Page 204 of Sweet Ruin

“‘Pretend’?” I ask.

“Oh, yes.” He nods. “Because if you truly give me control, sladkaya, things will get messy. Very fucking messy. I don’t want to frighten you away just yet, so I think it’s best if you tell me what to do for now.”

“Oh. Uh… okay.”

I can’t deny that a shiver runs through me at the thought of what Kane Makov might do if I told him he was in charge. Messy could mean so many things…

But I think he’s right. I’m just tiptoeing my way into this new life of mine.

I don’t think I’m ready for the big leagues just yet.

Unfortunately, what that means is that I have to call the shots. That’s terrifying in its own way.

“How should I start?” I ask with a nervous warble in my voice.

Kane laughs. “That’s for you to decide.”

“Just give me something,” I plead. “This is new territory for me.”

He sighs. “Tell me where to stand.”

I square my shoulders up to him and point at the rug. “There. Come stand there.”

Kane steps onto it.

“Hands at your sides.”

He obeys.

I look him up and down.

Really look, I mean. Not the sideways glances I’ve been rationing out all day while he worked alongside me or sat across from me at the dinner table.

He’s tall enough that my ceiling light hits him wrong, catching the top of his head and leaving the rest of his face in shadow. The suit is black and it fits him the way nothing has ever fit me, cut close through the shoulders and tapering down. His shirt has two buttons undone and has somehow survived twelve hours of my dish sink without a single splash of chocolate on it.

Unfair.

His hair is dark and pushed back off his forehead, a little wrecked from our fumbling makeout in the car, one piece falling forward over his eyebrow that I want to fix and also want to leave there forever.

The beard is short. Trimmed with a precision that suggests either a very expensive barber or a man with control issues, and I know for a fact it’s the second one.

Then there’s the ink. It starts somewhere under his collar and climbs the side of his throat in dark, dense lines I can’t decipher from six feet away. It comes back out at his wrists where his sleeves are still shoved past the elbow.

His rings catch the lamp. Four of them, heavy, all silver.

His hands are at his sides because I put them there.

“Well?” he says. “Are you going to keep looking, or are you going to use me?”

I step close enough to touch him. I begin with his jacket, peeling it off and tossing it on the back of the nearby armchair.

Then I open his shirt one button at a time and push it from his shoulders. That gets set aside, too.

The tattoos cover his chest and arms. I have seen pieces beneath his clothes for weeks, but seeing all of them at once makes me forget my next instruction.

Kane waits.

“You can touch me,” I say.