Page 165 of Sexting His Assistant

When I open them, I type exactly what I am thinking.

Luka: I would come in, close that useless curtain, and put my hand over your mouth before you had time to argue, because you would argue just to prove you could. Then I would turn you toward the mirror, push that dress up slowly, and make you watch while I slid my hand between your legs and found out exactly how much trouble you’ve been causing in a public fitting room.

Luka: No. You asked.

Nina: I asked what you would do if you were here, not for you to make me forget how to breathe.

Luka: I would keep my mouth near your ear and tell you to stay quiet while my fingers moved under that expensive dress. I would let you see my hand disappear beneath the fabric, let you see your own face when I touched you, and every time you tried to close your eyes, I would tell you to open them.

Nina: I would be mortified.

Luka: You would be wet.

Nina: I hate you.

Luka: No, you don’t. You would be holding the edge of the mirror with one hand and my wrist with the other, pretending you wanted me to stop while your body told me the opposite.

Nina: I’m actually going to die in this fitting room.

Luka: Not before I made you come quietly enough that no one outside the curtain knew what I was doing to you.

Nina: Quietly?

Luka: You would try.

Nina: You sound very sure I would fail.

Luka: I know you. You get loud when you’re close.

Nina: Luka.

Luka: And when you were shaking, I would fix your underwear, pull your dress back down, kiss your neck once, and send you out to buy it like nothing happened.

Nina: That is evil.

Luka: That is approval.

Nina: Of the dress?

Luka: Of you in the dress. There is a difference.

Saturday comes with problems before noon.

Pavel sends an update on the plate from the car that dropped Misha outside Nina’s building. The registration trail is bad, deliberately messy, routed through a company that exists mostly on paper. The driver has not been identified. The car appears twice on traffic cameras near the Aurelia, but the driver is still unidentifiable.

By six in the evening, I’m in my office dressed for the gala, reading the same report for the third time without absorbing half of it.

I close the file.

Useless.

I stand and put on my jacket, wincing when my shoulder pulls. Mirov taped it again this morning and called me several things my mother would pretend not to understand. The wound is healing, but slowly, and I’m making it worse every time I forget that I’m not as invincible as my reputation suggests.

Nina’s made me forget it often.

I take the private corridor to the executive elevators.

Dima and Sergei are already waiting there with Pavel.