He slips the spoon inside, but I don’t taste the food. It’s impossible when all my senses are being held hostage by this…enigma of a man.
The act of feeding another person should be normal, or at least, not important enough to cause such unbearable tension. However, due to who Kirill is, it’s anything but.
It also has to do with the position I’m in.
Each of his movements oozes with suffocating control, and I’m hopelessly caught in his web. I stare at my hands in a desperate attempt to disperse the tension that’s wrapping itself around my neck like a noose.
“Um…congratulations,” I say in a small voice.
Kirill slips another spoonful of soup into my mouth. “For?”
“Getting the position as your father’s replacement.”
“You say that as if there was a possibility I wouldn’t.” He raises a brow. “Did you doubt me, Sasha?”
A frisson goes through me like every time he says my name. It’s especially aggravating when he does it in that rare, amused tone.
“I did, but only until I found out you had two plans to get that position.”
“Two plans?”
“The first is playing the hero for saving your mother and subtly highlighting Konstantin as non-filial. The second is buying votes in case the first plan didn’t work.”
“That’s where you’re wrong.” He strokes the corner of my lips to wipe something off, but his fingers linger there for a second too long, feeling unbearably sensual. “There weren’t only two plans, there were three.”
“What’s the third?”
“Getting rid of Konstantin.”
“You…planned to kill your own brother?”
“Getting rid of him doesn’t necessarily mean killing him. I’m more creative than that.”
I was wrong. Kirill isn’t only dangerous. He’s a literal menace.
I turn slightly in his direction. “Don’t you feel apprehensive about having all these enemies?”
“Nothing great was ever achieved by only having friends.” He strokes my mouth again, but this time, his thumb presses on my bottom lip until it pulses beneath his touch.
My awareness of the weight of his arm around my back and over my hip feels heightened. But most importantly, I can’t ignore the growing bulge against my ass.
The more he strokes and presses on my lip, the bigger his erection becomes. A chill travels down my spine and into the very marrow of my bones.
My face heats, and so does my neck, despite my attempts to keep my reaction under control.
This is the first time he’s touched me this explicitly since that day during the snowstorm when I was injured. Maybe it’s because I thought this would never happen again, but now that it has, my body resurrects to life despite myself.
“Are you blushing, Sasha?”
I try to swallow, but it gets stuck at the base of my throat, so I just shake my head once.
“Your skin looks red.”
“That’s because…I’m hot.”
“That you are.”
My heart beats so hard, I’m surprised it doesn’t jump from its confinements and lay itself at his feet. “W-what?”