Kira moved in front of him, sitting down in the chair and allowing him to push it in. He lingered over that, bending slightly so he could smell her hair and the delicate flower scent of her skin just beneath her ear. He paused, strangely caught by the tracery of veins he could see at her throat, blue beneath the surface of her pale skin.
She seemed so very fragile. So very breakable. Yet she hadn’t died in the accident that had claimed her friends. She hadn’t been injured at all, or at least that was what Ivan had told him. But then he knew that some wounds were invisible and that they went deep, and that just because you couldn’t see them, it didn’t mean they weren’t there.
Kira had wounds like that. He knew because he had his own.
“You made a mistake,” he said quietly, before he could think better of it. “Everyone makes mistakes, and sometimes they’re bad ones. But you can’t keep punishing yourself for it. That’s not the way to make your friends’ lives mean something.”
She stiffened but didn’t turn around. “Don’t tell me what I should and shouldn’t do. Not when you know nothing about it.”
“I know.” He stared down at her slender figure sitting in the chair, her pale hair and skin painted in dying streaks of rose and gold by the sunset, not even realizing he was going to say the words until they came out. “I know what it’s like to lose someone. I know what it’s like when it’s your fault.”
He heard the breath go out of her, a soft exhalation rushing under the sounds of the city.
“Your mother?” she asked hesitantly.
Of course, she’d know about his mother. Everyone knew about the suicide of the wife of one New York’s richest businessmen. It had been a scandal that had rocked the headlines for weeks afterward.
But his mother’s death would always be linked to Katie’s. The death that no one knew about, no one but him. And he certainly wasn’t going to talk about that now, not here and not with Kira, so all he said was, “Yes, my mother.”
“I’m sorry.” Her voice was quiet. “That must have been terrible.”
The gentle sympathy in Kira’s words reached inside him. Touched something in him. It had been terrible, because his mother’s death was yet another to lay at his own door. A death he was trying to atone for by making an example of the man who’d made his mother’s life such hell.
Not that he was going to talk about that either.
“It was a long time ago,” he said dismissively, closing the subject, straightening, and stepping away from her chair. “More champagne?”
Her head turned, and she glanced up at him, and for some reason he knew—he just fucking knew—that she saw straight through him. That she saw exactly what he was doing.
He tensed, ready to tell her that he wasn’t going to be talking about his mother or Katie with her, with anyone, but all she said was, “Yes, please.”
The champagne. She was talking about the champagne.
Air rushed into his lungs, air he hadn’t realized had escaped and he forced himself to turn around and go and get the bottle, act like nothing was wrong and that he didn’t feel as though those blue eyes of hers had just read the contents of his soul.
He didn’t know what was happening. Christ, he needed to take control of this and now.
Grabbing the champagne bottle, he poured them both another glass then sat down, trying to think of another topic of discussion that was reasonably innocuous. He could push her about the fear he’d seen in her eyes earlier, but again, that had caused an uncomfortable response in him, one he didn’t want to revisit.
Then he remembered something.
“This isn’t really dining-table conversation,” he said. “But since I’ve got your panties in my pocket, why don’t you tell me what you meant when you said the beading took you forever to do?”
She blinked at him in surprise, another delicate flush of color staining her cheeks. “It . . . it’s nothing. I shouldn’t have said it.”
“There’s quite a lot of things you shouldn’t say and yet you do anyway, aren’t there?”
Her blush deepened, but she didn’t look away. Instead her chin lifted. “Yes.”
Defiance again, and yet she’d admitted it. Interesting,
He lifted his glass and took a sip. “Why?”
“You already know the answer to that.” She was sitting straight-backed and rigid in her chair, her knuckles white around her glass. “Because I never pay attention, and my behavior is terrible.”
So much for innocuous.
Lorenzo gave up the pretense that he wasn’t curious, studying her intently. Watching her lovely face. That electricity that always surrounded her was humming again, her eyes full of the most fascinating emotional currents. Yet she was sitting so rigidly. Almost as if she was afraid to relax, afraid to let go.
