Chapter 45: Except the person responsible was her

He said it the way someone said it when they wanted to find the person responsible and have a conversation with them. Except the person responsible was her.

And he knew that.

And the anger in his voice wasn’t at her, exactly; it was at the pain of the fact of it, at the ankle and the wall and the dark forest and the root she’d landed on as if the injury itself had committed the offence and he was only just restraining himself from responding accordingly.

Sienna stared at the ceiling. Her wrists were tied above her head.

Her ankle was in the hands of the most dangerous man she had ever met, who was holding it like it was something precious, something that had no business being hurt, something he intended to fix personally and thoroughly.

One minute she had been certain she was about to be punished. One minute she had been hiding under a table because survival was the only available logic.

And now...This.

She turned her head and looked at him, really looked, the way he was always looking at her, the way she had been carefully not doing in return at the dark head bent over her ankle, the careful hands, the jaw still tight with an anger that had apparently reorganised itself entirely around the fact that she was in pain.

What are you, she thought. Not a question she expected an answer to. Not a question she was sure she wanted answered.

But it sat in her chest anyway, quiet and persistent and considerably more dangerous than anything else that had happened tonight. Because bullets and knives and Morozov men and two million dollar vases she knew how to be afraid of.

This, she didn’t.

And that, Sienna understood, pressing her lips together in the lamplight while Viktor Kessler held her broken ankle like it was the most important thing in the room Was the most frightening thing of all.

If he is falling for her, Sienna thought, staring at the ceiling, she will never get out of here.

The thought arrived with the cold clarity of something she had been circling for hours without letting herself land on it. Because falling was mutual, falling had a gravity that pulled in both directions, and if Viktor Kessler was falling, then the danger wasn’t just him.

The danger was her. The danger was her own chest, and what it was doing. "What did you think I was going to do?"

His voice broke into her thoughts. Quiet. Almost curious. She turned her head aside.

"Force myself on you?" She said nothing.

She heard him exhale not quite a laugh, something shorter than that, something that lived in the same neighbourhood as disbelief.

"Sienna." He waited until the name had settled. "I told you. When it comes to that..." a pause, and his voice shifted into something lower, more deliberate, the voice he used when he wanted words to land and stay... "I will wait for you to beg me."

She kept her eyes on the wall. "You ask. You beg. Only then." Another pause. "Only then will I touch you."

The room was very quiet.

"And when that day comes..." she could hear the absolute, untroubled confidence in it, the confidence of a man who had never once doubted the eventual outcome of anything... "I have a million ways to make you scream my name."

He moved.

The mattress shifted, and he was above her again not restraining, not threatening, just there, in the space above her, and she was acutely, inconveniently aware of every inch of the distance between them.

"I can see it, you know," he said. Softer now. "The way your chest rises and falls when I’m close."

Her jaw tightened.

His hand moved to her waist. Light. Just resting there, through the ruined fabric of the red dress, warm and certain and completely unfair.

"You will never," Sienna said, and her voice came out steady, she was proud of it, she worked for that steadiness... "have me on my knees for you."

She shut her eyes. Braced.

Because he was close and the room was warm and she had had an extremely long night and her defenses were held together with something that was beginning to feel a lot like stubbornness alone, and if he kissed her right now

If he kissed her right now, she was not responsible for anything that happened next.... Her hands came free.

She opened her eyes.

Viktor was already moving back. Off the bed. Standing, straightening his jacket with the unhurried ease of a man who had made his point and was comfortable leaving it there.

"You should go change," he said.

Completely normal. Completely calm. As if the last three minutes had been a business meeting that had concluded satisfactorily.

"I’ll have the doctor come to look at your ankle." Sienna stared at him. He reached the door.

Paused with his hand on the frame and turned back, not fully, just enough, the profile of him in the light from the hallway.

"Don’t," he said, and the easy tone was still there, but underneath it was something with teeth, something that had been patient all evening and was done pretending otherwise, "for even one second, think that your little escape attempt goes unpunished."

A beat.

"I will punish you." Simply. Finally. "Once your leg heals." He left.

The door closed.

Not slammed. That would have been easier, somehow, something to push against, something to meet with equal force. Just closed. Quietly.

With the absolute confidence of a man who had nowhere to rush to because everything was already exactly where he needed it.

Sienna sat up. Slowly. Pushing herself upright on the bed, the red dress in ruins around her, the diamonds still somehow at her throat, her hair having long since made its own decisions.

She swung her legs to the edge of the bed. Her ankle reminded her, immediately and specifically, of every choice she had made in the last two hours.

She slowed down. Sat there.

The room settled around her, quiet, warm, the lamplight doing its usual indifferent job of making everything look softer than it was.