Page 108 of Ivory Oath

After a few minutes, he stands up and finds my clothes. He slides them over my legs.

“I need to clean up.”

He shakes his head, a dark look in his eyes. “Don’t. The only way I’m going to be able to let you leave this room is if I know I’m still inside of you.”

Some small part of me wants to be embarrassed and argue. What if people can smell him on me? What if they know what we did in here?

But Mikhail was right before: I’m dirty for him.

So I do exactly as he says.

45

MIKHAIL

Viviana sucks on the tip of each of her fingers and I’m a second away from sweeping our lunch off the table.

“Keep that up and I’ll cut this meal short.”

“Who, me?” She gives me wide, innocent eyes, but her mouth twists into a smirk.

I click my tongue. “My wife is a tease.”

She sucks her middle finger all the way into her mouth. “‘Tease’ implies I’m not willing to follow through.”

I’m halfway out of my chair when there’s a loud, exaggerated knock from the other side.

“Hello?” Anatoly calls, dragging the single word out for several seconds. “It is I, Anatoly Novikov, a person who does not want to see either of you naked. Can I?—”

“Come in, Anatoly,” I snap.

“You’ve welcomed me in, but I repeat: I do not want to see either of you naked.”

Viviana blushes, but she can’t help but laugh. There’s a reason my brother is one of her only friends in the mansion—he’s annoying, but he manages to make it charming.

Finally, he cracks the door open and peeks his head inside, one eye squinted open. When he sees we’re clothed and eating, he sighs in relief. “Thank God.”

“I don’t know what you thought you were going to see.”

He arches a brow. “You know exactly what I thought I was going to see. I’d say it out loud, but I’d hate to embarrass Viviana.”

“Too late,” she chimes in, kicking the toe of her shoe against his leg.

He laughs and ruffles her hair like they’re siblings. In a way, I guess they are.

It’s laughable imagining a world where Viviana would be my in-law. I was never going to be her fun, goofy brother. If she’d married Trofim, I would have become the man who killed his own brother to get with his wife.

There’s no world where this woman isn’t mine.

Anatoly leans back against the wall. “Your new assistant is a hardass, Mikhail. She wouldn’t let me past her desk until it had been exactly one hour. I swear she was counting the seconds.”

“She’s good, but she hasn’t figured out the phones. She keeps dropping all my calls.”

Viviana stands up, brushing crumbs off her lap. “The phones are a bitch. I can help her.”

“You don’t need to. Either she’ll figure it out or I’ll fire her.” I shrug. “Doesn’t matter to me.”

“I don’t mind showing her the ropes.” She smiles, one eyebrow arching. “You can express your gratitude later.”

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