Wicked Mafia Prince (A Dangerous Royals Romance, #2)(31)

He turns to me as if he senses the direction of my thoughts. “What are you thinking, Tanechka?”

“Many things.”

“I wish I could take all of the pain you felt. I would die ten times over to spare you from what you went through. The pain. The fear. I would do anything—”

“I wouldn’t want you to take it away. What happened was a gift,” I say. “The best thing.”

He grits his teeth and looks away. He doesn’t agree that it was a gift.

He has four guards following us, keeping watch on me. I saw two when we got out of the car. Two more later. Three are on the road behind us. One lingers near the shuttered snack stand some distance away. I am just one woman.

Perhaps he’s right to have four on me. I get many ideas about escaping, seemingly out of nowhere, like a hidden helper passing me a note. I often picture the floor plan of the flat he has me trapped in as a diagram in my mind. The idea of the roof has come to me several times. The row of homes is so tightly packed, the roof will be like a highway. This way of thinking feels like a well-worn path.

He wants to read the poetry to me.

I tell him I don’t want to hear it.

This upsets him—he’s gets upset very easily, this one—but I don’t like the way he knows things about me that I don’t know. Like the honey cake. The orehi. The fizzy water—favorites of mine from the past. This is not a fair playing field.

He wants to play music instead, but I will not have it—not after what he told me about my love of American rock and roll.

He reaches into the basket and pulls out a block with squares of color on it. He hands it to me, and instinctively I begin to turn the parts this way and that, knowing it is wrong and that it must be made right.

“Rubik’s Cube,” he says. “We used to love them. We would race.”

I pause. Another trick. I want to finish it. Red squares are where blues should be. The green, the red. It pains me not to finish it.

“Go on.”

I set it aside. “Another life.”

“Don’t you want to know, Tanechka?” He lies down next to me now, on his belly, head propped in his hands. “You used to be curious as a cat. It would sometimes get you into trouble.”

His nearness gives me an unruly feeling—so much feeling. My impulse is to sit up, so that the feeling might shake out of me. But such a sudden movement would reveal far too much. I stay. I pretend to be unaffected.

“You always loved stories and mysteries.” He takes hold of a bit of fabric from my sleeve and rubs it between his thumb and forefinger—unconsciously, it seems. But nothing this man does is unconscious. Best to remember.

“I remember once we had a ring that somebody lost—a ruby ring. So beautiful, with an unusual pattern. Celtic, you thought.”

He doesn’t touch my skin, only my sleeve. Still, he has such a gravitational pull. He continues to speak. The velvet of his voice seems to sweep against my skin. This man who would die ten times to take my pain, admiring and enchanting me. He’s too rich for my blood, too everything, just like the honey cake.

“You called on scholars to identify the unusual design, then you researched designers and stores. You had endless ideas for finding the owner.” He goes on about my quest, praising the inquisitive and resourceful side of me.

I remove my sleeve from his grasp and pretend to study the clouds. It doesn’t matter; he overwhelms me even when we aren’t touching. “What happened?”

“We found the person.”

“From just a ring?”

“Yes. Nobody thought we could do it, but you were tenacious. You and I found her house, just from the ring.”

Something tugs at the corners of my mind. “Was she happy to have it back?”

A pause. “Who wouldn’t be?”

The sun comes out from behind a passing cloud, and I close my eyes, basking in its warmth, basking a little bit also in his admiration.

That’s when I feel him touch my cheek.

I turn and scowl at him, and he withdraws his hand, smiling.

“You’re not doing it right. Keep them shut.”

“What?”

“Come on. It’s a game we used to play.” He pushes my chin, makes me turn my face back to the sky. “Close your eyes.”

I feel happy, and I don’t know why.

“Close them. Do this one thing for me.”

“Fine.” I close my eyes. Again he touches my cheek—so lightly I almost can’t feel it. Unbidden, my lips curl in a smile. I don’t remember this game, but I remember the happy, pure feeling of it. The excitement of it.

“Pomnish?” he whispers. “Remember?”

“It’s no use, Viktor.”

“Keep your eyes closed,” he says.

I feel his fingertips graze my cheek once again.

“Pomnish?”

I smile again because I know he’ll kiss me there—I need for him to kiss me there just as day follows night.

Then I still. This is the game—touch the place you’re going to kiss.

I should stop the game, but every molecule in me is waiting for his kiss, craving his kiss on my cheek, as if I need to finish this thing we have started.

It’s as if he’s communicating with my body, bypassing my mind completely. Is this what it’s like to be hypnotized?