Total pages in book: 187
Estimated words: 177397 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 887(@200wpm)___ 710(@250wpm)___ 591(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 177397 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 887(@200wpm)___ 710(@250wpm)___ 591(@300wpm)
I’m not ashamed to admit I love her. I’ve just never spoken those words to anyone but the woman standing next to us, and the remembrance has me wishing I had a way to contact Andrik. I could ask Maksim, but I don’t want to stretch how accommodating he has been.
Furthermore, he’s giving Nikita the world, and I don’t want anything to risk her accepting his plentiful offerings.
Aleena settles faster tonight than the previous two. It’s not hard to crave sleep when you’re burning the candle at both ends.
Nikita’s head pops up from a glossy magazine when she hears me enter the living room. “All settled?”
“Finally.” I flop onto the seat next to her, exhausted. “Today was…”—confusing and cathartic but also what dreams are made of, so I settle with—“amazing.” I twist my torso to face her. “Thank you so much.”
She brushes off my comment as if it is weightless. “Don’t thank me. I didn’t do anything.”
I smack her in the face with a pillow. “No prenup, baby. So any gift from Maksim today was also a gift from you.”
Any knocks my ego endured today become non-existent when she says, “I’ve seriously had the best day of my life. I never would have predicted that would be the statement that ended my day when I woke up this morning.”
“Then what are you still doing here? Why aren’t you taking full advantage of the alone time before we fly home tomorrow? I love Gigi, but you know as well as I do that if Maksim makes you scream like you did earlier today, she’ll take his head off with a baseball bat.”
“Z!”
“What? It was so hot I’m seriously reconsidering my stance on sex club parties.” Next time I might ask Maksim to keep the lights on. “You don’t have to participate, but what are your thoughts on this pose?” I leap onto the couch, arch over it, then shake my tooshie. “Too risqué or tastefully nasty?”
She spanks my ass, adding to the welts Andrik’s hand left yesterday, before she leaps to her feet and heads to her bedroom.
“Are you seriously staying here? He had one request, Keet. One!”
She thinks because her back is to me that I can’t see her eye roll.
She’s wrong.
“It’s late.”
“Don’t act like he isn’t awake, awaiting your return.”
I hide the burn my prolonged wait last night caused my heart by following Nikita into her bedroom. I almost laugh when she squashes her ear to the wall separating our penthouse suite from Maksim’s.
“I don’t want to wake him if he’s asleep.”
“He isn’t asleep.” When I mimic her snooping ass, I learn there is more honesty to my statement than first believed. Maksim isn’t asleep. He isn’t alone, either.
“Maybe it’s the TV?”
“That isn’t the TV.” Nikita’s voice has an edge of pain to it. “There’s nothing but infomercials on at this time of the night, and her voice is too young to be an infomercial host.”
I try to recall if Maksim’s quick scroll through his calendar this morning mentioned a Raya when he says, “I appreciate you coming, Raya. I know it is late, and you’ve traveled a long way, but hopefully I made the trip worthwhile.”
“Of course you did.” Nikita heaves, not missing the ambiguity in Raya’s reply. She either wants to fuck Maksim or has. I hope it is the former.
Maksim’s deep timbre pulls away from us as he says, “Let me know if you need anything.”
He must be walking.
I realize Raya’s hoping for the former when she replies, “I wouldn’t say no to a chaperon to my car.”
When footsteps sound through the door, I lock eyes with Nikita, silently promise her she has nothing to worry about, and then sprint for the entryway of our suite.
I beat Nikita to the peephole. I’m glad. The visual of Maksim walking a redheaded woman down the hall isn’t incriminating, but it would turn the gut of even the most confident woman.
Regretfully, Nikita isn’t one of them.
A second after I inch back from the peephole, she takes my place. She blinks three times before she sinks away from the door, spins, and then flattens her back against the glossy wood.
I can see a million thoughts shifting through her head before she settles on the one I often land on when trying to work out why Andrik went from meeting me and being married in hours.
“Maybe he wasn’t expecting me to give it up so easily.”
“No, Nikita. This isn’t on you. And we don’t even know what this is. She could be an acquaintance? Maybe she helped him arrange all the things he did today?”
“His hand was on her ass. They’re more than colleagues.”
Maksim hasn’t given any reason to lose my trust, so I won’t let my insecurities tear him down. “No, it wasn’t. It was near it but not on it.” When she glares at me, disgusted I am taking his side, I say, “You don’t see how he looks at you. He’s crazy about you.”