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“Elara.”

“It doesn’t.”

We both know that’s not the point.

I force myself to look at her face. “I’m sorry.”

I don’t know what she expected me to say, but it was not that.

“I should not have said what I said to you at the party,” I continue. “I was angry. I had reason to be angry, but I used the cruelest words because I knew they would hurt.”

Her throat moves.

I want to touch her.

I don’t.

“You were right,” she says.

“No.”

“Nikolai—”

“You crossed a line with Anya. That’s true. What I said to you after that was my choice, and it was cruel.”

She looks away, and for a second I think she might cry, but she doesn’t.

“I’m sorry,” I say again. There is more. Too much more. I don’t trust myself with it tonight. So I step back. “You should sleep.”

I turn to leave.

“Please,” she breathes.

I stop.

Then she says, “Wait.”

I turn back.

She’s still in the doorway, one hand curled around the edge of the door, her face pale and tired and open in a way she will probably hate tomorrow. The hurt is still there. So is fear, though less than before. But under both of those, there is the same pull that has been between us since the night I helped her out of that ruined blouse, since the pool, since every moment I told myself not to look at her mouth and looked anyway.

I should walk away.

She has been frightened tonight. She is vulnerable. She works in my house. My daughter loves her. Every decent reason says I should leave her standing there and go back to my room.

But I’m not decent. And she asked me to wait.

I cross the hall in two strides, take her face in my hands, and kiss her.

For one second, she goes still.

Then her fingers close around my shirt, and she pulls me closer with a sound that makes the last of my control snap.

I step into her room without breaking the kiss.

She steps back with me.

My hand leaves her face only long enough to reach behind me and shut the door close.