It’s his bathrobe. I’m wearinghisbathrobe.
Ohmygodjustkillmenow.
I look for anything else I can swap it out for, but there’s nothing. I mean, yeah, there’s towels, but they’re way too high up. This place was clearly designed with Tall Russian Hunk as the targetuser, not Bite Sized Woman who still buys her sneakers in the kids’ section.
I do a little jump, but the towel slips through my fingers. “Dammit.”
I do another. And another. And another.
And then, when I’ve finally almost got it?—
“You alright in there?”
—he walks in.
And the bathrobefalls open.
34
MIA
The staring contest goes a bit like this:
He stares.
I stare.
He stares.
I try to cover myself up with the bathrobe and accidentally drop it fully on the ground.
He. Stares. Harder.
This is it. He’s gonna fire me. He’s gonna sue me for sexual harassment, take me for everything Idon’town, and then he’ll?—
Wait, why is he walking?
Why is he walking towards me?!
“Blyat’.” That foreign word spills like a curse from his lips. “You think you’re clever, don’t you?.”
“Wait, it wasn’t like that! I didn’t—I—what?”
He’s looming now, him fully clothed, me very much not. “Always teasing. Always just out of reach.”
“Please don’t?—”
Whatever I was going to ask him not to do dies when he bends down to ravage my mouth.
He licks my tongue like he owns it. Like I’m his and always have been. It makes my head spin, sends me right back through the locked door of that night’s memories.
“Yulian,” I pant, “we can’t?—”
“No,” he agrees, pulling away sharply. His voice is a husky rasp, scraping me raw. “We’re late enough as it is.”
“Right.”
“So we’ll just have to be quick about it.”
