Page 72 of The Vow

“You go, I’ll be five minutes, text your sister, tell her you need to reapply some makeup or whatever-”

“Then you’ll follow? You’ll come?”

“Yeah, I’ll say I need to make a work call or something, I’ll come to your room, and I’ll fucking go caveman on you, Lena, it won’t take long.”

She snorted with laughter, and nuzzled his jaw, nipping at his ear lobe. He hummed with pleasure.

“Okay.”

“Yeah?” Carmelo sounded pleased.

She smiled. “Yes, okay. Five minutes, Sergeant. That’s all you have, otherwise people will get suspicious and come looking and we’ll be in such big trouble if we get caught-”

“I got it, I got it, five minutes,” Carmelo muttered, trying to push her towards the door.

She trailed her nails down his back, not wanting to go, not wanting to leave the warmth of being so close to him, his smell that permeated the air around him.

“Fuck, Lena, you’re making it impossible for me to lose my hard-on. Give me a chance Princess, please. Go, I’ll buckle myself up, go back, tell Colt I need to make a work call, then I’ll come to your room-”

“I’ll be ready and waiting,” she said playfully, and she tore herself off him, backing towards the door. She looked back and could just make out his profile in the small storage cupboard. Disheveled, breathless, hungry. Hungry for her.

She bit her lip, wanting to remember him like this, wanting to remember this moment, it was a dream come true, really. A man who was devoted to her. A man who would walk across oceans for her. Not for her surname, not for who her father was, but for her. For who she was as a woman. She beamed back in the darkness, not certain he could see her, but she smiled anyway, then slipped from the room. Back towards her bedroom, to await his knocks on her bedroom door. Her heart pounded in her chest and she couldn’t stifle the smile on her face.

Everything at that moment seemed too good to be true.

Lena paced. And she paced her room some more. She’d kicked off her heels but had kept her dress on, expecting Carmelo to come in, and have his way with her like they’d planned. It had been five minutes. Hell, it had almost been ten. He’d said he would come. What would have held him back? It better have been something bloody important-

Finally, a knock at her door.

“At last!” she huffed, stomping to the door to let him in in her bare feet. “I thought you’d stood me up or something-” She yanked the door open.

She froze, still and solid. “Oh. It’s you,” she said, blinking.

Kavan. The drag of a guard dog, Kavan.

She quickly regained her composure. “I was waiting for Pina to bring me lipstick, she borrowed mine earlier and didn’t give it back.” Lena crossed her arms, rolled her eyes and immediately tried to front. “And she said she’d run back and get it…”

Kavan had a strange smile on his face. Even more strange than it normally looked. Kind of smug. Kind of like he knew something she didn’t. She was thrown off.

“Milena, may I come in for a second?” he asked, already stepping over the threshold.

She dropped her arm from the door and stood aside. “Er, yes,” she said, nonplussed.

Kavan pushed the door closed behind him and walked over to the bed, sitting down on it. Lena stood and kept her arms crossed. She suddenly felt cold, aware that her nipples would be showing through her dress.

“Listen, I really need to have this chat with you, tonight, before the wedding…” Kavan was trying for some sort of simpering uncle vibe, kindly, well meaning. It was patronizing and weird and gave her the creeps.

He patted the space beside him on the bed.

Lena thought Carmelo must know Kavan was here. Maybe that’s why he didn’t come, because he knew Kavan was prowling about and it was too risky. It was probably easier to go along with this heart to heart chat Kavan had planned and then get back to the table. She could wait for Carmelo. Hell, they had their wedding night tomorrow. They then had the rest of their lives. She bit the inside of her cheek. Yes, far better to play along and just say “yes, sir, no sir”, and send Kavan on his way as quickly as possible so she could return to the table and get this farce of an evening over with.

She begrudgingly took a seat, perched on the edge of the mattress. Kavan scooted nearer to her. She tried not to wrinkle her nose when his stale cigarette and slimy salty smell invaded her nostrils.

“Well, I’ve worked for your father now for pretty much all of my life, as my father did before me-”

Oh God, it was going to be one of these chats, Lena thought with a silent groan. Was he drunk? She could smell the sour cognac on his breath. He had been drinking, she thought, pulling away a little.

“-and I’ve watched you mature from a little girl into a blossoming young woman.”

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