyway.
My stomach tightens. “What is it?”
He doesn’t answer.
I stand, clutching the towel around myself, and walk closer. “Yaromir?”
His hand comes out of the drawer.
The ring is in his palm. Dmitri’s engagement ring.
No.