Why? What did she think would happen? She’d let go with him in his office, up against the door, screaming her pleasure against his palm. It had been good, so good that she’d agreed to another night, yet now she was uptight again.
His curiosity deepened, widened. A hunger he couldn’t deny.
You shouldn’t be asking her questions. You shouldn’t be getting interested.
Sure, but this wasn’t for him, was it? It was all in aid of taking his father down.
“But you agreed, when I told you those things,” he murmured. “Are you saying I’m wrong?”
She glanced down at the glass in her hand. “The beading on that thong took me forever to do because I embroidered it myself. I make all my own lingerie. It’s something I’ve been doing for years.”
It didn’t answer his question, but he had a feeling she hadn’t finished, so he remained quiet, watching her.
“I like sewing, embroidery, that kind of thing.” She looked at him suddenly, her stillness so at odds with the vibrant emotion in her eyes. “It gives me something to do with my hands and keeps me focused.”
She was trying to tell him something, he could sense it. Yet there was something else that was holding her back. The wildness in her eyes made it difficult to untangle all the emotional threads, but he thought he saw fear.
“Why do you need to be focused?” he asked carefully.
Emotion crossed her face like a flash of sunlight across still water. Then it was gone and she shut down again. “It doesn’t matter.”
Did she want him to push? Because he would, he had no problem with pushing.
“It matters.” He studied her, not caring now that he wasn’t supposed to be curious, that he wasn’t supposed to give in to the part of himself that always craved more. “Tell me.”
She said nothing, her attention on her glass, her shoulders even more rigid.
“This is an order, Kira.” He let the edge of command bleed into his tone, wanting to see her response to it. “Remember. You have to obey.”
Strangely, the stiffness in her posture eased, her shoulders loosening, as if his order had released some kind of tension inside her.
A feeling swept through him then, one he didn’t recognize, but it deepened his own need, intensified it. Turned his grip on his wine glass, white-knuckled.
She lifted her gaze, looking at him. “I need to have something to focus me because I . . . find it difficult. My brain can’t settle on any one thing for very long, and I have poor impulse control. It’s also hard for me to pay attention to people, and I hate having to sit still. But when I have something to do, something I can do with my hands, then I find I can focus better. The more delicate the fabric, the greater care I have to take and that helps.” She paused. “I don’t know if you remember, but when I was a little girl, you showed me how to make paper cranes. I guess the lingerie is basically the equivalent.”
Lorenzo was conscious of a certain amount of shock. There were many things he’d expected her to say, but that was not one of them. “I remember,” he murmured, thinking of the bouncy little girl who was never still and who was never quiet. Who didn’t listen and who didn’t pay attention. “You remind
ed me of my brother . . .”
“If your brother had ADHD then I can see why.”
He couldn’t take his gaze from her face. He’d always suspected there was something not quite right with her behavior. “Did your parents—”
“Ever do anything to help me?” she interrupted flatly. “No. They just thought I was . . .” She stopped.
“They thought you were what?” he prompted, his chest clenching suddenly tight. Because he’d made a number of judgments about Kira Constantin and her history, and it looked as if every single one of them was wrong.
She let out a soft breath and when her blue eyes came to his, the storm of emotion in them made him feel like someone had punched him in the gut. “They thought that if they ignored my behavior, it would get better. But it didn’t. They didn’t understand when I tried to tell them why I found things difficult, because they didn’t want to understand. They wanted a perfect girl, and I was as far from perfect as it was possible to get.”
* * *
It was fully dark now, the candlelight flickering over Lorenzo’s stark, uncompromising features. Those sharp-edged cheekbones and hard jaw. That cruelly beautiful mouth. That laser-focused attention that swept like a searchlight into the darkest corners of her soul.
She hadn’t wanted to tell him about her condition. It was a weakness she’d hoped to keep hidden, yet that simple order had dragged it out of her with pathetic ease. Almost as if she’d been waiting all this time to tell him, which made no sense at all.
