Page 49 of Sapphire Tears

“Plus, if I remember correctly, you spied on me once while I was playing the piano.”

“Alright, fine. I guess that’s fair.” I pull my knees up to my chest and shudder. “You should play more.”

“You should dance more.”

I sigh. “It hurts too much when I dance,” I admit. “I didn’t mean physically. Well, I mean, yeah, physically, too, but also—”

“I know what you meant.”

It’s eerily silent in here. The wind is muted by the thick stone walls, reduced to a wild, distant groan. “Did you follow me here or were you in the ballroom already when I arrived?”

“I was here already,” Kolya replies. “Why?”

I shrug. “Just… thought I was being followed there for a second. It was probably just the wind.”

He chuckles. “The ghost story got to you, it seems.”

“It did not!” I protest, a little too insistently. Then I smile at myself. “It’s easier to believe in ghosts at night when you’re alone and it’s storming.”

“You don’t have to be alone if you don’t want to, June. You don’t ever have to be alone if you don’t want to.”

I look down to hide the fact that I’m blushing. I hate that it’s so easy for him to get in my head. The worst part is that I don’t even think he’s trying.

Hadn’t I just been through this in my head? I don’t want this life. And even if I did, I have a child to think of. I have to protect this baby where I’d failed to protect the first.

I glance around at the mirrors. Each one reflects Kolya and me at different angles. In many of them, we look like we’re entwined together.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about your mother,” I admit when I turn my gaze back to me.

“You and me both.”

“My mom was around, but she was never very present,” I whisper. “Sometimes, it felt like Geneva and I were just afterthoughts. Boxes she was ticking off. I know it can’t have been easy for you, but at least you know your mother loved you.”

He tilts his head to the side to regard me from a new perspective. “That’s true,” he says softly. “But I think I’d prefer if she were happy.”

I feel something twist inside me. Raw emotion that rises to the surface and brings tears to my eyes. I haven’t ever heard a statement as nakedly selfless as that. I didn’t know he was capable of it.

Maybe that’s why I lean in and kiss him—because I can’t find the words to express to him how much I think of him in this moment.

He’s surprised at first, I think. His fingers linger against my jaw. Then he pulls me onto his lap and delicately pushes the robe off my shoulders.

He breaks off for a moment and leans back to look at me. His eyes scour my face, desire lighting up his blue irises. Then his lips drop down to my neck, to my collarbone, to my breasts. He uses one finger to push down the straps of my slip.

With his fingertips caressing the nipple of my right breast, he keeps kissing me. Long and slow, washing away all my doubts with desire.

By the time he pulls back again, I’m breathless and wet.

He grabs hold of me and lays me down on the marble floor. Then he pulls the slip down my body, freeing me of it completely. He hovers over me, but his body never touches mine.

“Kolya,” I whisper.

“Yes?” he says, his voice deep and gravelly.

“Will you be naked with me?”

He stares down at me, doubt raging in his eyes. I meant the question in its most literal sense. I want to see all of him. His scars and his tattoos and the stories they tell.

But I mean it in other ways, too.

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