Since the Pakhan’s ultimatum, I had refused to believe we could survive this.But with her breathing soft and steady against my chest, her body warm and trusting in my arms, I let myself believe it anyway.
15
LENA
Sophie was pacing the marble lobby when I walked through the door, clipboard clutched to her chest, her usual calm frayed at the edges.Her mascara was slightly smudged, and a strand of auburn hair had escaped her careful chignon.The kind of small tells that meant things had gone wrong before I had even walked through the door.
“There you are.”Relief flooded her face when she spotted me.“We have a situation.Multiple situations, actually.”
A pipe had burst in one of the third-floor bathrooms sometime around four in the morning, flooding three guest rooms and sending water cascading through the ceiling into the hallway below.The guests had been evacuated in their pajamas, furious and dripping, and were currently camped in the breakfast room demanding compensation.The temporary florist, hired to cover until we could find a permanent replacement for Stephanie, had delivered the wrong arrangements for the corporate luncheon taking place in the east ballroom.Instead of tasteful white roses, we now had garish tropical centerpieces that looked better suited to a luau.And someone, somewhere, had left scathing one-star reviews on every travel website they could find, claiming they’d seen blood in the fountain and that the hotel was “clearly cursed.”
I threw myself into the work with a gratitude that bordered on desperate.
This was my domain.Within these walls, I knew exactly who I was and what I was doing.I knew how to soothe angry guests with upgraded suites and complimentary champagne.I knew how to coordinate with maintenance and housekeeping to contain water damage before it spread.I knew how to draft professional responses to unfair reviews that were polite enough to publish but cutting enough to satisfy the petty satisfaction burning in my chest.
Here, I didn’t have to think about the man who had made me scream his name last night.I didn’t have to analyze the way my body still hummed with the memory of his touch, or examine why his absence from the bed this morning had felt like a loss instead of a relief.
This morning.
The memory surfaced unbidden, and I let myself sink into it even as my hands kept moving through the crisis management motions.
I had woken to the scent of him.Sandalwood and musk and a deeper wildness underneath, an animal heat that clung to the sheets and saturated the air.The scent had surrounded me completely, layered into the cotton of his shirt where it hung loose on my frame, embedded in my hair and my skin.I had breathed it in without meaning to, and my body had responded with a warmth that had nothing to do with the blankets pooled at my waist.
The bed beside me had been empty, but the sheets had still held the impression of his body.Still radiated the heat he had left behind.
I had lain there for a long moment, staring at the ceiling with its carved moldings and morning shadows, cataloging the aches that mapped last night across my body.The tenderness between my thighs that pulsed with each heartbeat.The faint sting across my backside that reminded me of leather cracking against skin, of the way I had pushed back into each strike instead of flinching away.The deeper soreness in muscles I didn’t normally use that told the story of exactly what he had done to me, and exactly how desperately I had begged for more.
Three nights.I had stayed three nights in his bed, in his arms, in his care.
The thought should have sent me scrambling for my clothes and the door and the safety of distance.Should have triggered every self-protective instinct I had spent a lifetime developing.Instead, I had rolled onto my back and let the aches settle into my bones, trying to remember the last time I had slept so deeply that morning came as a surprise.
I had showered until the water ran cool, scrubbing at my skin with more force than necessary, trying to wash away the evidence of the night before.I could still smell him on my wet hair, still feel the ghost of his hands on my body, still taste him on the back of my tongue.
Part of me hadn’t wanted to wash him away at all.
That was the part I refused to examine too closely.
By the time I had made it downstairs, dressed in fresh clothes with my hair twisted into a damp knot, he had already been gone.The study door stood open, revealing an empty room where cold coffee sat abandoned on his desk beside a scatter of papers covered in Cyrillic script.The fire had burned down to ash sometime in the night, and the morning light through the windows had made the space feel hollow without him in it.
Alice had appeared from the kitchen doorway with a dish towel in her weathered hands.Her expression was carefully neutral, the way it always was when she found me wandering his hallways in the morning, but her sharp eyes missed nothing.
“He left early, child.Said something about the investigation.”
Child.She called him that too, in that same gentle tone, like the decades between them had compressed into something familial and warm.The casual intimacy of it softened a place in my chest that I didn’t want softened.Made me think about what it meant that this woman had watched over him since he was young, had seen him become whatever he was now, and still looked at him with such obvious affection.
“Thank you.”I had reached for my bag where I had dropped it last night, fumbling for my keys, grasping for the shelter of routine.“I should get to the hotel.”
Alice had nodded, but she hadn’t moved from the doorway.Her eyes, still sharp despite the lines that age had carved around them, studied me with an intensity that made me want to squirm under the scrutiny.
“He’s different with you.”
I had paused with my hand on the door, the words landing in my chest like a physical weight.“What?”
“Before you came, he was…” She had trailed off, her brow furrowing as she searched for the right word to describe whatever she had watched him become.“Frozen.Going through the motions of living without actually being alive.Doing what was expected, saying what was required, but with nothing behind his eyes.Like a machine wearing a man’s face.”Her expression had softened, memories crossing her features.“Now there’s warmth in him again.Light.He looks at you like you’re the first sunrise he’s seen in years.”
I hadn’t known what to say to that.Hadn’t known what to do with the weight of it, the implication that I mattered to him in ways I wasn’t ready to accept.The idea that my presence had somehow thawed a man I had assumed was cold all the way through.
“I have to go.”