Page 69 of The Nanny Goal

All of this is temporary.

My hands are shaking.

I pull it over my head and try to ignore how my body reacted to the heat of his eyes on my skin. How quickly I can unravel, it turns out.

This is your job. This is not your fantasy. This is not your forever.

I drag in a tight breath.

In.

Out.

“Fuck,” I whisper.

Then I turn around and Alexei is there, in the doorway, watching me.

Fuuuuuck.

“Better?” His voice dips low, a little rough now.

I narrow my eyes at him. “Yep.”

He doesn’t move as I close the gap between us, not until the last second, when he steps into the room to let me past.

Except I don’t move past him.

I slow down, and my gaze rakes over his bare chest again, his chest and his abs and all that skin.

“Do you see something you like, solnishko?”

I suck in a breath.

Maybe I didn’t expect him to call me on my reaction. Maybe I thought he would let me hold on to the pretence of not being affected, when of course I’m affected by him.

He’s the only man who has ever undone me completely. The only man who I ever wanted to get under my skin and do some damage.

Doesn’t mean I’m going to let him do it again.

I step abreast of him, and I’d like to think I would have made it into the hallway, except he shudders. I’m weak, I guess, but knowing that he’s as affected as I am by whatever this moment is—an inevitable culmination of all the moments over the last week—is enough to make me turn. My back bumps up against one of the bookcases lining the wall.

There’s no retreat now. No way to hide from the burning need in his eyes.

I don’t know who moves first.

One second I’m standing still, and the next his hand is on my waist, pulling me in against him, and my arms are curling around his neck, holding on to him as if he’s a lifeline and not the churning storm.

And his mouth?—

God, his mouth isright there.

He searches my face as he cups the back of my neck with his other hand. There’s no space left between us now, only breathless need and pounding pulses.

His mouth finds mine, sure and soft.

If it was anything other than soft…maybe maybe maybe.So many maybes, but they’re all irrelevant, because the truth is I was never going to avoid this.

It’s still extra-devastating when he kisses me with a tenderness I didn’t know was possible. This definitely isn’t the kind of embrace that haunted me as I tried to move on. The feeling nobody could match, for two long years.

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