Sure, he’d once been kind to her when she’d been a child, but he wasn’t kind now, that was for sure. Telling him felt like ripping a layer of skin off, leaving all her nerve endings exposed. And he was standing by, with a whip.
There was a silence now, and the urge to fill it was overwhelming.
“My grades in school were terrible,” she went on, because she couldn’t stop herself, the words pouring out of her whether she wanted them to or not. “And I told Dad I didn’t want to go to college, but he made me. Told me I wasn’t trying hard enough and that I had to try harder. But no matter how hard I tried, I just kept fucking failing.” Without thinking, she picked up her fork and began fiddling with it, a dim part of her brain warning her that she was supposed to sit still, that she was supposed to control herself. But she couldn’t focus on that voice though, the urge to speak too strong. “So I thought, fuck it, you know? Why bother trying? Never worked at school, so what the hell was the point in trying at college? So I didn’t try. I did whatever the hell I wanted to.” She thumped the end of the fork rhythmically against the table, then tried it against the stem of her wineglass to hear the difference in sound.
“Kira.”
Lorenzo’s voice was low and cold, cutting through her mental and physical restlessness like a sword through silk.
Her head jerked up, and she met his gaze, the ice in it an odd kind of relief, like cool water on a painful burn. “What?”
“Be still.”
She didn’t know why that cold order made everything inside her begin to slow down and calm. Perhaps it was just that the command was simple and clear. Enough that even a girl like her, who found following instructions difficult, could manage it.
Her hand stilled, the fork sliding from her fingers and onto the table. She didn’t look away from him. Couldn’t. It was as if his gaze calmed the chaos inside her, made it all make sense somehow, and that if she looked away, everything would get tangled up again.
“Good girl,” he said quietly.
The oddest feeling swept through her, a warmth. Relief and gratitude. “Am I?”
He didn’t even blink. “Do you want to be?”
“Yes.” She said it unhesitatingly, the word vibrating with passion, with desire, and she trembled, because she hadn’t meant to say it, still less make it sound so needy. God, she was slipping. She wasn’t controlling herself like she should be. The therapist had given her exercises, but she couldn’t remember any of them. “I want to be g-good. I really do. That’s all I’ve ever wanted to be . . .” She trailed off as his cool gaze swept over her, calming the fever inside her.
“You are good.” The calm authority in his voice made her feel even quieter. “You’ve been good ever since you got here.”
“No, I haven’t. I didn’t take my panties off when you asked.”
“I liked that you didn’t.” He didn’t hesitate, didn’t look away. “I like it when you challenge me.”
“But I didn’t follow orders.”
“You pushed the boundaries, yes. But you like doing that, don’t you? It excites you.”
She blinked in surprise that he’d seen that. “Yes. I suppose it does.”
“Why?”
Good question. She’d never thought too deeply about the reasons her brain urged her to do the things it did. It was enough of a struggle just resisting those urges. “I . . . don’t know.”
He tilted his head. “Perhaps you like testing those boundaries so you know where they are.”
“Why would I do that though?”
“To feel safe maybe?”
Kira blinked again, the thought a striking one. She did like explicit instructions and precise rules, because they made expectations absolutely clear. It was much easier to control her roving brain and focus when she knew what was expected of her.
That’s why you teased him when you first arrived. Because you didn’t know what he wanted from you and that made you anxious. And when you get anxious, it’s harder to control yourself.
She swallowed, part of her disturbed that he’d been able to understand her better than she did herself, while another part of her was strangely relieved. “I don’t know. Maybe you’re right. What gave you the idea?”
“Because boundaries make it clear what’s expected. And that’s reassuring.”
Had he read her mind? He must have. There wasn’t any other explanation for how he’d lifted her own thought clean out of her head.
She found she’d curled her fingers around her fork and was leaning forward, curiosity overwhelming her. “Did you have lots of things expected of you, too?”
