Page 119 of Nine Months to Bear

He grips my chin and turns my head until I have to meet his eyes. They’re bloodshot, unblinking. “Good” is all he says.

Then he kisses me—quick, brutal, like punctuation.

When he finally lets me go, papers crunch under my bare feet as I slide off the desk. The robe is crumpled somewhere on the floor, but I can’t see where.

“Leave it,” he says when he catches me looking, catching my wrist. “Stay. Here. Like this.”

I hesitate, then I nod. “Alright,” I whisper. “I’ll stay.”

46

OLIVIA

The tender bumps the dock and I grab the rail, legs still loose from too much sun and not enough blood in my brain. Stefan climbs out first and offers a hand. I ignore him and hop off myself. My knees wobble and nearly give out anyway. The costs of having pride, I suppose.

“You’re quiet this morning,” he notes.

“You wore me out last night.”

A ghost of a smile. He guides me toward the waiting car with a palm at my lower back.

The Maybach swallows us. Salt clings to my skin. He rolls his sleeves to the forearms, opens his phone, fires off orders in clipped Russian.

Soon, we’re moving. I watch streetlights smear across the window and try not to replay last night. The smear of my breath across his desktop. Fractured glow from a chandelier swinging overhead.

Neither of us speaks for a while. I want to ask so many questions—What changed that means it’s okay to come back now?is at the top of the list—but it’s easier to just sit here, with Stefan’s hand on my thigh, as we slowly make our way back to the city.

I snort and stare out at the birches as we turn up the drive to his mansion. Their pale trunks shine like bones against the night.

Guards lift the gate. Cameras track our every moment.Home sweet home—complete with safe rooms and panic buttons.

When we go inside, it takes me a second to realize that I’m suddenly walking down the corridor by myself. I stop and turn around to see Stefan sauntering in the other direction with my weekend bag still in his hand.

“Where are you going? My room’s that way.” I point towards where I was headed.

He keeps going in the other direction. “Not anymore.”

“Not anymore, what? Stefan? Stefan!”

Frowning, I go marching after him. When I round the corner, he’s just unlocking a huge set of double doors. They swing inward and he stands back.

My throat goes tight. The room is dark wood and steel as far as the eye can see. The bed is a black, brutal concrete slab with a soft, sinful center. The bay window spills moonlight across the floor. His scent lives here—citrus and smoke seeping from everything.

And on the tufted bench at the foot of his bed sits my suitcase. The one I brought here the first night I stayed. My blue sweater is folded on top like an apology.

“You moved my things.”

Stefan doesn’t even look in my direction. “Yes.”

“Into your bedroom.”

“Correct.”

“Without asking me.”

Now, he looks up, one eyebrow raised. “Would you have said yes?”

“That’s not the point?—”