Page 59 of Play Your Part

The door to the house slid open to reveal Alexei dressed in a Wolves T-shirt and a pair of black swim trunks. He locked eyes with me as he walked across the deck, sending my heart into overdrive, the same rhythm as during my morning run. A powerful thump, thump, thump that made me feel alive. Alexei kept eye contact as he lifted his shirt, not dropping it until the shirt eclipsed his face. The raw strength of him sent a shiver down my spine.

I watched shamelessly, something he was well aware of once he tossed his shirt to the side of the deck and refocused on me. I expected a snide comment and a devilish smirk to signal he knew the power had shifted. I couldn’t deny he had me in the palm of his hand. Not with the way my body tingled in anticipation of him joining me in the water, of what would happen after he did.

I tried to calm down, slowly counting backward from twenty as I exhaled as quietly as possible. It had always worked in stressful situations, but apparently, it was no match for a half-naked Alexei Volkov across from me in a hot tub, looking finer than I’d ever seen him. Even with a residual bruise under his eye. Oh, who was I kidding? That bruise made the sight hotter.

“Seems like I’ve impressed you now,” he said, one side of his lips quirked into a smile.

Right, the cake. It took me a moment to remember our earlier conversation, that he would have to impress me to get me to bake something for him. Distraction is a bitch.

“I don’t know if I can be responsible for messing up this whole thing you got going on.”

“What thing?” he said, all false innocence.

I motioned to him. “You know, this whole…”

Alexei took a few steps until he hovered in the center of the hot tub. Too close and not close enough.

“I don’t know. You’re going to have to tell me.”

“Jesus Christ, Alexei,” I said on an exhale. “You know how you look.”

“Not to you.” There was a vulnerability, I realized. With my shameless staring, he couldn’t have missed how I reacted to him, but he seemed unsure of himself. That crack in his confidence, something I heard the other night on the phone when he confessed he wanted someone to belong to, made me want to give him the truth.

“It matters what I think?” I asked, swallowing hard.

He nodded.

“Okay. You look so good, it’s hard to keep my eyes off you sometimes.”

Alexei prowled closer, eyes razor-focused on me. “Why did you come here tonight?”

This situation kept spiraling further away from me, my grip on it tenuous at best. I rolled my eyes, trying to erase our steps as we barreled forward to something I wasn’t sure we could recover from.

“Didn’t the sign and the cake make that obvious?”

“Don’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“Make this a joke.”

Was that… no, he couldn’t be hurt by what I said.

“Alexei—” I stopped abruptly before saying something I couldn’t take back. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”

“What do you want to say? Without anyone in your ear. It’s just us here.”

Just us here. The words sent a pit to my stomach. Not seeing him for the last week and a half had tortured me. No wonder the anticipation geared me up this much.

“It’s not because you wanted to see me?” he asked.

I shook my head, biting my bottom lip to keep the words in.

Alexei followed the movement. “You weren’t hoping we’d end up alone?”

“I was proving a point.”

“You proved it. Zach didn’t look at you. Why are you still here, Kennedy?”

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