The candlelight made his eyes glitter, and for some reason the usual restlessness she constantly had to battle was gone. She almost felt as relaxed as she did when she had a piece of silk in one hand and a needle and thread in the other. But her focus wasn’t narrowed on sewing beads, it was narrowed on him.
“My father expected . . . certain things.” Lorenzo’s expression turned distant. “And he was very clear about what those things were. Pity I didn’t listen to him.”
Kira clutched her fork tightly, staring at him in helpless fascination. “Why? What did he tell you?”
Lorenzo didn’t move, but she had the feeling that she’d suddenly come up against one of those boundaries, and she was pushing at it. “We’re not here to share secrets,” he said coldly.
“But I told you all about—”
“No.”
A quiver ran through her. She wanted to know his secrets. She suddenly wanted to know them desperately. But how to get him to give them to her? Perhaps if she gave him one of her own, he might reciprocate?
“It was my fault, the car accident,” she said, before she could stop herself. “We were going clubbing and I’d just failed the semester. So I decided I was going to drop out of college. Of course, I couldn’t wait until after I’d finished driving. I had to text Dad right then. So I did and . . .” She stopped, her throat closing.
She couldn’t remember much before the accident, only the words of her text to her father, a big middle finger emoji glowing on the white screen. Then a loud noise and the world turning upside down and blackness.
Lorenzo said nothing, watching her.
“I shouldn’t have been texting. I shouldn’t have taken my eyes off the road. I shouldn’t have been driving while I was so angry.” She was babbling, and she knew it. “But I didn’t even think, because I never did. I was careless. I wasn’t paying attention. If I’d onl
y controlled myself. If I hadn’t let my anger get to me. If I’d only thought and paid attention, my friends might be alive, and I wouldn’t—”
“Stop.”
The rush of words halted like he’d closed a hand around her throat, and she blinked, breathing fast, horrified to find there were tears in her eyes.
Slowly, he pushed his chair back from the table. “Come here.”
She blinked fiercely. Dammit, she didn’t want to cry, not in front of him. She was supposed to be better at controlling her emotions than this. Hadn’t she learned anything? “Why?”
“Don’t ask questions.” The intensity of his gaze was inescapable. “Do as you’re told.”
She didn’t want to. She felt too unstable, the emotions gripping her too raw, and she was afraid of what he might see. Telling herself she didn’t care what he thought of her didn’t seem to work, and she didn’t want to lay herself bare in front of him. Not when she was healing from wounds that went deep enough already.
She shook her head, not trusting herself to speak this time.
His dark brows drew down and he tilted his head, searching her face. “You’re afraid. Why? And this time, Kira, you will tell me.”
A spark of anger caught, becoming a flame, licking up inside her, wild and hot, and again, she found herself opening her mouth and letting the words spill out. “Why should I? You said we’re not sharing secrets, yet you said it only after you’d gotten all of mine. I don’t see you spilling your guts, so why should I tell you a damn thing?”
“Because I don’t want you to be afraid.”
“Too bad.” It was an admission. She should have said that she wasn’t afraid, but Kira was too angry to notice, too overwhelmed by the toxic mix of disappointment and her own guilt and shame sitting heavy in her gut. “Maybe you should have thought of that before you made such a big deal of how much you despise me.”
A bright emotion flashed in his eyes, her own anger mirrored back. “I never despised you, Kira. Sure, I admit I had an opinion on you based on your past behavior, but I got that wrong. Completely and utterly wrong. Is that what you want to hear?”
She shook her head, hating herself for the tears that kept blurring her vision. “No, too late. You judged me from the minute I walked into your office, and you never even gave me a chance to set the record straight. But that’s okay, that’s pretty much what I’ve come to expect.” She shoved her chair back, barely conscious of what she was doing, knowing only that the storm of emotions inside her was going to break, and she didn’t want to be anywhere near him when it did. “No one else ever listened to a word I say, so why should you?” She stood up jerkily.
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