Page 163 of Dark King Daddy

“So go on. Show me,” he said.

“What?”

“You said you would have flirted. Show me how.”

I looked at him. The candles. The wine. The dark suit and the white shirt and the man who had turned off his phone and asked me what I would have done if the world had not been arranged for us.

I picked up my wine glass. I took a sip. I set it down. I looked at him—not at his face, not yet. At his hands. The broad shape of them on the table. The way his fingers rested near the base of his wine glass. I let my gaze travel from his hands to his wrist to the cuff of his shirt to the exposed skin above the buttoned collar.

Then I looked at his face.

I held his gaze. I did not smile. I did not look away. I let the silence between us fill with the particular awareness of a woman who wanted to be looked at and was willing to wait.

“You have something here,” I said. I reached across the table. My fingers touched the corner of his mouth. My fingertip traced the edge of his lower lip for one second, two, and then I withdrew my hand and placed it in my lap.

“Thank you,” I said. As though he had handed me a napkin.

His eyes had not left mine. The ice-blue had darkened. His hand on the table had gone still—not tense, not gripping, but still with the particular stillness of a man whose attention had narrowed to a single point.

“That’s how you flirt?” he said. “Clean my mouth.”

“First I clean with my fingers. Then I clean with my lips.”

His eyes widened with lust. “Is that so?”

“Maybe.” I giggled. “But it is a bit forward. Maybe I try something else.”

“A different approach?”

“Mmmh. I’d wait. Let you notice. I’d let you wonder whether I meant it or whether I’m the kind of woman who touches everyone’s mouth at dinner. I’d let you think about it. I’d let you think about it until the next time we’re in the same room, and then I wouldn’t look at you at all. Not once. And you’d spend the entire evening wondering what changed.”

“That’s cruel.”

“That’s effective.”

“It’s both.”

I smiled. The first smile of the flirtation—slow, private, the kind of smile that existed only for the person it was directed at. I let it happen. I let him see it.

“The difference now,” I said, “is that I don’t have to wait. I don’t have to wonder whether you noticed. I know you noticed. I know you’re thinking about my finger on your lip. I know that when I stand up from this table and walk past your chair, you’re going to watch me go. And I know that when I come back, you’ll be here. Because you love me. And that, Daniil Sokolov, is the most outrageous thing I’ve ever felt.”

He stood up. He came around the table. He took my face in both hands and kissed me, and the kiss tasted like saffron and wine and deep, warm, love.

Moments later, music began. It came from his phone, connected to the small speaker on the living room shelf. Something old. Russian. A man’s voice, low and unhurried, singing about a river or a woman or both—my Russian was good enough for architecture and arguments but not for poetry, and the song seemed to be both.

Daniil stood in the center of the living room. He extended his hand.

“Dance with me.”

I took his hand. He drew me in. His other hand settled on my waist. He pulled me close. My hip met his. My hand went to his shoulder.

He moved.

He was good.

Not adequate. Not functional. Good. He led with his whole body—a slight shift of weight, a pressure through his palm on my waist, and I followed because following was the only option when the man leading you knew exactly where he was going and moved with the calm, unhurried confidence of someone who had been doing this long enough that the steps were in his muscles rather than his head.

“When,” I said.