He placed a hand on the small of my back and urged me forward. I felt awkward. I couldn’t help it. Should I hug him? I wanted to, but it felt weird. He was too remote, a beautifully sculpted statue of a god, while I was a mere mortal in a printed swing dress and leather jacket.
“I might say the same to you, Lori Wilson.” He raised an eyebrow at me.
We passed through another door, with security guards armed to hell and back. I couldn’t stop staring around the building as we walked toward a door at the end of the hall.
“I took my father’s name a few years back,” Kirill explained. “It turned out my mom never registered Lewis, so I started using my legal name.”
I nodded, distracted by the luxurious penthouse apartment. I couldn’t wrap my mind around the casual wealth in every direction.“Looks like we had different trajectories when we parted ways.”
“You have no idea,” Kirill murmured.
He walked with a slight limp as I trailed alongside him. It wasn’t too pronounced, but it was enough to change his gait. He stopped in front of an enormous steel door at the bottom. Yep, it was an intimidating door for a residential house.
“Expecting the army to try and break in?” I asked as he unlocked it with a fingerprint.
“This is New York. You can’t be too careful.” He pushed open the door and stood back so I could precede him.
“The key is not to have anything worth stealing. That’s my strategy, and it’s working,” I muttered as I went inside. The space was huge. Cavernous. Considering New York property prices, it must have cost millions upon millions. It was also as cold as hell and weirdly empty. “Did you just move in?”
He kicked his shoes off at the door, and I copied him, remembering the first time I had followed him home at sixteen.
“It’s been a few years,” he said noncommittedly.
He was so quiet and uncommunicative. It was driving me crazy. His steady gaze stayed on me as I looked around his house appreciatively. This place didn’t feel like him, but there was no denying he’d done well for himself. I was proud of him. One of us had made it, after all. I was glad it was him. That’s how fucked up I was over this guy.
We stared at each other until I noticed a drop of dark red landing on the pale marble floor.“You’ve hurt your hand! Do you have a first aid kit?” I seized on something practical to focus on rather than the awkwardness.
He looked down at his hand, seeming surprised to see blood dripping from his fingers to the floor.“It’s fine.”
I folded my arms across my chest and shook my head. “Tell me where the kit is, or I’ll go and look for it.”
He narrowed his eyes at me for a moment, and I wondered if he was going to argue. Luckily, he merely nodded. “I’ll bring it,” he said, turning down a dark hall.
I lingered, not sure where to go. There was a light at the end of the hallway, and I headed toward it, hoping to find the kitchen. Bingo. Pools of light illuminated a huge island in the middle of the state-of-the-art kitchen, all white and black marble with gold shot through it. One wall was floor-to-ceiling views of New York at night. I drifted to the glass, pulled by this vision of the city from above.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?”
I turned to see Kirill leaning against the wall with a first-aid box in his hand. He was studying me, not the view.
“From up here, it is beautiful, even if I know it isn’t up close. It’s full of rotten parts,” I muttered and held my hand out for the first-aid box.
Our fingers touched, and a shiver of pure, liquid heat went through me. My throat tightened, and my skin flushed. Kirill had been my first kiss and only the guy I’d ever wanted. He didn’t let go of the box, stroking his thumb gently over my finger where it touched his until I shuddered. He finally released it, a secret smile appearing on his lips.
“What is it?” I asked as we sat at the island.
“You haven’t changed.”
I busied myself with the contents of the box, starting with the disinfectant. “You have. And I have too. You just can’t see it,” I disagreed. “This might sting,” I warned him as I dabbed the disinfectant on his skin.
He shrugged and didn’t flinch as I cleaned glass from the wound.
I winced the entire time and was relieved as hell when I was done.“That’s some injury. How’d you do it?”
He shrugged. “I forget.”
“There’s a glass splinter in it,” I fretted, looking for tweezers.
I started rummaging in the box when he shocked me by bringing his hand to his mouth and closing his lips over the cut. He pulled away after a moment and wiped the blood from his lips before flicking the splinter from his mouth and onto the floor.