Page 61 of Nikolay

Not rudely. Just attentively. Like he’d noticed every last bit of that response and would be taking it under advisement.

“Neat,” he added.

“Got it,” I said, and was grateful my voice came out steady.

He let the empty glass go at last.

I turned before I could think too hard about his mouth being that close to my ear again and headed for the bar with the tray balanced against my hip and my pulse behaving like it had never seen a handsome man before.

Which was ridiculous.

I had seen handsome men. I worked in a building full of them. Supernatural species had an unfair advantage in that department. Sage was gorgeous in a clean, dangerous, rich-man way, sure, but that was not what had me off balance.

I reached the bar with an empty tray and stopped for the first time in what felt like ages.

Just a moment.

Just enough to set the tray down on the polished black surface and flex my fingers once.

The demonstration had begun to reach its peak. It was so beautiful in its completion I was compelled to stop and watch. And for a split second, even though I’d just been admiring the handsomest wolf I’d ever laid eyes on, I could not help but imagine myself in that swing and a vampire prince’s hands controlling my body. I was being ridiculous. But there was more.

I knew that I was being watched.

Noticed.

But this time was different.

That thought had barely formed before I made the mistake of glancing across the room.

Nikolay stood near the bar at the edge of the stage light.

He was not glaring. That was what unsettled me most.

Weeks ago, during the St. Andrew’s cross demonstration, rage had sat on him plain as weather—dark, banked, impossible to miss, making his whole body look carved from some harder thing than flesh. Tonight there was none of that open violence to him. He stood with a whiskey in one hand, broad shoulders easy under his tailored jacket, face set in that grave composure he wore better than most men wore skin.

I glanced up at his face.

He was looking directly at me.

Something in me gave before pride could stop it.

My tongue moved across my bottom lip.

I did not mean to do it. That was the worst part. It was one of those traitorous little body-things that happened below thought, a response to dry mouth or nerves or too much awareness, except his gaze sharpened the instant it happened and made it feel filthy.

The corner of his mouth ticked up.

Not a smile. Not properly. He was not a man who gave those away freely. But something ghosted there, brief and private and devastating precisely because it was so small.

Then he winked at me.

Slow.

Deliberate.

Unmistakable.

It was not playful. Not exactly. It felt more intimate than that, more old-world and wicked, like a gloved hand tipped under a ballroom table to brush a woman’s inner knee.