Page 109 of Cashmere Cruelty

“Sorry,” April murmurs into the surface, making bubbles as she speaks. “I’ve been venting ever since you came home.”

“To be fair, you’ve been doing other things to me, too.”

“Hey!” April’s face flushes a delicious shade of red. I could eat her up like this: naked, warm, skin peppered with droplets. If I had my way, I’d kiss them off until the pool was dry. “Cheater.”

“Never.” It’s an automatic response, one I don’t think about. In the seconds that follow, though, I pause. I shouldn’t be making these kinds of promises. April hasn’t lied to me so far. I don’t want to be the one who starts.

But she doesn’t seem to have caught my slip. She’s still looking ahead, gaze lost far away, no doubt replaying the conversation with her mother in her mind.

I grip the edge of the pool, white-knuckled. It’s going to take a lot of restraint not to storm right over to Staten Island and demand a pound of Eleanor’s flesh in return for this. “Hey.”

April snaps out of her reverie. “Yeah?”

“Look.” I point at the other edge of the pool, where the water falls freely off. It’s an illusion, of course—it cost me an arm and a leg just to get the permits for this—but that’s what my hotels are for: illusions. A dream of infinity.

Here, one night should feel like forever.

I watch as April’s gaze softens. Her pupils are wide now, reflecting the dancing lights of the pool. This terrace is the crown jewel of the Manhattan Jupiter Hotel. No other location has it.

“It’s beautiful,” April breathes.

I agree.

Only, my gaze isn’t on the water.

“You could give birth here,” I mention.

April looks at me like I’ve grown two heads. “No way.”

“Yes, way.”

“I couldn’t,” she gasps, scandalized. “It’s the hotel pool!”

“It’smyhotel’s pool. I decide who gets to use it and how.”

April peers up at me, trying to gauge if I’m being serious. Little does she know, I’m always serious. Twenty minutes ago, I had Grisha empty out the place with the excuse of emergency maintenance. Every single guest will be given a generous discount in apology for the inconvenience.

But April doesn’t need to know that. “Births are messy, Matvey!” she shudders. “You could clean it a thousand times afterwards, and still no one would ever want to use it again.”

“Then we’ll just have to use it ourselves,” I reply, drawing close.

I tilt up April’s chin. Big, hazel eyes look up into mine, shining with a million specks of light. Her lips part, but for a while, no sound comes out. “We can’t,” April murmurs in the end.

“My pool,” I repeat. “My child’s mother.” I lean in, brushing past her lips at the last second to speak into her ear. “I’ll do exactly as I please with both.”

A shiver. April’s body reacts without a single touch. It’s intoxicating—a kind of power unlike any other. Even beingpakhandoesn’t compare. “Is that so?”

“It is. Allow me to prove it.”

The next few minutes are a blur of kisses. I rarely kiss my conquests—just enough to be a gentleman—but with April, I could spend the night doing just this: tasting, prying her lips apart, eating her whole, swallowing down moan after moan after moan.

I don’t linger on what that means. That’s the only thing I can’t afford to do.

Instead, I flip us around. April’s back hits the pool wall and her thighs wrap around me, ankles locked to trap me. It’s a pointless effort—I’m not going anywhere.

My hands roam over her body until they find her belly. It feels even more swollen than yesterday.Our child’s growing here, I remind myself, getting bigger every day. Getting ready for the cutthroat world that made their father sharp and their mother kind.

Will you be like me?

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