“Arianna.”
My name, but not the sound I recognized. This was all harsh Rs and long As that sounded like poetry. My name, but made beautiful.
A hand slid around the back of my neck, warm and strong, the thumb rubbing at my hairline. I could feel the heat pumping into me, and that was when I realized how cold I was.
“You’re freezing,” said Luka. He told Yuri in Russian to turn up the heater. Then I heard the concern in his voice. “It’s not just cold, is it?” he asked. His hand was still rubbing at the back of my neck and now his other hand started to stroke up and down my bare arm. Not a sexual touch—a healing touch. One I wouldn’t have thought him capable of.
I turned my head to him. Somewhere, alarm bells were clanging hysterically, reminding me that I was meant to be being the perfect dream girlfriend, that I was meant to be sexy and happy and laugh at his jokes. But the alarms were muffled by the ice. I didn’t feel sexy—I was dripping wet and bedraggled. I opened my mouth to tell him that everything was fine, but nothing came out. He studied me, those blue eyes searching deep inside me, straight past any barriers I could throw up. I saw his frown as he realized something was really wrong.
It didn’t make any sense. Guys, if they looked at me at all, just thought I was distant and cold. How could this man—this monster—be the one to see past that?
He reached across me and I felt my seat belt disengage. I shuddered. Just the sound of it hissing back into its reel, that glorious sound that I’d imagined so many times when I was trapped, was enough to fill my eyes with tears.
And then he was shoving one big arm under my legs and another around my back and I was being scooped up again. He lifted me—powerfully, determined but with great care. He didn’t want to hurt me but he was damn well going to cuddle me, now.
I landed in his lap, but it wasn’t like at the club. This wasn’t about sex. He wrapped his arms around me, leaning forward at the same time and nestling his head into my cheek, and it was as if he was wrapping his whole body around me. His warmth, his life, throbbed into me and I felt the ice inside me break. What had been cold and solid but at least smooth became jagged and vicious. A strangled sob escaped me.
Luka whispered something in my ear. “Shh, myshka.” Shh, little mouse.
That sent me over the edge. I forgot that it didn’t make any sense, that this couldn’t possibly be Luka Malakov being tender and concerned. I forgot who I was and who I was meant to be. I just remembered being cold, so cold, in that car, and no one coming, and, suddenly, I couldn’t stop crying.
The pain rolled down my cheeks in big, hot waves, dripping onto my dress and onto Luka’s muscled arms. My wet hair was soaking his collar and now my tears were soaking his sleeves and I was a disgusting mess but he didn’t seem to care. He just wrapped me tight in his arms, so tight I could feel his heartbeat thumping against my back, and he held me.
I don’t know how long it took us to drive to his apartment. But I know that, eventually, the tears slowed and the memories crawled back to their homes in my chest and the ice re-froze. Thinner than before, though, and with cracks like a spider web.
I sniffed and blinked and took some deep breaths and said, in a small voice, “I’m alright, now.”
He made a disapproving noise, as if to say that no, I most definitely wasn’t and he knew it, but that he’d accept it for the time being. He squeezed me and then held me against him until the car pulled up.
His building was a skyscraper whose concrete base looked solid enough to withstand an apocalypse. A doorman dashed to open the doors for him before we were even out of the car and he led me straight inside, his arm around my waist. Both the doorman and the woman behind the reception desk did an incredible job of ignoring my soaked hair and the make-up running down my face.
There was an elevator at the far end of the reception hall. Luka didn’t have to press a button and wait. He just turned a key in a lock and the doors slid open, the elevator already waiting for us. Inside, there was only one button.
I swayed a little in my heels as the floor pressed upward under our feet. A hundred floors sped past. We were going to the penthouse.
There was a short, bare corridor, with a camera pointing right at the elevator door. His front door was a huge slab of polished wood, as strong as it was beautiful. Luka turned another key and heavy bolts clunked back.
We emerged into a huge, two level living room. There was a sort of pit sunk into the floor with cream leather couches on three sides and I caught a glimpse of a kitchen area off to the right. But I barely looked because in front of me was...Moscow.
The walls were floor-to-ceiling windows, with no drapes or blinds. But we had privacy, of a sort, because we were the highest building for miles. The city lay spread out around us like a map, traffic just glowing worms of light far below.
Luka put a hand on my arm and led me gently to a door. Behind it was a wet room finished in dark gray slate. The edges of the room were in darkness, giving the illusion that it went on forever. In the center, recessed spotlights picked out a gleaming metal shower head and the circle of floor beneath it.
“Take your time,” said Luka. “Clean that bitch off you. Dump your clothes outside the door and I’ll have them cleaned.”
I swallowed and looked around for a bathrobe. “Do you have anything else to wear?”
A smile touched his lips. His accent stroked each word, elongating the Es, turning them into vibrations that traveled up and down my spine.
“You won’t need anything to wear.”