Ruby Fever (Hidden Legacy, #6)(98)

My fingertips were going numb, and I still had half of his back and both thighs to go. It was him, me, my notes, and an art marker with Shadow as the audience.

“Ready?” Bern asked from the phone on the coffee table. I had him on speaker.

“Go,” Alessandro said.

“Sample 1.”

Arabella’s voice came from the phone, haunting and persistent. “You’re going to die. This is your last warning. Leave, and we will not pursue you. Save yourself.”

“Sample 2.”

A slightly different intonation. “You’re going to die. This is your last warning. Leave, and we will not pursue you. Save yourself.”

“Sample 3 . . .”

Apparently, my sister could sound remarkably menacing when the occasion called for it.

“The third one is the scariest,” I said.

“The first one,” Alessandro said. “She sounds like a younger sister guilt-tripping you.”

“Our vote is for the first one as well,” Bern said.

“It’s your concert,” I told him. “First it is.”

He hung up.

I kept drawing. The glyph pattern wasn’t difficult to understand. It was just hellishly complicated to draw.

“Konstantin was in your office for a while today,” Alessandro said.

“Mhm.”

“What did he say to you?” he asked.

“He thinks you will die tomorrow.”

“I won’t.”

Damn right, you won’t. That’s why we were doing this.

“Anything else?”

He wasn’t going to let it go. I knew that tone. “He thinks Princessa Catalina Jamesovna Berezina has a nice ring to it.”

The muscle under my fingers went rock hard. My marker slipped.

“Damn it.” I reached for a cosmetic wipe and scrubbed the ruined glyph from his skin. “Do you want to be here all evening?”

“Yes and no. I had plans for tonight.”

Ah ha. “Were you naked in those plans?”

“Yes.”

“Well, see, they came true.”

I redrew the glyph and knelt to get better access to his side and hip.

“In my plans, we were both naked.”

I glanced up at him. “Would you like me to take my clothes off?”

His eyes flashed with orange. “No, it might not be safe.”

“You’re doing your seductive voice again.”

“I’m so sorry,” he purred. “Is it distracting you?”

“A little bit.”

“Clearly, I need to try harder.”

“You need to hold still so we can finish this. Don’t talk.”

I redrew the glyph and kept going.

“Konstantin does bring a lot to the table,” Alessandro said, as if thinking out loud. “He can look like anyone, which provides endless variety in bed. He is wealthy, powerful, and witty. Able to hold a stimulating conversation. And then of course, the perks of being a royal. The bowing, the rituals, the status. The family would benefit by association.”

I stopped and looked at him.

He gave me that sharp and funny Alessandro smile, the one that made me stare at him like a lovesick idiot every time he did it.

“But to get all of that, you would have to put up with Konstantin every day. And that would be a fate worse than death itself.”

“Are you done?” I asked him.

“Possibly.”

“I’m so glad. Please stop talking.”

“I love you, Catalina.”

I growled at him.

“You are so smart and beautiful.”

“Alessandro, shut up.”

“Your wings are breathtaking.”

I would punch him.

“You cook like a goddess . . .”

“Damn it!” I threw the marker on the floor.

He grabbed my hands and pulled me upright. His eyes were like molten amber. “Every time I wake up next to you, I feel like the luckiest man ever born. I can’t believe you chose me. You have all of me forever. In this whole world, there is no one like you.”

He touched my cheek with his fingertips and kissed me. There was so much tenderness in that kiss. It was made of love and hope, and it broke me. I had been trying to keep it together for so long, but no defense could’ve stood up to that.

He wiped the tears from my face with his fingers and touched my forehead with his. We stood an inch apart, the glyphs still drying on his skin.

“Don’t die tomorrow,” I told him.

“I won’t. I promise.”





Chapter 18




The northwest corner of the wall widened into a patio originally designed to offer a scenic backdrop for wedding photos. The patio was crowned by a pavilion we’d dubbed the Wedding Cake because it was ornate and ridiculous. After buying the Compound, the Wedding Cake was converted into an observation post complete with reinforced walls and massive bulletproof windows. We still called it the Wedding Cake, despite all the renovations and the fact that its charming table and chairs had been replaced by a utilitarian counter offering a variety of cameras and binoculars.

I stood inside it now, drinking coffee from a white mug with golden lettering on it. The letters said, “You got this.”