Page 34 of Just One More Night

JUNEFADED,TURNINGinto a sweet, golden July that seemed to stretch on into forever.

Maybe he only wished it could.

Stefan had never spent much time contemplating the seasons. They marched on, one after the next, and what mattered was surviving what they wrought. Summer had simply been warmer than the bitter winters, but life had carried on the same. The less said about his childhood the better. Ditto the army. And since then, he’d been far too busy catapulting toward his dark future to spend any kind of deliberate time in the light.

But this summer he was in Prague. The only place on the planet that he had ever viewed not just as an escape, but as safe. It was where his grandmother had showed him that there was more to life than his father’s heavy fist.

And now, fittingly, Prague was where he and his Indy were finally coming to terms.

I’ll give you a month, she’d said that first afternoon. When she’d left him but come back, looking jittery and wide-eyed and still somehow stubborn.

Still stubborn, even as she’d surrendered.

Even as she gave him what he wanted, she did it her way.

He’d thought again of a splash of red in a dark alley. And how quickly, how irrevocably, this woman had happened along and changed everything. It was a good thing he had always been a practical man, or he might have been tempted to tear down a wall or two. With his bare hands, just to feel them fall.

Anything to feel as if he could control the things he felt for this woman. As if he could control himself the way he always had before her.

But he had a month. And Stefan intended to use it.

Let me guess, she’d said that first afternoon, when all he’d done was gaze at her, victory and something that felt too much like relief pounding through him.You require nudity at all times. Blowjobs morning, noon, and night. Is that the kind of intensity you have in mind?

It is never a bad place to start, he’d said, already amused.As I think you know.

She had already told him that not indulging in her usual behavior, out there where she could have lovers eating from her hand with a single glance, was a statement of her intent. But Stefan didn’t think he was the only one who thought that really, when she crossed the terrace to kneel down at his feet, then held his gaze while she took him into her mouth again, that it was a new set of vows.

And for the first few days, it was enough to simply have her near. To know that there would be no renegotiation come the dawn. That she had promised him a month and that meant she wouldn’t sneak out when he was on his run or while he was dealing with the inevitable phone call.

Not that she struck him as the type tosneakanywhere. But then, before her, he hadn’t been the type to worry about what a woman might be doing. Or about anything at all save getting richer and staying in one piece.

“I thought you walked away from your business,” she said when he finished one of those calls, standing out in the dusk and testing himself. Not looking back into the house to see what she was doing. Not checking to make sure she was where he’d left her.

He supposed that was trust. Or a gesture in its direction. And in him, trust was a muscle that had atrophied long ago—but for her, for them, he would work on it.

Stefan had been cooking Indy a traditional Romanian dinner when the call had come in. He walked back in now, something in him shifting—not quite uncomfortably—at the sight of her standing there at his stove. The kitchen was warm and bright, filled with the scents of his childhood, and Indy there in the middle of everything. She was barefoot, wearing those cutoff shorts that he had become a little bit obsessed with. Her hair was tied in a big knot on the top of her head, letting him look at her elegant neck and her shoulder blades beneath the airy tank she wore. Her bracelets sang small, happy songs every time she moved.

He felt his heart beat harder in his chest, the way it did now.

And he knew that two years ago he would have called what surged in him then a kind of horrifying neediness. He would have found it unpardonable. A weakness. He would have tried to excise it with his own fingers, if he could.

But that had been before. Before she’d walked into his world and knocked it straight off its axis.

“I walked away from my major business, yes,” he replied. “The part that would be frowned upon by any number of law enforcement agencies.”

“Then why are you still taking business calls?”

Once again he was struck by the fact she simply sounded interested. Not trying to score any points. Not building toward some kind of agenda. Just interested in him as a person.

And only when he acknowledged how rare that was could Stefan also admit that he liked it. That he wasn’t sure how he’d lived without it all this time.

“I always intended to retire from the more dangerous part of my business eventually,” he told her, and opted not to share how difficult that had turned out to be. It was clear to him that if he’d stayed in any longer than he had, exiting would not have been possible—and he didn’t like that at all. He’d always imagined himself in control of the things he did. “I only expedited the process. I am sure I told you this.”

She looked over her shoulder at him, laughter in her gaze. “I guess I didn’t realize you had a legitimate arm of whatever had you gun slinging in an alley in Budapest.”

Stefan went over to the stove and took the wooden spoon from her hand, nudging her away from his pot. “My money is perfectly legitimate. And as you know, money invested wisely makes more money.”

“That’s what you do? Invest?”