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"She’s in her room," he replied. "She’s fine. Just resting for the night, I think."
"Looks like she had a pretty busy one," I shot back, my voice tenser than I had expected it to be. Maxim let out a chuckle, breaking some of the tension between us.
"Yeah, I guess she did," he agreed. He turned to face me.
"I’m sorry you walked in on us like that," he remarked. "I didn’t plan for it. Didn’t expect anyone to come looking for me."
"I know," I replied. There was no chance, not in a million years, that someone like Maxim would have set up something like that, let alone with me. He had never been that kind of guy, not in the whole time I’d known him, a show-off who wanted to rub it in the faces of the people around him.
"It just kind of … happened," he continued. "I came back from the gym, and she was at the club, talking to this random guy …"
I bristled at the thought. Some random guy? After she had kissed me? I didn’t get this. I didn’t understand what the hell was going through her mind, or even if I was meant to.
"And I pulled her into my office to explain why that wasn’t a good idea," he continued. "And it just … happened."
I grunted, lifted my drink to my lips, and took another long sip. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know what he expected me to say, to be honest. Tell him congratulations, for fucking her before I got a chance to? Yeah, I didn’t get the feeling that would have gone down well …
"You alright?" Maxim asked, and I blurted it out before I could stop myself.
"I kissed her."
"You what?" he replied, confused, brow furrowing.
"I kissed her," I repeated, making sure he heard me this time. He stared at me for a moment, and I couldn’t tell whether he was mad, confused, or just hurt.
"When?" he asked me quietly.
"Earlier tonight," I replied, holding out the injured hand that she had patched up. "I was dealing with Tony at the club; he was causing some trouble. I came back up here, she saw what kind of state I was in, and she insisted on helping. And we … We ended up kissing."
There it was; the truth of the matter. I had no idea how Maxim was going to take this, no idea what I thought his reaction was going to be. I figured he was struggling with it, judging by the furrow that appeared between his brow as he took in what I was saying to him, but, after a long pause, he shrugged.
"Thanks for telling me," he remarked, turning to lean on the balcony railing once more. I blinked at him, surprised.
"That doesn’t bother you?"
"If it was anyone else, it might," he replied. "But … we’ve shared damn near everything in our lives, Damyan, you have to remember that. Sharing her …"
He trailed off.
"She’s different," he admitted. "She’s … She’s not like the other women I’ve been with."
"Yeah, you can say that again," I agreed. I hated to come out and say it like that, admit that a girl had gotten inside my head as well as she had managed to, but there was no way I could deny the truth. There was something about her that made it hard to think straight, something that made me ready to give up on all the rules I had laid down for myself and act on pure instinct alone.
"You should be careful around her," I warned Maxim, and he shot a look at me out of the corner of his eye, a grin on his face.
"You really think what you saw was me being careful?" he pointed out. I chuckled.
"Okay, fair point," I agreed. And, as silence fell between us once more, I found myself wondering just what else might have been going on between Maxim and Mina, and, more importantly, what might have been going down between her and I.
Because I knew I wasn’t going to be able to get her out of my head anytime soon. And, shit, seeing her like that? It was just going to make it even harder.
Chapter Thirteen – Mina
I tossed and turned under the covers, my head a mess that I just couldn’t seem to get a handle on.
How was I meant to deal with what had happened earlier this week? It had been playing on my mind ever since, going around and around in my head like it was trying to outright torture me. There was something so tantalizing about it, the memory of being with Maxim like that, as though it had come straight out of a fantasy and into the real world, but I knew I couldn’t get used to it.
Right?
