Smith smiled agotchasmile and stood. Buttoned his jacket before accepting her shake. Raven didn’t wince at the force of his squeeze, but that muscle in her jaw jumped again.
“It was wonderful to meet you,” Greg said, kindlier, as he offered his hand next. The way his fingers fumbled at Raven’s palm, Toly thought he’d meant to kiss the back of her hand again, but she didn’t allow it.
“Yes,” she said, tonelessly. “Lovely. I’ll be in touch.”
She walked them to the door, murmured something half-polite to their retreating backs, and then shut the door with a decisive shove. She let out an explosive sigh afterward, hand resting on the door panel, head dropping forward. Her shoulders and hips tilted at steep angles as she purposefully rolled one ankle so that her foot lay sideways on the rug. How she did that in those shoes without breaking said ankle was a mystery to him.
Donovan Smith and Greg Ingles had brought a wall of pressure into the room with them when they’d entered, like the swollen, buzzing energy just before a thunderstorm. In their absence, the air turned brittle. He watched the gentle flex of her back as she worked through a few deep breaths, and thought that if he broke the silence, he’d break something in her, too, and so he waited.
And waited.
Andwaited.
Her fingers flexed the smallest fraction, slender and pale against the dark wood of the door. He heard her draw in a deep breath, watched her ribcage expand, a delicate fretwork of bone visible beneath the dress, where it clung to her. She wasn’t sleeping, wasn’t eating; was too thin, and jumpy, and scared…
And Toly wouldn’t say that he cared, not really, probably not ever, because that part of him had been severed in his early childhood, but he applied his rusty voice to the fragile air between them and said, “What did you make of them?”
Her flinch was a tiny thing; would have been invisible if he wasn’t watching her so closely. But then her head lifted, and her shoulders dropped, and she stood up straight – but not rigid. Something had eased in her. He wouldn’t flatter himself by thinking it had eased at the sound of his voice.
She turned and leaned back against the door, arms folded, sole of one shoe propped along the copper kickplate. “What didyouthink of them?” she countered.
He tipped his head in concession.Fair enough. Then he took the chair that Smith had abandoned and plucked a chocolate out of the dish. It was a dark Belgian chocolate with a caramel center; it tasted like money. He swallowed, as she resumed her seat on the sofa, and said, “They’re both pricks.”
She rolled her eyes. “Obviously.”
“Smith in an obvious way,” he continued, “and the young one, Greg, in a way he tries to hide with his good-boy routine.” If he made a face on those words, so be it.
Her snort said he had.
“Smith doesn’t have any respect for women, but neither of them looked at you like they wanted to…you know.”
Her brows lifted – both this time. “Iknow?”
He made another face, on purpose this time. “They didn’t do anything–”
“Overtly sexual, no,” she said.
The same moment he, groping for the words, finished in Russian: “That made it obvious they want to fuck you.”
Her brows lifted a fraction higher.
“Let’s go with how you said it.”
Her mouth did the sideways, not-quite-a-smile thing. “Yes. Let’s. Alright.” She eased another fraction, expression smoothing into one of gentle worry. “No, they weren’t lecherous in any way.”
Thatwas the word he’d wanted.
“And their request isn’t necessarily…a bad one.”
“You don’t seem happy about it, though.”
“No, I’m not. It feels…” She shuddered delicately. “Cheap.”
“Hm.”
“What?” Her gaze sharpened a moment, keyed on his face. “You think that sounds elitist? It is,” she said, shrugging. “I am.”
He shrugged back and snagged another chocolate. “Eh. You’ve earned it.”
